BoJack checks into Pastiches, a Malibu rehab facility, where he grapples with memories of Sarah Lynn's death, his own troubled childhood, and dealing with a teenage girl named Jameson.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Medicine: Pastiches seemingly provides little or no medical supervision for people quitting drugs cold turkey, even though this method is extremely dangerous. However, this is sadly not uncommon in the unregulated rehab industry.
- Ball-Balancing Seal: An anthropomorphic seal at the Wild Teen Party can be seen standing on top of a juice keg while balancing another keg on his nose.
- Call-Back: The twin art-thieving girls from before strike again, pilfering another painting from the house where Jameson's boyfriend lives.
- Elephant in the Living Room: During therapy sessions, the patients are prompted to discuss their earliest encounter with, and causes for drinking. BoJack would always deflect and change the subject. Dr. Champ notices and presses him on this, but BoJack stubbornly refuses to talk about the root of that particular problem.
- Fictional Counterpart: Pastiches, for Passages Rehab at Malibu.
- Flashback: BoJack has a series of flashbacks in reverse order about his history of drinking. The first is him on set of Horsin' Around reluctantly accepting a drink to loosen him up during a difficult scene, implying that he started drinking because he enjoys the way that it makes him feel, but simply establishing part of why he drinks. Then, he has an earlier flashback at a kegger in high school, and he turns on one of the few people who treated him well. Then as a boy who caught Butterscotch in an affair (though BoJack doesn't understand what he's seeing at the time), who gave BoJack alcohol to the point of sickness, and advised BoJack that they both simply forget that night, establishing BoJack was always capable of drinking to excess. Finally, we have a flashback of very young BoJack sneaking a drink from his drunken, passed out mother's vodka and cuddling up to her, establishing that in BoJack's mind, drinking is intrinsically, tragically tied to comfort and safety.
- Furry Reminder:
- The receptionist at Pastiches is a groundhog who keeps randomly popping up from behind the front desk.
- During one of the "Friends and Family Days" at Pastiches, a monkey can be seen grooming his wife like how monkeys often groom each other in real life.
- The mosquito hooking up with Jameson's boyfriend sucks blood out of his face and causes mosquito bites to form, which he scratches.
- Funny Background Event:
- Two cats having a cat fight outside Diane's hotel room.
- The Celebrity Stealing Club steal a painting of Frida Koala from the party.
- Foreshadowing:
- During the rehab montage, we see Jameson's friend hand her a water bottle. A few scenes later, we learn that said friend has been sneaking her vodka during visitation.
- Jameson mentions that her boyfriend dumped her because she "got fat" in junior year. With the reveal that the new baby is actually her son, she was most likely referring to her pregnancy.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: BoJack spends the latter half of the episode fully taking this to heart and encourages Jameson to do the same. That said, it's also shown to be difficult to let go of the bitterness towards the individuals who contributed to the Freudian Excuse in the first place. BoJack nearly lets that bitterness get the better of him.
- Gender-Blender Name: Jameson. In an episode that has a bit of fun with the weird names today's teens sometimes have (e.g. McKaitlyn, Dathan), female teen Jameson's normally masculine name is comparatively normal-sounding.
- Gilligan Cut: BoJack's advice to Jameson backfires.BoJack: Now I think you should come back to Pastiches with me like you promised, but if you want to go to your dad's house, all you need to do is steal Nathan's car, and I heard Michele with one L is about to jump naked into the pool so everyone's going to be distracted which means this is the perfect time. But is that really what you want?Jameson: Bye BoJack, thanks! [drives off in Nathan's car]BoJack: God damn it!
- Going Cold Turkey: BoJack spends most of his first month or so in rehab going through withdrawal. Pastiches seemingly provides little or no medical supervision for this process, even though quitting certain drugs this way, especially alcohol, is extremely
dangerous. - Infant Sibling Jealousy: Jameson frequently brings up how she's The Unfavorite after her father got remarried and had a new baby. It's later revealed that she's the one who had the baby and her father is looking after it while she keeps going in and out of rehab.
- Idiosyncratic Wipes: Scene transitions look like film burning away in a jammed projector.
- Literal Metaphor: When Jameson finds her boyfriend she finds her friend sucking face with him. Her friend is an anthropomorphic mosquito and she's literally sucking blood out of his face while also making out with him.
- Moment of Weakness: Throughout the episode, BoJack's been taking one of the shows core lessons to heart (Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse, you're responsible for your own actions). However, he briefly laps back into his past destructive behavior after a flashback to Butterscotch's A+ parenting. Thankfully BoJack realizes the error.
- Never My Fault: Dr Champ tells the Pastiches clients that they are not to blame for their addictions. BoJack calls him out on this, claiming he came to rehab to learn how to take responsibility for his behaviour. This is reprised with BoJack's flashbacks regarding his drinking problem, with his earliest encounter with alcohol being when he was a colt who snuck a drink from his mother's vodka when both she and Butterscotch were passed out.
- Overly Pre-Prepared Gag/Tongue Twister: Mr. Peanutbutter had an incident where he was playing with a toy helicopter when it crashed into the water tower, flooding the set of Downtown Julie Brown's puppet show, ruining a thrifty goose feather dress that she recently purchased and interrupting the finale where the puppet would perform Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 on the bongo drums. Princess Carolyn sums up Mr. Peanutbutter's situation as such:Princess Carolyn: Wait!? You're telling me your dumb drone downed a tower and drowned Downtown Julie Brown's dummy drumming "dum dum dum dum" dousing her newly found goose down hand-me-down gown? I'll be right down.
- Police Are Useless: In the flashback to the night Sarah Lynn died, Officer Fuzzyface was in so much of a hurry to close the case that his reaction to BoJack all but directly confessing to his role is to ask him to stop talking.
- Red Herring: BoJack recounts that Jameson's dad just remarried and now there's a new baby he and his wife are focusing on. This would naturally make one assume that the baby is Jameson's half-sibling, with the mother being her stepmom, but at the end it's revealed the baby is actually Jameson's son.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: BoJack calls Diane, who calls Todd, who gets called by Princess Carolyn, who gets called by Mr. Peanutbutter, and all five are shown onscreen in a five-way call.
- Spoonerism: Jameson calls her ex-boyfriend Dathan a "buck foy," a play on the slang "fuckboy."
- Start of Darkness: As BoJack resists talking about when he actually began drinking, we are shown a series of flashbacks that could appear to be the moment he first began drinking, except each flashback goes further back to an even earlier time he drank.
- Teen Pregnancy: Jameson was the one who had the baby all along.
- The '80s: BoJack flashes back to his teenage years in this decade and gets offered a beer by a literal seagull with an A Flock of Seagulls haircut.
- Time-Passes Montage: BoJack's therapy in the opening, where he makes it up farther and farther to the top of Metaphor Mountain.
- Unimpressive Progress Reveal: During hiking therapy, we see BoJack completely exhausted and having to be carried by two men... To the starting point of the trail, on which he immediately collapses, repeats later when we see him fall to his knees out of exhaustion, only to reveal he moved a few meters at most. Subverted the third time when we see him needing to stop to rest and is revealed that, while nowhere near completion, he has actually made good progress this time.
- Visual Pun: In BoJack's room at pastiches there's a painting of Vincent Van Gogh's self portrait but with him as a goat.
- Wham Line: When Jameson's dad reveals that the baby he's been taking care of is not his own, but Jameson's."I thought she would change after she had her baby, but…"
