BoJack Horseman really wants his director, Kelsey, to like him. Todd, Diane and Kelsey's daughter help a chicken who's on the run from the police.
"Chickens" contains examples of:
- Ascended Fridge Horror: This episode actually addresses the issue of where meat comes from in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist. Certain species of animals are set aside to be bred as unintelligent livestock, and everyone accepts this as normal.
- Bittersweet Ending: The gang successfully saves Becca but fail to address the moral issues of meat production, leaving billions of other chickens on the chopping block.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: No one see anything morally wrong with eating the non-sapient chickens since they've been genetically modified to behave like animals.
- Boomerang Bigot: The owner of Gentle Farms, who uses the fact that he and his family are chickens to advertise that they know how to better take care of chickens than their competitors even though he views the chickens under his care as his property to be killed and sold.
- Career Not Taken: The wife of the Gentle Farms farmer is deeply traumatized in her job, which entails drugging and killing other chickens for food. She confesses that her actual dream job is programming video games that help children learn math.
- Carnivore Confusion: How meat works in this world is finally explained. A large number of farm animals, such as chickens, are set aside to be born and bred as livestock. Despite looking like the other anthropomorphic animals that inhabit the world, they have intelligence of regular animals and are treated as nothing but a food source by the rest of the population.
- Comically Missing the Point:BoJack: You know, I learned something today. Sometimes when you think something isn't about you, you find a way to save the day and in the end realize that it was, all along, about you.
- Competing Product Potshot: The Cold Open shows two commercials for chicken restaurants. One is a cheap fast food place called Chicken-4-Dayz, a parody of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The other, Gentle Farms, begins its own commercial by calling out how Chicken-4-Dayz keeps chickens in tiny cages and pumps them full of hormones. Since the Gentle Farms farmer is a chicken himself, he promises they give the chickens on his farm a more fulfilling life. As the episode continues, however, it becomes clear that the treatment of meat in the show's universe is inhumane in any case, since the Carnivore Confusion is resolved by breeding and genetically modifying sentient animals to become meat instead.
- Faux Affably Evil: The chicken family that run Gentle Farms act kind and caring toward the chickens on their farm when they're really sadistic and view their chickens as property.
- Furry Reminder: BoJack is at one point seen being groomed with an actual horse brush. He also mentions that he once got spooked by a bag in the wind.
- Hypocritical Humor: The farmer from Gentle Farms criticizes how Chicken 4 Dayz pumps their chickens full of hormones, only to mention not long after that he "lovingly injects" his own chickens with "natural, delicious hormones".
- It Can Think: Becca manages to say Todd's name as he rescues her from Gentle Farms.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: The chicken family who runs Gentle Farms may be trigger-happy, dysfunctional and only see the non-sapient chickens as property to be butchered and sold, but their business is legal and they do legitimately treat their chickens more humanely than Chicken 4 Dayz does. The fact that they make a living on slaughtering their own kind says more about the Blue-and-Orange Morality of the world they live in that it does of them as people.
- No Social Skills: The episode's B-plot highlights BoJack's lack of ability to have conversations not involving him or comprehending how some people may not like him.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: The wife of the owner of Gentle Farms tries to get Todd, Diane and Irving to take her with them when they rescue Becca, explaining that she hates living on the farm and wants to leave and make video games. However, they choose to leave without her.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: BoJack gets Diane, Todd and Irving off the hook for stealing Becca simply because he is a celebrity. He also manages to get Becca adopted by Drew Barrymore.
- Shout-Out: Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface's demand for "a hard-target search of every gas station, backyard, outhouse, [and] pool house" is a reference to an almost identical line from The Fugitive.
- Take That!:
- Against free range farms who advertise themselves as being more "caring" for their animals than big companies when they ultimately see their livestock as nothing but property to be slaughtered and sold as food.
- When asked about the morality of chicken, the Chicken 4 Days spokesman remarks that if the FDA approves it, then it must be okay.
- Weak-Willed: Irving mocks Diane as this, as both she and Todd are able to easily sway her opinion on how to deal with Becca.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The chickens who run Gentle Farms don't view the non-sapient chickens as being on the same level as them, referring to them as "animals". Todd is the only person who views Becca as a person worth saving, despite everyone else simply seeing her as a mindless food source who can't even speak English.
