"In fact, you feel even more alone than you were before left"
Diane divorces Mr. Peanutbutter and moves into a shabby studio. Feeling melancholy, she travels to Vietnam to get away from it all.Tropes:
- Acquired Error at the Printer: This just may be the pinnacle on the ongoing saga of miscommunication between Mr. Peanutbutter and the banner guys:'''MR. PEANUTBUTTER'S HOUSEWARMING BASH AND CAN YOU SEND ME A PICTURE OF THE BANNER BEFORE IT GOES OFF TO THE PRINTERS THIS TIME?
- Anachronic Order: Diane's trip to Vietnam is intercut with scenes from different parts of her past.
- As Herself: Laura Linney
- Bilingual Backfire: Diane's time with the grip ends when she reveals she can understand English and knows about movie production.Diane: Holy shit! A falling Klieg light!
- Black Comedy: Girl Croosh's cockroach IT workers tried to unionize, so Stefani calls an exterminator to kill them.
- The Cameo: Various characters from the course of the series make background appearances at the party, such as J.D. Salinger, Skinny Gina, and the security guard from the Nixon library.
- Casting Gag: Since Alison Brie, a white American, voices Diane, who is Asian-American, this episode had Asian-American actors voice white characters.
- Continuity Nod: Diane buys dinner in a Chicken 4 Dayz restaurant.
- Crystal-Ball Scheduling: The film Laura Linney is shooting is about a divorced woman who travels to Vietnam to find herself. But from there the film goes into a Genre Roulette sci-fi/action/romance with clones and murder.
- Culture Clash: Diane experiences severe culture shock while visiting her ancestral nation of Vietnam. She hoped to reconnect to her cultural roots, but as a born-and-raised American who can't even speak the Vietnamese language, she admits to feeling more like a foreign tourist than a returning countryman.
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode focuses on Diane and is almost entirely shown from her point of view with narration made by her.
- Did You Get a New Haircut?: Diane did but everyone keeps saying her neck looks different.
- Double-Meaning Title: The title could either be a reference to the Florence + the Machine song (in turn used for Eat, Pray, Love, another film where a divorcee travels abroad to find herself), or it could be referring to the fact that Diane's "dog days" (i.e. her relationship with Mr. Peanutbutter, who's a dog) are over.
- Foreign Language Theme: The Ending Theme is sung in Vietnamese.
- Funny Background Event: One that is played for Black Comedy. At Elefante, as Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane are dating as a non-married couple, the food being served are chopped-off pig heads. And behind Diane, an actual pig who is dining notices this and is at first utterly horrified and then depressed.
- Furry Reminder: One shot shows a female mantis courting a human man before starting to pour salt on him, referencing how female mantises will eat their male partner after mating, or sometimes even during the affair.
- Gonzo Journalism: Diane has to write something for Girl Croosh to justify her trip, so she winds up writing a Gonzo Listicle called "10 Reasons To Go To Vietnam" which is really just a list of reasons why she went. This serves as the Framing Device for most of the episode.
- Horrible Housing: The studio Diane moves into after divorcing Mr. Peanutbutter is tiny, shabby, and has a leaky ceiling. Unlike Mr. Peanutbutter's spacious house, boxes of her things are seen piled up in the back. BoJack shares this opinion and invites Diane to crash at his place if she wants.
- Hollywood Old: Stefani demands a listicle about "five empowering roles for women over 40 that would be better played by Jennifer Lawrence."
- How We Got Here: The episode details where Diane had been when Mr. Peanutbutter picks her up at the airport.
- Immigrant Patriotism: In a flashback Pa Nguyen outright refuses to teache Diane anything about Vietnamese culture to drive home that she's no different than any other native born American.
- Important Haircut: Diane now has short hair.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Diane's awkwardness in her ancestral homeland feels very much like a nod to how she's voiced by a white actress, which the show's crew have come to deeply regret as the issue of diversity in Hollywoo has blown up since the show started.
- Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded when Diane moves. She has large boxes of jackets, jeans, boots, glasses, and red arrows.
- Mistaken Nationality: Diane Nguyen, an American of Vietnamese descent, is mistaken for an actual native citizen of Vietnam by a family of American tourists, resulting in all of them having an argument in broken English. Later on, Diane meets an American film crew worker who mistakes her for a local girl that can't even speak English, but she plays along with the mistaken assumption until the next day.
- Noodle Incident: How Todd got his tongue stuck on the ice sculpture, and the following encounter with a mob boss at a roller rink.
- "Rediscovering Roots" Trip: Subverted. The second-generation Vietnamese-American Diane travels to Vietnam ostensibly to find herself and reconnect with her roots (as framed by the listicle she's supposed to be writing), but as the episode progresses, it becomes clear that her Americanized upbringing and life only makes her feel more alone and alienated from the people in Hanoi, and that she's really only there because she's trying to deal with the emotional fallout of her divorce.
- Running Gag: Once again, the company Mister Peanutbutter calls to print things misinterprets his instructions.Mr. Peanutbutter's Housewarming Bash and Can You Send Me a Picture of the Banner Before It Goes Off to the Printer This Time?
- Screw Yourself: Laura Linney mentions that in the movie she's shooting, she eventually makes out with her own clone.
- Ship Tease: A drunk Diane suggests to a drunk BoJack that since they're both single now, they're free to make out, before claiming she's joking although her body language says otherwise. BoJack notably doesn't take any advantage of her, but keeps his distance and asks if she wants to spend the night "in the guest room, I mean", and later covers Diane with a blanket when she passes out.
- Then subverted when BoJack goes to get her to the party, she makes a pass at him and he, not interested, quits altogether, deciding to not accompany her anymore and clearly upset about the pass.
- Shout-Out:
- After Diane and an American guy have a fallout, she calls their little affair "his Miss Saigon cosplay".
- The title of the show is a sort of double reference. It shares the name with Florence + the Machine's hit song "Dog Days Are Over", which is also the theme song for the movie adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love, a movie about a recent divorcee traveling to find herself, much like Diane's own quest.
- "Ugly American" Stereotype: The American tourist family Diane encounter in Vietnam who assume her to be a local and stubbornly misunderstand her assertions that she's an English-speaking American. Later, the American guy Diane romances is a handsome and majestic bald eagle to highlight his sheer American-ness. When her deception is revealed, she defensively attempts to paint him as a similar boor for making assumptions.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: The one between BoJack and Diane gets another Lampshade Hanging. Diane ambiguously drunkenly propositions BoJack, stating how weird that the two are both finally single at the same time. BoJack reads between the lines but deflects on it.
- Verbal Backspace: Stefani says she meant "negotiator" rather than "exterminator" for dealing with the unionized cockroaches. But she's still using a fumigation tent over the building.
- Whole-Plot Reference: A rather subtle one to Eat, Pray, Love, a movie about a woman who, after her divorce, travels to find herself.
- You Are Not Alone: Subverted. Diane realizes at the end of her trip that she is alone, however, rather than being thrown into deeper sadness by the realization, she comes to the conclusion that she just might be okay being on her own.
