Painful memories come rushing back when Princess Carolyn visits her hometown and meets a pregnant teen. A stunt goes awry on the "Philbert" set.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: While nowhere near hateful like BoJack's parents or bullies like Diane's family, at best giving her children Tough Love, Princess Carolyn's mother still guilt trips her into living at home to take care of her and cover for her when she's too drunk to work, simply because she was the last of her siblings not to move out.
- The Alcoholic: Princess Carolyn's mother. She did it so frequently that PC had to cover for her job several times due to being so hungover the next day.
- Analogy Backfire: Princess Carolyn's mother claims the difference between them is she knows where her bed is, before realizing this isn't her bed, and drunkenly wonders where she even is.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Sadie, the pregnant teen who Princess Carolyn wants to adopt from, shoots one at her near the end of the episode.Sadie: Lemme ask you something. Did you really like the clothes I made?Princess Carolyn: Of course I did!Sadie: Then why didn't you buy anything for yourself?
- Sadie gives PC another lick a few seconds later.
Princess Carolyn: I just want to give your baby a better life!
Sadie: Better than what? Better than a sky full of stars? - Continuity Nod:
- In this episode, we see PC's mom tell her the story of her necklace.
- We also see PC's mother being a chronic alcoholic that she had to fill in for if she didn't want them thrown out.
- A more subtle call back is that their living room has a Thomas Kinkade painting in the background which was alluded to in a previous episode.
- After Princess Carolyn's mother wakes from a drunken stupor, she removes some wet socks over her hands; a callback to the season's first episode when the adoption agency lady mentions her mother would sleep with her hands in socks socked with lotion.
- Chekhov's Gun: The opioids that BoJack is offered to treat his back injury. He gets addicted to it for the rest of the season.
- Cross-Dressing Voice: David Sedaris (Amy's brother) as PC's mother, Cutie Cutie Cupcake.
- Damned by Faint Praise: PC often tries to assure Sadie she loves the town they grew up in and loves the bedazzled clothes she makes, but her compliments are weak at best. Unfortunately for her, Sadie is not as easily fooled as PC assumes her to be.
- A Day in the Limelight: The episode mostly focuses on Princess Carolyn's upbringing in Eden, North Carolina.
- Dramatic Irony: While the father of the boy who got PC knocked up discusses her future, he emphasizes that they get their fortune from producing recording tapes for answering machines, and since people will always need answering machine tapes, her future will always be secured. Since the episode aired in 2018, the audience knows it's a Foregone Conclusion that society stopped using such technology a couple decades ago, and the family became Impoverished Patricians.
- Dumb Blonde: Subverted. Sadie is a blonde, poorly educated, pregnant teen from a backwoods Southern town, but it turns out she's very bright and observant and is easily able to pick up on how PC regularly manipulates people.
- Flashback B-Plot: As Princess Carolyn looks around her hometown, we see her backstory unfold, depicting her dependent relationship with her mother and how she underwent a traumatic teen pregnancy and her first miscarriage.
- Foregone Conclusion: PC miscarried as a teen and the family her mother worked for became Impoverished Patricians.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the flea market there's a quick shot of a T-shirt reading "Stop pausing and just watch the show".
- Gilded Cage: PC almost entered a Shotgun Wedding into the family she and her mom worked for (thanks to getting knocked up by their son), where every detail would be planned for her, but they assured her as long as she stayed in line she and her baby would be taken care of. Then PC miscarried and it all became moot.
- Glad You Thought of It: When Diane complains to PC that Flip disregards any suggestion she makes, PC tells her to convince Flip that it is his own idea so he would accept it. When Diane questions it, PC phrased it as if Diane had that idea, and she immediately accepted.
- Interspecies Romance: Sadie (a human) got knocked up by her boyfriend Strip, who's a porcupine. Princess Carolyn got knocked up herself by the son of the family she worked for, who are all foxes.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For everything she puts her daughter through, forcing her to take responsibility for her own mistakes and lacking any empathy when PC finds herself in the awkward situation of getting pregnant out of wedlock, PC's mother still worries for her well-being when she finally decides to move to California and is sad that her family is no longer together (granted, this is a well-known tactic of gaslighters, intentional or no, so even if she meant well, Carolyn's mother clearly has her own interests in mind).
- Law of Inverse Fertility: The flashback sections portray the start of Princess Carolyn's fertility problems as she gets pregnant with and miscarries her first child, right after she was promised a life of wealth and comfort that would save her family from financial ruin.
- Liberty Over Prosperity: PC had this brief dilemma as a teen. Should she give up the baby to follow her dream of moving to California (Liberty), or keep the baby and enter the Wallace family's Gilded Cage (Prosperity)? It's rendered moot when she miscarries anyway.
- Never My Fault: PC's mother claims that everyone's fate is predetermined like a game of roulette where the white ball lands on a lucky or unlucky number, and they were just born with unlucky numbers. This rings hollow as it's not just their poverty that made PC miserable, but her pessimistic attitude and constantly abusive relationship with her daughter, leaving their mark on PC's life.
- Old Money: The Wallace family that PC and her mother served as maids certainly give off this vibe, though they made their money producing answering machine recording tapes.
- Origins Episode: This episode shows PC's early life in hometown that has a lasting effect on her.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sadie ends up giving a small one to Princess Carolyn after calling her on how hollow and manipulative she is.Sadie: You're bullshitting me. This is just another sale for you.Princess Carolyn: No-Sadie: You think I'm stupid, but I've been watching you bullshit everyone on that phone of yours.Princess Carolyn: Listen, I want to give your baby the best life, the best schools, the best opportunities-Sadie: You think because you left here, you're better than me. You think because you're all fancy show-business, you can just take whatever you want.Princess Carolyn: No, no, no, you don't understand-Sadie: Well, I've got something you can't have, and no amount of your managing or producing is gonna change that.
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: Justified as the Carolyns were so poor the only tape they had was "The Amelia Earhart Story". Which PC watched so much that it eventually damaged the tape.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Ultimately Sadie decides to keep the baby, thus rendering PC's entire trip pointless.
- Shotgun Wedding: PC almost entered one with the wealthy family she and her mom worked for, but she miscarried.
- Technology Marches On: In-Universe - the Wallaces and another family, The Floppydisks, lost their fortune including their mansion in ruins when answering machines went out of style.
- Teen Pregnancy: The episode's main plot revolves around Princess Carolyn meeting a pregnant teenage girl named Sadie who's considering giving up her baby for adoption. Flashbacks reveal that Princess Carolyn herself got pregnant as a teenager, though she ended up miscarrying.
- Ungrateful Bastard:
- When Sadie remarks that nobody is buying anything at her stall, Princess Carolyn nets her the first sale of the day by pretending she really wants a jacket someone is trying on, making him buy it before she can, but all Sadie can do is complain about such a tactic being "manipulative".
- Additionally, she asks Princess Carolyn why she didn't buy anything from her clothes stall, but fails to mention that PC bought her a chair to sit on from a nearby stall which had a price tag in excess of $100.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Princess Carolyn's half-hearted and distracted management of BoJack leads to him becoming badly injured. The opioids she prescribes him will develop into a major issue for the rest of the season.
