Tear Jerker / BoJack Horseman

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

"I burst into tears when I first saw this. If you told me 2 years ago that an animated comedy starring Will Arnett would be the most moving, life affirming piece of media I've ever seen, I would have laughed right in your face."

— YouTube commenter on the final scene from season 2

BoJack Horseman has been praised for breaking the mold of traditional Animated Shock Comedies... by breaking all of our hearts. Whether it be through exploring the nihilistic toxic tar-pit that is Hollywoo, or the nearly identical eponymous horse, there's no shortage of moments that'll (figuratively) rip your heart out. Needless to say, there is a reason it inspired the term "sadcom."

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Season 1

The BoJack Horseman Story, Chapter One

• The first scene for several reasons, especially once you've watched the entire season. Let's dissect it, shall we, folks?
  • For starters, a fragment of Horsin' Around, the show BoJack recorded in his glory days, is played. However brief, the BoJack portrayed in the archive footage is lively, energetic and fun to be around as his character of "The Horse". Then, we cut to The Charlie Rose Show whose interviewee is the horse himself and he presents himself apparently aged well, only to then reveal to be completely wasted, barely conscious of his surroundings and even trying (and failing) to appear well adjusted to his fading stardom.
    Am I nailing this interview or what?
  • Gets worse in later seasons—Despite appearing at first as a well-adjusted actor who became bitter with age; even back in the Horsin' days, BoJack was already a sad jerk in The '90s and he was probably even worse considering how he treated his fellow castmembers and crew, only evolving into a regretful Jerk with a Heart of Gold through experience and time. He had it all back then and he still felt empty enough to behave similarly: the only difference now is that he's starting to take notice of how much damage his path has caused. It's sad that he had to tear so many relationships apart and get old to truly begin his clunked recovery.
  • To elaborate, BoJack shows up to the interview drunk and making a fool out of himself, yet still deluding himself into thinking he's doing great. The contrast between what he thinks is going on and how everyone else sees him is painfully obvious. He's just that willing to lie just for the sake of appearing happy, as if to convince everyone he's anything but a Sad Clown. It becomes unbearable when later episodes show it's this mental trick what eventually starts screwing him over and over.
  • When Charlie Rose just mentions Horsin' Around, BoJack automatically defends it, expecting him to mock the show. For everyone who knows the series, BJ has a very troubled, tug-and-pull relationship with the show because of all of the backstage fiasco and consequences, especially in "That's Too Much, Man!", but he defends it because in his mind, it's the only good thing he did.
    • To say nothing of this rationale, which effectively sums up his vision of reality and foreshadows his deep desire that life would work that way:
      BoJack: Charlie, listen, you know, I know that it's very hip these days to shit all over Horsin' Around, but at the time, I can tell you [...] 'Cause I I think the show's actually pretty solid for what it is. It's not Ibsen, sure, but look, for a lot of people, life is just one long, hard kick in the urethra, and sometimes when you get home from a long day of getting kicked in the urethra, you just want to watch a show about good, likeable people who love each other, where, you know, no matter what happens, at the end of 30 minutes, everything's gonna turn out okay.
    • Then, he starts repeating himself...
      Did I already say the thing about the urethra?
  • Charlie Rose's expressions during the whole interview. It's clear he feels uncomfortable and disgusted about the whole thing, but feels such pity for the horse he seems ambivalent about kicking him out or continue seeing him making a fool out of himself. Makes it Harsher in Hindsight considering Rose's real life accusations.
  • And finally, the kicker:
    Charlie Rose: Well, let's talk about real life. What have you been doing since the show's cancellation?
    BoJack: That's a great question, Charlie. I...uh...Uh...I...Um...

Prickly Muffin

• We see Sarah Lynn's Start of Darkness. She was filming a Horsin Around scene where BoJack praised her, and asked the audience to cheer her. Then he whispered Anti-Advice that no one would ever love her, not even family or lovers, but she should do everything for her fans even if it kills her. Sarah Lynn retains her Oh, Crap! face as the cameras start rolling again for take two. No, the bell tolling after does not help. The worst part is BoJack was right; Carol Himmerlfarb and her husband don't love Sarah Lynn, using her as a paycheck or a warm body in the latter's case. Andrew Garfield breaks up with her for the crime of turning thirty and insensitively says that he thought she wouldn't make a scene in public. As Sarah Lynn puts it, with her voice breaking, he thought she wouldn't make a scene? Herb was the only positive influence in Sarah Lynn's life, but he wasn't enough.
• Sextina Aquafina carelessly saying that Sarah Lynn should just go where stars after 30 go when they lose relevance. Talk about No Sympathy
• Almost the entire episode is Harsher in Hindsight, but nothing more so than the following exchange:
  Sarah Lynn: I'm at a place right now where I never need to grow as a person or rise to an occasion because I can constantly just surround myself with sycophants and enablers until I die tragically young.
  BoJack: Wh-what?
  Sarah Lynn: Yeah, it's pretty much too late for me.

Zoes and Zeldas

• The whole episode really shows how toxic and abusive BoJack is to Todd.
  • For most of the beginning, BoJack is very vocal about how he thinks Todd's Rock Opera won't be a success and making insult after insult. And the clenching part is that Todd, whose already insecure, believes all of BoJack's insults are good.
  • When Diane brings up why BoJack never bothered to learn anything about Todd, she asks him a question: Does he let Todd stay because he's kind or because he's afraid of being alone? Given BoJack's reaction and the ending of the episode, it's the latter. So, BoJack is willing to clip his friend's wings because he can't stand being alone.
  • BoJack's verbal abuse mirrors how his parents would tear any moment they had the chance to. While it's clear BoJack is not as bad as his abusive parents, it doesn't change the fact that he is doing a similar abusive method they always did to him. This is depressingly common — most adults who grew up in abusive households as children tend to adopt some, if not all, characteristics of their parents.
• Parts of Todd's backstory is revealed — He got addicted to a video game to the point his girlfriend left him and his parents kicked him out of the house.

Live Fast, Diane Nguyen

• While Diane's response to her brothers' call about her father dying is barely mustered grief which in retrospect is understandable, BoJack's and Pinky's reactions (the former more so than the latter) aren't. While Pinky utters a genuine condolence before being sidetracked by necessary business concerns, BoJack just stays there with a sad expression and silent grief. It's especially telling since he didn't have a good relationship with his own father and hearing about Diane's (apparently) happy relationship with her father made him open up: he's truly sorry that relationship has been taken away. Which of course, sets everything up for a bigger gut punch later, see below.
• Based on what Diane has previously told him, BoJack has assumed up to this episode she and her dad shared a special relationship, climbing to the roof and looking at the stars. This belief is shattered when she acts completely indifferent to her father dying. On the way to Boston, BoJack points out this and Diane reveals that everything she has told him about her dad was a lie. A trick to get him to open up for the book.
  Diane: Oh, yeah, I was just trying to get you to open up, so I used an old writer's trick called "me lying to you."
  BoJack: Oh, yeah? Well, I'm using an old me trick called "that hurts my feelings."
• This is then followed by Diane explaining to him how's life back home: she was the White Sheep (the Black Sheep was her adopted brother) of the family and every member of it, her dad especially, enjoyed tormenting her and making her feel less. The fact that she's returning is clearly making her uncomfortable and her speech is probably one of the most realistic descriptions of an abusive household and how bad memories never completely fade, they just stay hidden in you. The assholish thing she did to BoJack is obliterated as Diane suddenly becomes just as miserable as he was with his parents. To see her let her guard down and simply talk without any barriers about it is just painful to watch.
  Diane: Yeah, well, I was pretty lonely, too. My family made my life miserable, and then they never forgave me for leaving. [...] I'm just the member of the family nobody likes. And my dad was the worst of them all. [...] And the truth is, I used to sit alone on the hill out by the dump and dream of waking up as Chelsea Clinton, but with my hair.
• The 'Cryane' tape. We learn that when she was a teenager, Diane's brothers wrote letters to Diane pretending to be a pen pal they made up named "Leo". They eventually invited her to prom and then paid a hobo to pretend to be Leo. In the video, we see the teenage Diane shakily complimenting the hobo's beard before breaking down crying. If you look at the hobo, it's clear that even he was really uncomfortable taking part in the prank, and probably just needed the money.

Our A-Story is a 'D' Story

• BoJack's obvious, burgeoning love for Diane results in BoJack stealing the D from the Hollywood sign. It forces BoJack to come to terms with his feelings for her, except that he can't manage to tell Diane how he feels. Even as Diane herself seems to be waiting for BoJack to push himself to speak up after hearing from Princess Carolyn that he is in love with her, BoJack can't get the words out. The first when he realises that Diane is recording their conversation and the second time he leaves a expressive heartfelt message on her voicemail telling her exactly how he feels.
  • The end result of BoJack stealing the D is that Mr Peanutbutter takes the credit to get BoJack off the hook. Diane doesn't like public displays of affection which upsets her, and to make it up, Peanutbutter puts together exactly what BoJack described earlier as a "Diane thing", a hand made collage of pictures from their relationship. At which point Peanutbutter proposes to Diane and she says yes.
  • After Diane calls BoJack having not listened to the voicemail, being told about the engagement completely takes the wind out of BoJack's sails and he tells her to delete the voicemail.
    "Well, nobody knows me like you." - BoJack, to a bottle of scotch after he ends the phone call with Diane.

Say Anything

• The shift in POV to Princess Carolyn adds several layers to what the series has amounted so far.It also cements the show's Cerebus Syndrome. Why? Well, as everyone bares witness to the relationship she and BoJack share, this time from her perspective;what initially appears like a comical on-again-off-again work & pleasure arrangement, becomes a rather chilling tale of co-dependency and hurt.
  • Princess Carolyn's bitter speech about how often she has to be there for BoJack when he crashes and burns, despite more often than not really getting anything in return. To drive the point home during the Failure Montage in which BoJack gets into all sorts of pickles, he keeps repeating about how this is a blessing in disguise, "the best thing that ever happened" and how it has made him realize what's really important: his relationship with Princess Carolyn. He keeps saying this as he continues messing up. Over. And over. AND OVER. AND OVER.
  • Princess Carolyn's anger comes less out of the fact that her client/ex-boyfriend keeps screwing the pooch and more about how he expects her to be there to comfort him almost automatically, as if her opinion, what's she doing, who she is doesn't even matter. She is just expected to put everything else second with no regards to what she wants and has to say about it. Am I Just a Toy to You? has never been summed up in such a raw fashion.
  • And the kicker? When she finds out Vanessa Gekko, BoJack's new agent after he fires Princess Carolyn to date her again, shredded their contract, she still tries to reason in his favor to keep him attached to Vigor. After everything that has happened, she cares. SHE STILL CARES. Which is more than can be said about the rest, given how easily and matter-of-factly Vanessa reveals she ripped the contract and how Mr. Witherspoon is eager to advise PC to drop the "dead weight".
  • While Princess Carolyn may be the focus of the episode, BoJack's half of the relationship isn't ignored and there's something sad about it. Many toxic relationships often show either one half of the couple being responsible or both. BJ's actions toward PC, however, aren't as cut-and-dry as Both Sides Have a Point or as The Obstructive Love Interest. No, there's every indication that should BoJack unleash himself from the neuroses that plague him, of his belief the world owes him, of demanding full attention and love from Princess Carolyn without giving her any, they could actually work as a couple. BoJack's full attention is focused on Princess Carolyn in this episode and he shows the kind of attention to detail only decades of knowing someone can get you. He gives her a cardboard cutout that spells "Jerry Maguire" phrases (her favorite movie) and up to a point, they have a sweet date. But it always end up the same way: BJ can't stop devaluating a relationship as soon as he hits a snag, he can't stop pigeonholing PC as the woman who'll always be there for him no matter what and whenever he has a Love Epiphany, he's basically in a tug war with a cat who has had to place a lot of value within herself to rise in the business, who's starving for companionship masks a deep sense of untrustworthiness toward others and workaholic tendencies based on self-esteem and fulfillment. They should work together. But they don't.
  • Beyond that, the episode does a pretty good job of showcasing how much Princess Carolyn has to juggle in her line of work and how little she's reaped as part of it. She has meetings with flaky, pragmatic producers; she makes big projects from scratch for her clients only for them to go with a better option; she's not looked upon at work, especially not by her boss Mr. Witherspoon and just the tiniest slip, the smallest mistake and she may be out the door.
  • The episode ends on what seems to be a rather triumphant note - Princess Carolyn finally succeeds in besting her rival Vanessa Gecko and securing BoJack a job. That is, until she calls him excitedly to tell him the news, and he responds in a broken, emotionless voice.
    "It doesn't matter. Nothing... matters..."
  • The end of the episode reveals that it was Princess Carolyn's 40th birthday, and nobody remembered or bothered to wish her a Happy Birthday.
    Laura: Are you gonna head out soon?
    Princess Carolyn: Where else would I go?
  • The ending credits replace the usual theme with Lyla Foy's "Impossible," a miserably beautiful song about not looking back.

The Telescope

• BoJack reveals he abandoned his friend Herb after he got kicked off the staff of his sitcom, when Herb needed a friend more than ever. To be fair, BoJack was coerced into it by his heartless studio executives^note  and Herb initially wanted BoJack to threaten to walk if he got fired, but he still carried a lot of guilt over that. Years later, BoJack tries to make amends, but Herb doesn't forgive him and tells BoJack that he'll have to live the rest of his life without closure, sealing BoJack's status as a Jerkass Woobie and giving his relationship with Herb some emotional depth and brokenness.
  • The flashback of Charlotte telling BoJack that she doubts that he would've tried to take their relationship to the next level, even if Herb hadn't hooked up with her, because she thinks he's a coward.
  • Herb, in late stages of cancer, winds up fighting BoJack when he starts playing with the telescope. This used to be the symbol of their friendship and their goal to take over Hollywood together. During the fight, they roll onto it and break it. What makes it worse is that during his first flashback with Herb, BoJack refused alcohol and was a truly caring individual, and was willing to stand by his friend if he lost his job, as he admits to that he wouldn't have even starred on Horsin' Around if it wasn't for Herb vouching for him.
  • BoJack pulling over on his and Diane's trip back from Herb and jumping out of the car so she won't see him cry. He never does, but the heavy breathing clearly implies that he's about to explode.
  • BoJack's misconception that real life operates like a sitcom finally blowing up in his face when Herb calls him out on how selfish and petty he is.
    BoJack: I don't know why I came here!
    Herb: Yeah... you did.
  • If BoJack learned to leave well enough alone, he would have had his closure. He, Herb, and Diane had a good day, he and Herb made many jokes and bonded, and left on good terms. Herb even told him it was genuinely good to see him again. And even then, even after he went back and apologized on Diane's urging, if he'd left it at that, things could have closed on a neutral note at worst. But BoJack can't just leave well enough alone. He kept pushing, and refused to accept that Herb had every right to refuse to forgive him. His final memory of Herb won't be the lovely day they had, or even the reality check Herb gave him, it's of a fight, and old wounds ripped open anew, and the symbol of their friendship shattered on the floor.
• BoJack kisses Diane. Only to get rejected.

Downer Ending

• While trying to write his memoir, BoJack starts off with a saccharine take on his childhood, complete with flashback to the fictional event. When he scraps it for not sounding right, his father gives Young!BoJack a Dope Slap for writing so poorly as an adult.
• This appropiately titled episode features a sad moment at the end where BoJack goes to the Ghost Writers Panel to give Diane permission to publish the book she'd written.
  BoJack: Um, I-I guess my question is, do you... do you think it's too late for me? I mean am-am-am I just doomed to be the person I am? The-the person in that book? It's not too late for me, is it? It's— it's not too late— Diane, I need you to tell me that it's not too late. I-I-I need you to tell me that I'm a good person. I know that I can be selfish and narcissistic and self-destructive, but underneath all that, deep down, I'm a good person, and I need you to tell me that I'm good, Diane. Tell me, please, Diane. Tell me that I'm good.
  • Made even worse in that, during the telling silence where he's hoping Diane will reply, the audio shifts to play a lone birdcall and his hallucinatory daughter's laughter.
  • In the same episode while starting their binge, an intoxicated Todd gently admits that he no longer expects BoJack to ever be a good friend.
    BoJack: Okay, just to be totally clear, we're shooting each other to determine whether we're holding guns or brooms, right? Not because you're still mad about the whole me sabotaging you with the rock opera and your life's dream and suchety-such?
    Todd: BoJack, shh, shh, k, BoJ- quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. As you know, I was hurt, but then I realized that's just how you are. You know, maybe I just need to stop expecting you to be a good person, so that way, I won't get hurt when you're not.
    • And prior to this and in a very subtle moment, when Todd and Sarah Lynn are making different versions of BoJack's memoir, Todd puts in that he (Todd) is BoJack's best friend. BoJack's reply? To change "best friend" to "pretty good friend". And Todd is shocked by this hurtful statement.
  • BoJack's Jerkass Realization.
    "This is all that I am and all I'm ever going to be."
  • During his Mushroom Samba, BoJack dreams of a life where he left showbiz, got together with Charlotte, started a family with her and living a simple but fulfilling and happy life. Moreover, he actually does seem like a good father (unlike his own parents who were horribly abusive), and Charlotte is very sweet and BoJack is actually a nice and normal person around her on his own accord. And then Dream Charlotte seals it.
    BoJack: What are you thinking about?
    Charlotte: Oh, just how nice things could've been if you had chosen this life.
  • Even before Charlotte drops the bomb that it's All Just a Dream, it's pretty easy to tell that something is up with this too-perfect scenario. The reveal hurts, but the anticipation is murder!
  • The majority of his Mushroom Samba counts as well, as it reveals just how psychologically broken BoJack really is, including a flashback to his Stage Mom pushing him into singing the "Lollipop song" for her friends at the Supper Club, telling him something he later passed down to Sara-Lynn.
    Beatrice: Nobody gives a damn what you feel! You've got an audience out there, and they want to hear you sing! Now you want your mommy to love you? You go out there, and you do the only thing you're good for, which is singing the god-damned lollipop song!

Later

• The opening: Secretariat, in his prime, replies to a letter from a young BoJack Horseman on live television. BoJack's letter asks how Secretariat dealt with getting sad. Secretariat replies honestly with some truly inspiring advice.
  Secretariat: BoJack, when I was your age, I got sad. A lot. I didn't come from such a great home, but one day, I started running, and that seemed to make sense, so then I just kept running. BoJack, when you get sad, you run straight ahead and you keep running forward, no matter what. There are people in your life who are gonna try to hold you back, slow you down, but you don't let them. Don't you stop running and don't you ever look behind you. There's nothing for you behind you. All that exists is what's ahead.
  • It's worth noting that after hearing BoJack's letter, Secretariat suddenly sports eye bags and briefly loses his composure, as if BoJack's question struck a chord.
  • Cue an immediate Smash Cut to Secretariat throwing himself off the Louisville bridge one month later after being permanently banned from horse-racing.
  • It's no surprise Secretariat killed himself in the end; all that running just distracted him from how unhappy he was. When running was finally taken from him, he had nowhere else to go. BoJack, for all his faults, is at least trying.

Season 2

Brand New Couch

• It starts off on a low note, showing a young BoJack watching Secretariat answer his letter on TV... while his parents fight in the kitchen loudly enough that he comes in closer to the tv so that he can only hear Secretariat's response to his question of what to do when he is sad, establishing his life of running from his problems.
• His reaction to the fight is equally heartbreaking - he just scoots closer to the TV and turns up the volume in an attempt to avoid hearing the fight, the pure happiness he was expressing earlier from his idol talking about him vanishing instantly.
• And then his mother calmly walks into the living room and blames it all on BoJack.
  Beatrice: You know, I was beautiful before I got pregnant
  Young BoJack: I know.
  Beatrice: You ruined me, BoJack.
  Young BoJack: (sadder) I know.
  Beatrice: You better grow up to be something great to make up for all the damage you've done.
  Young BoJack: I will.
  (Beat)
  Beatrice: Okay, enough me being a great mom. I'm gonna go hide your father's heart medication. Enjoy your dumb little TV show.
• Beatrice calls BoJack to apologize to him for how horribly she treated him when he was younger. It doesn't lessen the sadness by very much when she tells him that "[he] was born broken." True to form, Beatrice never actually admits fault or apologizes for her behavior, instead saying "You must think I'm a monster. I don't want to argue with you, BoJack." and then apologizing for the fact BoJack was born messed up. Even her apology shifts all of the blame onto BoJack. It's a subtler blow, but heartbreaking nonetheless.
• BoJack has been trying to turn over a new leaf the whole episode, listening to positive thinking tapes, refurnishing his house, working out, and doing his level best to be upbeat and happy, while fighting off anxiety. While filming Secretariat, he has been having difficulty with his delivery on a line that is supposed to be sad and understated, as he keeps hamming it up in the style of his Horsin' Around character. At the end of the episode, after all the heartbreak he's gone through, he nails the line. It's painfully obvious he's tapping into his own depression to do so.

Still Broken

• The scene at the end where BoJack and Herb sneak into an on-set pool after filming the Horsin Around pilot doubles as this and heartwarming.
• The Todd sub plot of the episode involves him finding a new, sudden burst of confidence... Until BoJack makes fun of him, re-shattering his self esteem. It really shows how even after admitting to BoJack that he no longer expects him to ever be a good friend, he's still vulnerable to BoJack's constant criticism.

  BoJack: Hey, why'd you roll up your sleeves like that? You look weird.
  Todd: Oh, I, uhh...(immediately falters) I was - I was trying out a new look - It was... It was a dumb idea...

After The Party

• The fourth episode has Diane confessing to Mr. Peanutbutter that she's no longer happy where she is. This revelation and their ensuing conversation finally gets her husband, who had been using every passive-aggressive trick in the book to try and change her mind, to fully support her trip overseas.

Hank After Dark

• Mr. Peanutbutter ends up reading a lot of hate mail directed towards Diane and gets steadily more depressed because of all the terrible things people are saying about her, which culminates in their fighting over her having no personal stake in any of it, but is being targeted by others due to bringing it up. The episode ends with Diane deciding to give up on exposing Hank and waiting for her flight to Cordovia looking miserable... and a random guy tells her "Smile!". The perfect depressingly realistic cap to an appropriately Anvilicious episode.
  Diane: You don't... really want me to go. Do you?
  Mr. Peanutbutter: Why does it suddenly matter what I want.
• Hank's current assistant, Nicole, nervously calls Diane to talk to her but ends up bringing Hank along. When we see her, she looks incredibly uncomfortable, and one can assume whatever Hank did to his other assistants, he's still doing to her. And she probably isn't going to get justice for it anytime soon.

Let's Find Out

• It contains an emotional exchange of Armor-Piercing Question and Armor-Piercing Response between Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack, ending with PB admitting that he wasn't sure if he could forgive BoJack for all he's done.
  • Worse, he tells BoJack that he really wanted to be his friend and was perfectly aware at all of the verbal abuse he was receiving. He doesn't know if he can forgive him, but by the sound of his voice, he clearly wants to.
  • This is swiftly followed by this instruction from Wanda, reflecting BoJack's Friend-or-Idol Decision.
    Wanda: Uh, this is network television. So, resolving everything cleanly in a half-hour is kind of what we do. You wanna host a game-show where everyone feels bad at the end? You can get in your little car and drive to Santa Monica and pitch it to AMC. But these people want resolution, okay? So you get your little butt back on that stage, and you resolve.

The Shot

• One of the many tearjerkers near the end of "The Shot" is how after BoJack had difficulty crying for the shot they needed for the movie (saying himself he never cries in public) he goes off to smoke in private and then breaks down sobbing.
• And the reason he never cries in public is because the one time he tried a cigarette as a kid his mom caught him and forced him to finish it in front of her telling him that he should never cry in front of others, least of all her.
  Young BoJack: Are you punishing me for smoking or for stealing?
  Beatrice: I'm punishing you for being alive.
• The ending where it's revealed that the events of the episode cost Kelsey her job, because Turtletaub fired her for disobeying his orders... especially since it was established a few episodes earlier that Kelsey needs a big budget movie success to provide for her daughter and avoid losing custody to her ex-wife.
• Diane not being able to deal with Cordovia, and after her phone call with Mr Peanutbutter, it is revealed that she's at the airport sadly waiting for her luggage.
  • Even worse is her monologue at the end of the scene, mentally putting herself down as a writer and as somebody who makes a difference knowing she couldn't tell Mr. Peanutbutter she was back so soon after he had finally comes to terms with her being gone for so long.
    And then you realize that book you're writing in your head... will never actually be a book. So you just stop—

Yes And..

• Diane waking up from a drunken stupor shouting "Kinko!", the Cordovian boy who she became friends with and got killed.
• Pay attention to Diane's rant and the way she mentions how "all your favorite musicians beat their wives... allegedly!" Sounds like she's still sore over the Hank Hippopopolous fiasco just three episodes earlier, even after spending some time in Cordovia to take her mind off of it.
• BoJack and Wanda's break-up. Wanda's "when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags" is painfully relatable, as is BoJack's "you didn't know me, so you fell in love with me, and now you know me".
• Diane's conversation with BoJack about how she misses Mr. Peanutbutter but no longer knows how to get out from under her lies:
  BoJack: Why won't you go home?
  Diane: I should. I know I should. I wish I could just go home right now and crawl into bed and not have to talk about anything or explain anything. He would just say, "How was your day?" And then he would say, "Hey, did you know the monorail was invented by George Monorail?" And I would say, "I don't think that's true." And he would say, "Well, if he didn't invent it, he certainly perfected it." And I wouldn't have to say "I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I made things so difficult. I'm sorry I'm not the person I thought I was." I would just say, "My day was good." And he would say, "I love you."
• The brief shots of Wanda going to sleep on her sister's couch, starting to cry, and then perking up at the sound of the doorbell...only to find it's a pizza deliveryman.

Escape From L.A.

• The episode doesn't have anything specifically Tear Jerker-inspiring, until you realize that at the end, BoJack's circle of friends from the 80s - him, Herb, and Charlotte - is irreversibly, irreparably broken. Herb died hating BoJack, and Charlotte, after catching BoJack in bed with her daughter, utterly despises him.
• And the "theme song" for that episode is "Kyle and the Kids", as seen under Lyrical Dissonance.
• Charlotte's hatred of BoJack by the end of the episode is absolutely heartbreaking, especially remembering the Maine hallucination in "Downer Ending". Consider that BoJack is implied to still love her- and the implications that BoJack was about to sleep with Penny,not out of some selfish or spite from Charlotte rejecting his earlier advances, but rather an attempt by BoJack's subconscious to sabotage his relationship with Charlotte for good. Word of God says he did this because he has the mental capacity of a teenager and, therefore, can't fully register that what he's doing as wrong.
• Charlotte's reaction upon seeing BoJack and her daughter Penny, who is seventeen, getting ready to have intercourse. Her one line sums up just how shocked, disgusted, and betrayed she feels.
  Charlotte: No.

Out To Sea

• The episode compares a day in the life of the separated Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter. Mr. Peanutbutter seems to have it much better than Diane, who is disgraced and ashamed from returning to L.A. with nothing to show for it. Then he quietly sneaks away from his own party to sigh and look up at the stars as he pines for his wife.
• Copernicus may be a cult leader but he does make a few good points as to why would Todd would ever go and be friends with BoJack. Which he, sadly, is right — Who would want BoJack for a friend or, in Todd's case, take him back as a friend. Most of Todd and BoJack's relationship consisted of the horse being emotionally abusive to Todd, not to mention intentionally ruining his Rock Opera out of fear that BoJack would be all alone.
• The final scene of season 2: "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier."

Season 3

Start Spreading The News

• Princess Carolyn's dream of running her own agency has turned out to be a dead-end alley, crumbling under her own leadership. Clients are signing off, revenue is at a new time low and PC is scraping for whatever money-making deal she can make with any of her clients.
  • Her method of dealing with clients is no longer at work either: J.D. Salinger finally gets fed up by the fact Carolyn (or anyone by that matter) can never spot the many obscure references to his works and finally renounces her as his agent. The salt in the wound? He's going to Gekko-Rabbitowitz Agencies instead. To think the traitorous rabbit who once seemed lost without Princess is now thriving while the hard working cat is sinking further is just infuriating.
  • She even calls Mr. Peanutbutter to convince him to get another job after "Hollywoo Stars And Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let's Find Out!" gets unplugged. She's just that desperate for something good coming her way.
• BoJack is about to have sex with a manatee journalist... until she says she'll "climb up onto [his] boat".
  Bojack: On the boat... there was a girl. In New Mexico. And she trusted me. I keep asking myself if her mother didn't walk in, would I have done it? And part of me is sure that I— I couldn't. But another part knows that's a lie. How do you make something so right when you've made it so wrong you can never go back?
  • Then, there is his comment about not being in the movie physically. Playing Secretariat has been a project BoJack has psyched himself into playing, being his childhood hero and all. Then, as the movie took a turn for the worse and saccharine, he decided to bail out no longer wanting to do a watered down version of an actual humane story, especially of someone he respected too much. Then, the computer replica and the Oscars occurred and now the horse is adrift with nothing but bad memories: an unfulfilled fantasy, a bastardized dream and a hollow recognition for a film notable by his absence.

The BoJack Horseman Show

• First there's Princess Carolyn who (by then) has been working as a secretary for 14 years and wants to be her own agent. And her (former) boss clearly doesn't value her.
  • Then, when she tries to help BoJack with the keeping the idea for the original idea of the show, he brushes her off, telling her that he'll ask for her when he needs coffee. Ouch.
  • But the saddest part? When she does get the job, her ex-boss laments about he never got married, had kids, or a life. And then Princess Carolyn promises to do the opposite of all of those things — The present timeline shows she has yet to do any of that.
• Mr. Peanutbutter and his second wife did not get along. She may not have been as abusive as his first one, but she definitely didn't respect him and was implied to have been unfaithful to him.
• This episode sets up a pattern in BoJack's behaviour that comes back to bite him hard in Season 6. The first draft of "The BoJack Horseman Show" is so well-received that the executives are happy to let it air without any changes whatsoever. So great, BoJack is making a big comeback, right? Wrong. BoJack gets so caught up in the moment that he makes drastic changes to the script, resulting in the show becoming an embarrassing train-wreck. As we see later on, BoJack's inability to be happy with what he has already achieved results in him giving another interview about Sarah Lynn's death after the first one managed to portray him as sympathetic, with the second interview making him look like a monster in the eyes of the public. It just shows how BoJack had so many opportunities to give himself the life he always wanted, yet always finds a way to ruin it for himself and the people around him.

BoJack Kills

• This dialogue between Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter:
  Diane: Mr. Peanutbutter.
  Mr. Peanutbutter: Diane, where the hell are you?
  Diane: Ojai.
  Mr. Peanutbutter: Oh, hi? You've been gone all night, all you have to say is "Oh, hi?"
  Diane: I'm so sorry. BoJack and I were trying to find a killer and—
  Mr. Peanutbutter: Oh, you're with BoJack still? Well, that explains it. Of course.
  Diane: Mr. Peanutbutter, I understand and affirm your feeling—
  Mr. Peanutbutter: I'm glad you're safe, but I was worried about you!
  Diane: What I'm hearing you say is you were—
  Mr. Peanutbutter: No, stop. You have to call me. It doesn't matter what's happening, doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night. You can't keep doing this to me.
  Diane: I'm sorry. I'm coming home.
  Mr. Peanutbutter: I'm going back to bed. We'll talk about this in the morning.

Fish Out Of Water

• BoJack's bonding with the baby seahorse becomes this by the end — he managed to get the baby back to his father, but when BoJack waved at the baby, he didn't wave back. The hurt on BoJack's face can't be described in simple words.
  • And the fact that bonding with the baby gave BoJack the courage to "speak" to Kelsey...it still didn't work out. The words got washed away in the water.
  • Speaking of Kelsey, during the convention not one person appeared at her stand. Looks like hard times for her.
• Abe appearing without any audible dialogue, due to Garry Marshall's death.
• After an episode spending unable to talk due to being underwater, at the end BoJack discovers that the oxygen tank has a button that allows him to speak. Which could have prevented half his problems this episode.

Love And/Or Marriage

• When Tanisha runs into the bathroom, worried that marrying Karen might be the wrong decision, BoJack manages to convince Tanisha to go through with it, but only by exposing his own fears.
  Tanisha: I love Karen, but does she complete me?
  BoJack: Tanisha, nobody completes anybody. That's not a real thing. If you're lucky enough to find someone you can halfway tolerate, you sink your nails in, and you don't let go, no matter what!
  Tanisha: So, what? I should just settle?
  BoJack: Yes! Thank you! Exactly! Settle! Because otherwise, you're just going to get older, and harder, and more alone. And you're going to do everything you can to fill that hole with friends, and your career, and meaningless sex, but the hole doesn't get filled. And one day, you're going to look around, and you're going to realize that everybody loves you... But nobody likes you. And that is the loneliest feeling in the world.

Brrap Brrap Pew Pew

• Princess Carolyn's passive envy of Diane.
  "I'm sorry you're so fertile and in a sexually active, loving relationship. And how you don't want a family. I'm sure that's really hard for you"

Stop The Presses

• BoJack follows Ana home, and sees that she's just a sad, lonely woman who gets Mac and Cheese on her sweats.
• Emily and BoJack are uncomfortable with each other after having sex, and Emily bows out of her work deal with Todd, saying that neither she or the horse have been good friends to him.

Old Acquaintance

• Just how badly everyone ends up screwing themselves and one another over:
  • Because Princess Carolyn wrote a letter to sabotage her former secretary Laura's promotion, the latter pulled some strings to ensure that BoJack doesn't get the role of Pegasus. And because of this, BoJack couldn't work on the movie he wanted to do with Kelsey. Putting their relationship in the toilet.
  • Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter's disastrous visit to his brother. First, Diane feels like Captain Peanutbutter is being persnickety with her because he knows and is unhappy about her abortion, and Mr. Peanutbutter is highly offended when she tells him to talk to his brother, snapping at her for being intrusive and then rubbing salt in the wounds by reminding her how shitty her family was to her. Thankfully, it all gets resolved by the end: the two make up and Captain Peanutbutter admits that he might be dying of a twisted spleen, which bums the brothers out, but otherwise ends happily when Captain's surgery goes well.
• Just how badly Bradley Hitler-Smith, BoJack's former on-screen son, gets jerked around: he's ready to give up everything he has just to go back to Hollywood and work with BoJack again on a sequel series to Horsin' Around, but by the time he gets to L.A., BoJack gets cold feet and is too chicken to tell Bradley to his face. The result is his publicist has to do it for him, going as far as to call him a talentless loser.
• What really sets it off though is the ending. Rutabaga brought up earlier that they (him and Gekko) are the good guys. At first, the viewer assumes they are the bad guys and BoJack and his team are the good guys, but once you analyze the episode it's clear that BoJack and his team are the bad guys in this. Gekko and Rutabaga get the film, the latter's marriage is repaired and he makes it in time to see his children being born and everything ends happily. Then there's BoJack where he cowers out again and can't even tell his own friend he doesn't want to do the show, he still doesn't have the balls to tell Todd he slept with his old girlfriend, Princess sabotaged her old assistants promotion for her own selfish needs and is the reason why BoJack's other movie deal was snatched away. It's sort of sad to think the lead characters we root for kind of caused their own disasters.

Best Thing That Ever Happened

• The episode functions as an elegy to one of the most complex relationships in the show and it just leaves enough hints to underscore what's about to happen to BoJack and Princess Carolyn's relationship.
  • The beginning of the episode opens with Princess Carolyn reading the reviews of The BoJack Horseman Show and simply sighing at how low the horse is falling. Then, PC receives a call from BoJack's and tries to cheer him up, only for her to end up agreeing to see him. Thus, a cycle of co-dependence begins, despite her promise in "The BoJack Horseman Show".
  • BoJack's state, while still funny due to the witty one-liners, is also heartbreaking due to how much it's hitting him. Put it in perspective, this was the first time he tried to do something innovative and daring, something outside his comfort zone. All to shed the cred of "being the horse from Horsin' Around". And he's failing. It only gets worse upon rewatch: BoJack has been trying to break out for a long time and if history is a witness, he never expressed such enthusiasm for a project (except the Secretariat Biopic) the way he poured into this. To find out people hate it....Man.
  • While it's somewhat heartwarming to see BoJack start to open up and trust friend's opinions of himself, especially since Ana clearly has his best interests in mind and is good at what she does'', the fact that he basically tells Princess Carolyn that she isn't one of those friends to him, despite having stuck by him for 23 years, is very sad.
    BoJack: Just so you know, [firing you] wasn't an easy decision... I agonized over this. Ask Ana.
    Princess Carolyn: Oh, so you did talk about it with Ana.
    BoJack: Well, yeah. I respect her opinion.
  • After spending the whole episode (intensely) working out their problems, Princess Carolyn, feeling like she truly understands her friend, practically begs him to rehire her as his agent, telling him that him firing her will cost her the company. But he's made up his mind, and gives her a blunt no. The look on her face is devastating. And the episode just ends there.
    • This comment on from YouTube perfectly explains the tragic and complex relationship between BoJack and Princess Carolyn:
      "Their relationship is more tragedy than romance, they bring out the absolute worst in each other. BoJack is self destructive and Carolyn is addicted to putting out fires in other's people's lives and not focusing on her own happiness. Their entire relationship is him screwing up and depending on her to fix his problems, which she does while not holding him accountable for his own actions, BoJack, meanwhile, is too self-centered to try and help her fix her problems, and the whole thing becomes a cycle. If anything can be said to have wasted Carolyn's thirties, it's their relationship. They are interdependent, but they don't push each other to change or improve. Together, they are stuck."

It's You

• BoJack's devastation that he wasn't actually nominated for an Oscar... which he finds out as he's celebrating his nomination.
  • And, as usual, he believes that his winning will make him happy, but after he hears the announcement that he's nominated, he tells Ana that he doesn't feel better at all.
• Worse, Ana, whom BoJack thought was genuinely interested in him, leaves him in a heartbeat when she learns he wasn't nominated.
  • If you rewatch carefully, it's actually foreshadowed. After his fight with Diane, BoJack goes to Ana to desperately ask if their relationship will continue after the Oscar nominations. However, from Ana's facial expressions, body language, and not even answering the question, she's saying, "No. It won't." Even with his heartfelt speech about wanting to see the real her in "Stop The Presses", it's becomes heartwrenchingly clear that Ana never started to care for BoJack, only seeing him as a way to advance her career.
• Todd, who has been fiercely loyal to BoJack since day one, finally getting fed up with him. The fact Todd he drops the season's requisite Precision F-Strike, which is usually reserved for when BoJack has done something unforgivable, just shows how far he's gone.
  BoJack: Todd, I'm sorry, alright? I screwed up, I- I know I screwed up, I—
  Todd: Oh great, of course! Here it comes! You can't keep doing this! You can't keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better!
  BoJack: I know, and I'm sorry, okay? I was drunk and there was all this pressure with the Oscar campaign, but now that it's over, I-I-I—
  Todd: No! No. BoJack, just... stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the alcohol or the drugs or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when you were a kid, it's you! Alright? It's you.
  (long, thoughtful pause)
  Todd: Fuck, man. What else is there to say?
  (cut to credits)
  • While the other Precision F Strikes usually came out of anger, Todd's just sounds disillusioned. He doesn't want to desert his friend, but he has no other choice.
  • Before that speech, BoJack asks what Todd thought he and Emily got up to in the first place. Todd replies, "I thought maybe you gave her one of your weird monologues about how sad you are and it bummed her out." A mild chuckle, sure, but it shows how often BoJack just dumps his trauma on others without resolving to improve himself afterwards. Todd is just worn out by it and has finally had enough.

That's Too Much, Man!

• For starters, Sarah Lynn's fatal bender only happens because a depressed BoJack pushed her off the wagon by inviting her to cheer him up by getting wasted. And this was after she'd been (begrudgingly) sober for nine months. (The entire reason Sarah Lynn was clean for so long was to enhance her highs when she started using again.)
  • Added to the fact that although Sarah Lynn was "clean", her entire house was full of drugs ("[The painting is] LSD!"). One has to wonder about her commitment to her sobriety when all it took was one call for her to fall off the wagon. BoJack didn't have to talk her into it, he simply asked and she willingly shucked her beliefs. It's easy to blame BoJack for this, but Sarah Lynn was just looking for an excuse to fall back into her old habits. The Tear Jerker comes when you realize that BoJack simply needed a friend, and the only one he had left was just itching to not be sober.
• The altered opening has BoJack walking through a completely empty home. His actions have finally alienated everyone from his life. The fact that he asks Sarah Lynn to party despite knowing it will end her sobriety (which he previously insisted she continue) shows just how lonely and desperate for a friend he is.
• BoJack's frequent blackouts causing literal Aesop Amnesia when he repeatedly goes to Ana's house to try understanding why she ended things with him.
  Ana Spanikopita: After I almost drowned, I decided I would never again be weaker than water, so I became a lifeguard. On my first day of training, my instructor told me that there are going to be times when you'll see someone in trouble. You're going to want to rush in there and do whatever you can to save them, but you have to stop yourself. Because there are some people you can't save. Cause those people will thrash and struggle, and try to take you down with them.
  Bojack: ...What does that have to do with me?
• BoJack decides it's best for him to "make amends" with everyone he's hurt (read: he shows up unannounced to their house and throws himself at them while yelling "I'm sorry"). Not only do all of them fail spectacularly, but when he hunts down Penny, who has been getting by fine, it re-opens a wound for her and she shrinks away from him in terror.
  • BoJack didn't want to see Penny. His better judgement told him it was wrong, and Sarah Lynn told him he was a jerk for even thinking it, let alone having done it. But somehow, through all of his black-outs, he ends up going through with it against his own will!
  • On his try with Princess Carolyn, BoJack is desperately begging and pleading while atop his car. She can only be embarrassed, and Ralph shows up to lead her back to the room. As he does this, he looks over his shoulder to frown at BoJack. It is either a look of annoyance for rudely waking them up like this, or a look of pity for his pathetic attempt to rebuild bridges.
• Sarah Lynn and BoJack watching the Oscars on TV, implying that their bender has gone on so long that they both completely forgot about it, especially since Sarah Lynn was actually nominated for one. When she wins, she's disappointed that she doesn't feel any better about herself, much like how BoJack felt when he thought he had been nominated. She then monologues about how much she hates herself, especially because she went through with the career she was forced into despite never wanting to become a performer, and how beyond help she is. It's Kristen Schaal's finest acting.
  Sarah Lynn: Oh, man, I should've been there. When I was a kid, if you'd told me I'd win an Oscar, I'd never have believed it. And now I've done it and- BoJack. I don't... like anything about me. None of this is me. These boobs aren't me, this house isn't me.
  BoJack: We're not at your house right now.
  Sarah Lynn: The only reason I wear this shirt is because some company paid me $8,000 to wear it. (Laughs bitterly) And I don't even need the money! I just liked that someone still wanted me to wear their shirt.
  • The bear who accepts her award on her behalf is implied to be her sexually abusive stepfather (even designed to look like photographer and alleged rapist Terry Richardson). Having one's greatest success be accepted by their rapist isn't easy to watch.
• BoJack tells Sarah he loves her - the one time we ever hear him tell someone on screen - only for her to awake suddenly from a blackout, meaning she probably didn't hear him.
  • Similarly, she is passed out during his poignant speech at the planetarium. This time she never wakes up.
• After a brutal Bait-and-Switch, where Sarah Lynn appears to have died in their motel room, she and BoJack finally go to her favorite place, the planetarium... where she does die, cuddled up to who is unfortunately the closest thing to a father figure she's ever had.
  Sarah Lynn: I wanna be an architect.
  • BoJack's closing speech after Sarah Lynn says the above.
    See, Sarah Lynn? We're not doomed. In the great, grand scheme of things, we're just tiny specks that will one day be forgotten. So it doesn't matter what we did in the past, or how we'll be remembered. The only thing that matters is right now, this moment, this one spectacular moment we are sharing together. Right, Sarah Lynn? (Beat) Sarah Lynn? ...Sarah Lynn?
  • The whole scene in the planetarium in general, between the peaceful Background Music and the narration by Neil deGrasse Tyson about how all our lives are just mere flashes compared to how long the universe has been around (which is especially sad once we find out what is about to come), is tear-inducing.
• Sarah Lynn proving that she essentially really is the same person as the sweet kid BoJack knew on Horsin' Around as she begins recalling her dreams of being an architect. One of her first lines as Child!Sarah Lynn were "I want to be an architect when I grow up." This isn't exactly sad – more sweet, watching her express genuine knowledge and passion about architecture throughout, watching her consider going to college – up until the end. It's all so much Harsher in Hindsight after she utters her last words: "I wanna be an architect."
• Sarah Lynn jokingly suggests that Penny might be in a sex chatroom with a 50y/o horse because it's the only way she can feel love, or maybe she's looking up ways to kill herself, in response to BoJack's panic over seeing Penny. It's funny at first – that is, up until you put it in retrospect. It is heavily implied that Sarah Lynn was sexually abused by her stepfather. It could have been projecting at its finest.

That Went Well

• The brief flashback to 2007 at the start of the episode. BoJack pays Sarah-Lynn a visit after a concert and she's overjoyed to see him, viewing him as her last true friend and immediately makes plans to reconnect with him that night once all of her obligations are done.

  Sarah Lynn: I am this close to falling off the deep end (laughs a little) I know I'm smiling right now, but the light inside me is dying.

  • Even worse is that, in the background, you can see life-affirming messages written by Sarah Lynn (and some of her fans) posted near the mirror, and she is absolutely crushed when she realizes that BoJack only visited her to arrange the guest spot.
• News anchor Tom Jumbo-Grumbo confirming Sarah Lynn's death at age 31.
• BoJack's regular acquaintances like Todd and Princess Carolyn gradually disappearing from his apartment in the Evolving Credits until, by the tenth episode, it's empty. By the final episode, the now-deceased Sarah Lynn is removed from the party scene, and he's totally alone.
• The sheer apathy everyone has to Sarah Lynn's death: everyone knew it was bound to happen (hell, in her first appearance, she knew it was going to happen), but no one helped, and BoJack himself made it worse.
  • BoJack's reaction just made it worse; he knows that a part of this was his fault, and he feels as if life "doesn't get better, and doesn't get any easier." He was probably thinking about how he felt as if the message he was given about life from the season 2 finale was a lie.
• Gradually watching Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter's once-happy marriage slowly crumble as he becomes more possessive and she becomes more self-reliant, if not outright selfish. The season ends with the implication that the feminist website she's being hired to write for is setting her up to write something incriminating about her husband and that, like BoJack, she's willing to burn bridges with loved ones for a shot at fame.
• The entire ending, scored to Nina Simone's cover of "Stars."
  • The Horsin' Around sequel series seems to be getting off to a good start, with BoJack joyfully coaching his former TV child Bradley in sitcom acting and bonding with the new child actors. It seems as though things will finally start working out for him and he'll be able to get past recent events. Then he asks Chloe, the actress playing the youngest of the adopted children, what she wants to be when she grows up.
    Chloe: What do you mean? I-I want to be like you.
    BoJack: (frowns) Like me?
    Chloe: I want to be famous!
  • The horror that Chloe is potentially on her way to becoming another Sarah Lynn sends BoJack into what is very likely a panic attack. By this point in the series, it's clear that his very presence is enough to negatively affect the people around him, no matter what he does, and he bolts out of the taping, saying to himself "I can't do this again. This isn't right." He proceeds to the city limits in his car and, once in the desert, floors it and lets go of the steering wheel. Whether this is meant to be a suicide attempt or not, it's clear that this is him just giving up. That Downer Ending is just barely avoided when he sees the herd of horses running and looks on in awe, ending the season on an ambiguous Hope Spot.

Season 4

See Mr. Peanutbutter Run

• You have to feel sorry for the Governor, who's genuinely focused on improving the lives of California's citizens, but gets forced into a ski race against Mr. Peanutbutter due to the public having drastically Skewed Priorities.
• Similarly, Diane is quickly being overwhelmed by being the Only Sane Man at that point, desperately wishing BoJack was around to comment on the situation so she doesn't have to.
• The end of the episode's arc with Princess Carolyn and Ralph reveals that she was pregnant. Emphasis on "was".
  Ralph: Oh. I'm so sorry. I still wish you would've told me. I have a card for that. On the front, it says "Life isn't fairage."

The Old Sugarman Place

• Michelle Branch's haunting cover of America's "A Horse With No Name" scoring the Cold Open. A perfect soundtrack to BoJack's isolation as he seems to be just drifting through life at this point.
• Beatrice finally gets a backstory explaining how she grew up to be such a cold abusive person. Her loving family crumbled after her brother Crackerjack was shot down in World War II, causing her mother Honey to lose her sense of joy and become reckless, even letting a very young Beatrice drive their car and almost get them killed. Her father, unable and unwilling to learn how to deal with a woman's emotions, gets her mother a lobotomy that leaves her barely functional. Honey then tells Beatrice to never love anybody as much as she loved Crackerjack.
  • "Why, I have half a mind..."
  • Beatrice's parents reacting to Crackerjack's death being interspersed with BoJack watching the miniseries on Sarah Lynn's death is especially tearjerker-worthy, especially the "That's just show business" complementing the "That's just war" line.
    • Paul Giamatti, playing BoJack in the miniseries, singing the Horsin' Around theme song when he hears Sarah Lynn didn't make it.
    • On its own, that probably could have been Narm, given its vibes of Hollywoo exploitation of tragedy. Juxtaposed with the quiet gradual way that Beatrice's family deals with their grief, however, it highlights what the real reactions to death can look like.
  • Beatrice's parents denying her choices and actions because she's a girl in the forties and is only expected to bear children.
  • Flashbacks show Crackerjack and Honey loved to play piano together while they were at the summer house. It becomes a tragic Meaningful Echo when he dies in the war and the family returns; she begins playing the first few bars of the song they played just before their portrait, then breaks down sobbing. Then it becomes even MORE of one when Honey gets lobotomized, and she's so broken from it she has trouble pressing one key.
  • The way Honey cries about not knowing how to be better after her trauma and begging Joseph to make her better. It's very easy to imagine BoJack saying the same thing she does about his broken mental state.
  • When a horrified Beatrice asks her mother what they did to her post-lobotomy, Honey attempts to comfort her by saying "I'm better now." She genuinely thought this was the only way she could be "fixed."
• Eddie the dragonfly and the way BoJack befriends him, especially when his backstory is revealed: He flew too high with his wife and got her sucked into a jet engine, and now refuses to fly. When BoJack tricks him into flying, he almost gets BoJack killed the same way for revenge, but they fall into the lake. BoJack saves Eddie from drowning, but Eddie starts crying about how he doesn't want to live anymore.
• BoJack destroying the summer house after spending months and months rebuilding it with Eddie, without even letting Eddie know.
• BoJack's Imagine Spot of his life with Charlotte (season 2) becomes this in hindsight: Their daughter Harper, was likely named for the house's location of Harper's Landing, Michigan. That and his eventual return suggests it was a place where he was actually happy.
• And the duet between Honey and Eddie as they both mourn their loved one through song, a Dark Reprise of Honey singing it earlier with Crackerjack.
  Summer, winter. Year by year.
  I'll hear this song inside my ear.
  Try to restart, that'd be smart.
  But thoughts of you haunt my heart.

Hooray! Todd Episode!

• After their falling out in the previous season, BoJack is genuinely remorseful of what he did to Todd and wants to be friends with him again, but Todd understandably doesn't share the sentiment. During their first conversation he basically tells BoJack his life has gotten better without him, and BoJack's reaction says it all.

Commence Fracking

• Diane getting a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Katrina, especially about how her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter is falling apart, calling it "the thin injection of mint in this dog shit sundae" to watch Mr. Peanutbutter fail again.
• Hollyhock trying twenty-three different women on a list, none of whom were her mother. Her frustration boils over to the point she starts to cry. She even admits that, despite growing up with eight dads who all loved her, she just has to know who her mother is. It's a realistic and sobering fear of adopted children, and it's heartbreaking to see it play out.

Thoughts and Prayers

• BoJack finally makes the trip to see Beatrice again for Hollyhock's sake. Beatrice is in a nursing home now, and suffering late-stage dementia, and unlike season 2 she can't even recognize BoJack. BoJack refuses to accept that she isn't terrible to him anymore. When she recognizes him on a "Horsin' Around tape but not in real life, he decides to stage a live performance of the sitcom to remind her who he is... just so he can say "Fuck you, Mom" at the end of it to rub in her face how far she's fallen. When he puts on the show, she panics out of confusion and attacks another patient, getting her kicked out of the home to live with BoJack. Thus begins the tragic arc that takes up the rest of the season, and can be especially tragic if your parent or grandparent was abusive, or if they're losing their mind.
  • Even worse is that he discovers that she was lying about not caring for his show. The audience found out why in episode 2, but he's left wondering why she not only didn't praise him for it, but outright scolded him for being a failure by acting in a sitcom.
• When first visiting her, he believes she's just pretending not to recognize him, just like that time he botched a choir solo.
  BoJack: I had to get a ride home from the pianist, who liked to tickle a lot more than just the ivories. When I made it home unscathed, she said "Huh, I guess no one wants you."
• Hollyhock and Beatrice have an understated moment while they're alone in the nursing home. People have been telling Hollyhock since she was a baby that she looks like BoJack. While it's not stated outright, Beatrice is either also thinking of BoJack, or, given Hollyhock's lineage, she's thinking about Butterscotch.
  Beatrice: I can't believe you came back.
  Hollyhock: Who, me? Or BoJack?
  Beatrice: You look just like him...

Stupid Piece of Sh*t

• The entire episode we're treated to BoJack's internal thoughts and monologues and they constantly bring him down and mock him. Bringing up how he's ruined all his past relationships, and how he's already ruining he relationship with Hollyhock. The worst one comes near the end of the episode.
  BoJack's Mind: You're ruining her. You know that, right? No matter what, your poison is already in her. There's nothing you can do.
  BoJack: That's not true!
  BoJack's Mind: Yeah it is, you stupid piece of shit! You're a real stupid piece of shit. And everywhere you go, you destroy people. Of course your mother never loved you, what did you expect?! That's why Sarah Lynn died. That's why Charlotte will never forgive you. What are you gonna do to Hollyhock? What are you gonna do, asshole?!
  BoJack: SHUT UP!
• In a fit of jealously, depression, anger, or some combination of all the above, BoJack goes on a rant against his dementia addled mother over her sudden affections towards a small doll, which BoJack proceeds to throw of a balcony specifically to spite Beatrice. If the encouragement and cold satisfaction from his inner monologue is not enough, the sheer anguish resulting from Beatrice as she screams and collapses on the floor in tears is heartbreaking, if not horrifying. It gets even worse after watching the penultimate episode of the season.
  • Leading up to this, BoJack's Inner Monologue continually contradicts what he actually says and does, up until the final moment... where it says "Do it."
  • And then there's the doll itself, as Beatrice believes it to be an actual baby, and plays the role of a Doting Grandparent to a T. BoJack is furious.
    BoJack: Oh, I know! What if, for 18 years straight, I just tell it how worthless it is every day, how it embarrasses me, how my life would be better if it was never born?
    • And later, after he'd promised to find the doll, his Inner Monologue comes back with a vengeance.
      BoJack's Mind: This is what you do. This is what you always do. This is why Mom loves Doll more than you. And she's right. Doll never hurt anybody. Doll wouldn't throw you over the side of a mountain.
    • And this isn't helped by Hollyhock humoring her by saying Beatrice is "such a good mother".
    • An easily missed line during BoJack's rant is when he suggests Beatrice "leave [the doll] in its crib to cry when it's hungry and wet." Considering the kind of mother Beatrice was, it's not hard to believe this actually happened to BoJack. Worse, this form of neglect is proven to be extremely damaging to a child's ability to form strong attachments to other people in later life, which explains a lot about BoJack, really.
• The last line of the episode. It's clear that the moral of the story is the opposite of the one that's said.
  Hollyhock: That voice, the one that tells you you're worthless, and stupid, and ugly...?
  BoJack: Yeah?
  Hollyhock: It goes away, right? It's just like, a dumb teenage girl thing, but then it goes away?
  BoJack: ...Yeah.
  • Even worse, BoJack had promised a few episodes ago that he wouldn't lie to Hollyhock anymore, but this is something he really doesn't want her to worry about.

Underground

• Diane sobbing about how she's never satisfied with her life:
  Diane: Why can't I be happy? Am I busted?
  BoJack: No, it—
  Diane: I am! I'm a pit! I'm a pit that good things fall into!

Ruthie

• Princess Carolyn's awful day. In short order, Courtney fired her as her manager, her necklace broke (and she found out that it was not, as she had thought, an old family heirloom, but a fake-gold costume piece purchased at a JC Penney), Judah lied to her about an offer from Charlie Witherspoon, causing her to lose faith in her trusted Number Two and fire him, and worst of all, she had a miscarriage (later revealed as her fifth), goes on a drinking binge and breaks up with Ralph. Oh, and the cute, distant-future Framing Device? All in her imagination. While on the phone with BoJack, she says that after a bad day she likes to imagine a distant descendant telling her story in the future. Break the Haughty in its purest form.
  • Notably, this is the only time we've seen her cry on-screen.
  • And her reason for being so stubborn about having a biological child? Her mother had had twelve children, and she doesn't want to feel like a failure for being unable to have one.
  • The whole episode also makes "Brrap Brrap Pew Pew" a lot Harsher in Hindsight as a result: Princess Carolyn has repeatedly tried to settle down and have a family and lost every single one of the babies she's conceived. Diane, who is Happily Married and can presumably carry a baby to term, gets pregnant entirely by accident and aborts it. To PC, it's not just Dramatic Irony, it's unfair!
• Watch Judah's face as Carolyn is firing him. She accuses him of rejecting Charlie Witherspoon's offer due to his desire to work at a smaller agency, because he's weird and doesn't get along with other people. The look on Judah's face when Carolyn calls him "weird" is one of pure hurt. This is the same guy who, when he made personalized Christmas cards for her, wrote in his own that she was proud of him. He's probably been called similar names his entire life, and to have someone who's opinion of him he obviously values do the same really hurts him.
  • Even worse when you rewatch their conversation in Season 3 when P.C. mentions the idea of selling Vigor - Judah nearly tells her about the offer, but opted not to. Hearing his rationale in this episode makes perfect sense - he was looking out for her best interests, not the company's, and felt that she was in too vulnerable a position at that point to make a decision she would be satisfied with later.
• The Reveal at the end. Through the entire episode, the framing device is Ruthie, a cat girl living about 200 years in the future, doing a report on her ancestor, Princess Carolyn, for a day in which she faced a lot of adversity, but overcame it and landed on her feet. The episode starts off by painting this like it's a Foregone Conclusion that everything works out for her, despite the Trauma Conga Line she endures. But then, you make it to the end, and she's on the phone with BoJack, and she tells him how she handles having bad days like this and how she lands right back on her feet. She imagines her great-great-granddaughter reporting on her, telling her class all about the adversity she faces, and proudly reporting on how she endured it and made it through to the other side. BoJack wonders how this helps her. PC replies it doesn't, but it makes her feel better. And the episode ends. Ruthie was never real, there is no Foregone Conclusion. Easily one of the worst Downer Endings in the series.

lovin that cali lifestyle!!

• Bojack is unable to see Hollyhock throughout his entire time at the hospital. Not only because he's not her legal guardian but, because when her eight fathers arrive, they accuse him of overdosing their daughter with amphetamines. As a result, they forbid him from ever seeing her anymore.
• BoJack's self-loathing is so pervasive that when Hollyhock appears to have overdosed on something from his stash, he immediately registers it as the foregone conclusion of him destroying any good relationship in his life. What's worse, we see his resulting panic attack from his POV, complete with the high-frequency sound cutting out and him eventually collapsing on the floor of his bathroom as he hyperventilates.
• The revelation that it was actually Beatrice spiking the girl's coffee with weight loss powder is too much for him. Hollyhock was the ONLY reason BoJack considered the relative kindness he showed his mother this season, and to find out her regressive and toxic attitude about weight (which he accidentally reinforced earlier on) put the girl in the hospital? The best person in his life nearly destroyed by what he sees to be the worst? One can hardly blame him for putting her in another, less pleasant, home.
• BoJack rounding on Beatrice when he finds out what she's done. She looks confused and frightened and asks "Where's Crackerjack?"

Time's Arrow

• The whole episode is told from Beatrice's memories. Because of her dementia, however, details become glitchy, and most people in the background are missing their faces. The unstable environment is a jarring, tragic look into the mental workings of somebody who can't trust their mind anymore.
  • Watch the family portrait - it shifts from Beatrice, Butterscotch and BoJack's family portrait to the one of the Sugarman family very fluidly.
• Young Beatrice getting bullied on the playground and getting pushed off the slide by her fellow schoolgirls. One insult they stick to is calling her fat, which leads to her growing up to be severely weight conscious, taking "pretty pills" and downing the weight loss supplements that lead to Hollyhock's fainting spell.
• Beatrice is ready to marry Corbin Creamerman, who she genuinely begins to develop feelings for. Corbin cares about her and connects with her Daddy Issues and love of learning... but because of her pregnancy she rushes back to Butterscotch. Of course, they talk up a nice life in California, with Butterscotch writing his novel and Beatrice caring for the infant, but we know that won't be the case.
• Young Beatrice getting scarlet fever, resulting in her favorite doll getting burnt in front of her due to having the disease on it, with her dad barely caring, just telling her that "crying is stupid". This is explains her volatile reaction to BoJack throwing her doll out the window in episode 6.
  • And just to rub salt in the wound, her father obliquely threatens Beatrice with a lobotomy of her own if she's unable to keep her emotions in check.
  • A more subtle example: when Joseph begins admonishing Beatrice for crying, she reaches out to him for comfort...and he backs away from her. Even if it's due to her having Scarlet Fever, that's harsh given the context.
  • What's worst, this whole traumatic event (as well as her inability to get him to stop crying as an infant) set into motion her telling BoJack never to cry, inflicting him with his own depression.
• After her maid Henrietta gets pregnant by Butterscotch, Beatrice has to be Cruel to Be Kind and tell Henrietta that she has to give the baby up for adoption when it's born, knowing that the girl will just make the same mistakes she did if she doesn't.
  • Henrietta's anguished pleads to hold her baby after giving birth as Beatrice takes it away, knowing that Henrietta will become attached if she does. Her scribbled-out face engulfs the screen, giving the viewer a perfect illustration of her anguish.
• In the end, BoJack is unable to bring himself to curse out his mother like he (and the audience) had hoped he would, feeling at this point it would be pathetic of him to bully a frail, senile old woman. Instead, he lets her die happy by sitting with her and telling her that they're at the summer home in Michigan, surrounded by loved ones and having a wonderful evening rather than rotting in a wretched nursing home.
  • Unfortunately, he doesn't realize she was never allowed to have ice-cream - when he asks how it tastes, she doesn't know how it's supposed to taste. So she lies to him one last time by saying it's delicious.
  • Special mention goes to Will Arnett and Wendie Malick's amazing performances for their respective characters. Malick truly sounds like a woman who's mind, body and soul have been worn with age and experiences, the weight of which still sit heavily on her chest. Every word sounds as if she's ready to cry. Arnett, meanwhile, nails BoJack's begrudging but otherwise sincere empathy.
• The fact that even after everything Joseph did to Beatrice, she actually defended some of his actions, even calling him "a man who knew what marriage meant" and attending his funeral. In short, Joseph died peacefully, without receiving any sort of punishment for his less-than-savory actions. The only karma he got was that his business eventually foundered with no heir, meaning he had no lasting legacy.
  Joseph: I promise, one day this will all be a pleasant memory.
• When Butterscotch confesses to having gotten Henrietta pregnant, what follows is the only moment on the show where he comes across as remotely sympathetic. The look on his face and his voice are that of a man who, for probably the only time in his life, is having to come to terms with just how toxic he is:
  Butterscotch: I know you hate me, Bea, but please... think of the poor girl.

What Time Is It Right Now?

• Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter. After taking a random vacation before settling into their new house, Diane finds that PB has built her a "Belle Room" based on her childhood fantasy of having a library just like Beast gifted Belle in the movie. Diane, however, is furious. On top of hating grand gestures (remember the D incident from season 1? Or the huge, multi-themed, surprise party for her 35th Birthday?) she feels betrayed because as long as it remained a fantasy, it remained hers and hers alone. This drags out the issues at the core of their relationship — Diane's independence chafing against PB's all-in devotion. It comes down to the fact that regardless of everything they've been through together, the many sweet moments they share, and how much they may genuinely love each other, their relationship is never, ever going to work. Diane puts it the most succinctly.
  Diane: You know, sometimes I feel like our marriage is a Magic Eye poster.
  Mr. Peanutbutter: I love those things.
  Diane: I know. And it's messy. And at first glance, it doesn't seem to make any sense. And it's hard to figure out! But sometimes if you squint at it just right, everything lines up and it's the most perfect, beautiful, amazing thing.
  Mr. Peanutbutter: Yeah. I know what you mean.
  Diane: But... (bursts into tears) I'm so tired of squinting.

Season 5

General

• BoJack spends quite a bit of time trying to build up Gina's self-confidence, as she had seemingly given up on being anything but a second- or third-tier performer on shows that never go anywhere. Despite the failure of her musical audition, his help brings them closer, and they begin a relationship and her performance on the show starts getting her noticed. Gina herself states that it's the first time someone from her work has actually cared about her for longer than their show stayed in production. Of course, BoJack ruins their relationship in the end, nearly chokes her to death on set because he was high and psychotic. She wants nothing to do with him beyond contractual obligations, and then their show gets cancelled anyway.
  • Aside from that, BoJack's growing addiction to painkillers, which culminates in the above due to the hallucinations he's going through, but prior to this (and just moments after dropping Hollyhock off at the airport), he becomes so desperate for his fix that he drives into a busy intersection in the hopes of getting taken to the hospital and being given more.
• It's subtle, but BoJack's interactions with Hollyhock and Diane really show how incapable he is of reciprocating love like a normal being: Hollyhock and Diane visibly expect a hug when he picks them up from the airport and she drives him to rehab respectively, but they never get one and are visibly saddened by this. It highlights that while BoJack really did learn a lot and managed to become less sheltered, he's still got miles to go.
• Princess Carolyn becoming a producer causes her to start treating BoJack as a resource she needs to exploit rather than as a friend. Despite BoJack only joining the project because PC forged his signature, she berates him when he brings it up, and then starts him on his pill addiction road by forcing him to see a dodgy doctor instead of healing his injury after the stunt failure.
• Beatrice Horseman passes away during this season. And BoJack clearly has trouble processing the fact that he's grieving for her, despite everything she did to him. Beatrice may have been a terrible mother to BoJack, but she was still the only mother he had.
• BoJack and Diane's friendship crumbling down throughout the season.

Trailer

• The preview shows that just like in the premier of Season 2, BoJack's newfound happiness was a fleeting moment in his life. Hollyhock is worried he might be an alcoholic and he appears to have a sleep disorder.
  Diane: You say you want to get better, but you don't know how.
  • The saddest part of the trailer has to be BoJack trying to regulate his drinking while filming his new show, with lines drawn on a bottle of vodka for how much he's allowed to drink that particular day. Any recovering alcoholic will tell you that just because you regulate your drinking (or at least act like you can) doesn't mean you don't have a problem.

The Dog Days Are Over

• The ending scene, which reveals why Diane was sobbing with grief at the beginning at the episode and why she went to Vietnam to begin with. If you thought watching Diane cry in "What Time Is It Right Now?" when she realizes that she and Mr. Peanutbutter aren't going to work out was rough, this is one hundred times worse. While the divorce papers are being finalized, Diane attends a party at Mr. Peanutbutter's house, convinced that she's cool and carefree now, and that she and him are capable of having a normal platonic relationship. Then she sees him kiss another girl, and she just breaks.
  Diane: The real reason you go to Vietnam is because you accidentally see your soon-to-be-ex-husband kiss someone else. At first you think, "Oh, it's a fling. Whatever, they're drunk, it's a party." But then he puts his hand on the small of her back exactly the way he used to do to you. It means, "I've got you," and when he did it to you, it made you feel safe. And you realize he will never do that to you again. And it breaks your heart, again, after your heart was so broken you thought it could never get any more broken. You thought it was safe, but it still, somehow, finds a new way to break. Because, even though you're the one who asked for this, now that you've got it, you are completely adrift, with no compass, or map, or sense of where to go, or what to do. So you go to Vietnam. You think you might find community, a connection to something bigger, but, you don't. In fact, you feel even more alone than you were before you left. But, you survive. You learn you can survive being alone.

BoJack The Feminist

• Just the fact that Vance Waggoner can be likened to any number of male celebrities who get a slap on the wrist for being louts creates a pretty depressing sense of perspective.
  • Vance Waggoner is an excellent Deconstructive Parody of celebrities who are horrible even by basic decency standards. If anything, the way he's even able to slime his way into Hollywood's graces by spinning his artful expression of being a caitiff nugget of shit into a harmless "profitable scumbag" perception is nothing short of horrifying. Even worse, while his humiliation (when it happens) is satisfying, his family and friends are often dragged along with him, with his family often caught in the crossfire of his scandals and victims to his violent behavior.

The Amelia Earhart Story

• It's another Princess Carolyn episode, folks. Strap in.
  • It begins in a dumpy house with PC watching a movie she's memorized by heart. She's less than a foot from the screen, reciting every line as Amelia Earhart says it. Her mother then berates her for not ever watching anything else, and when Princess Carolyn says she'd be interested in watching something else, her mother then asks, "You think I'm made of tapes?" Hooo, boy.
  • Cutie intercepts Princess Carolyn's mail, mocking her for thinking she could ever get into a college, and then guilt-trips her into even thinking of abandoning her mother.
  • Princess Carolyn's first relationship falls apart when she gets pregnant. She then loses the baby. Which her mother blames her for, because "miscarriages don't just happen". PC begins sobbing and just starts screaming "I'm sorry" over and over again. It's extremely hard to watch.
  • Cutie tells Princess Carolyn she got into UCLA, telling her she's "free now", but at the last minute begs her to back out. Princess Carolyn still leaves and the last we see of her mother is her crying in the airport.
  • The agency calls to tell her that Sadie isn't going to go with her for the adoption, so she's back to square one again.

Free Churro

• The episode in its entirety gives us BoJack painting us another picture of his home life, his parents' miserable marriage, and his failures to make either of them happy, with the acknowledgment that neither of his parents' deaths made him feel anything.
  • The worst is when he relates how he could relate so well to Diane after her father passed away.
    BoJack: You know what it's like? It's like that show Becker, you know, with Ted Danson? I watched the entire run of that show, hoping it would get better, and it never did. It had all the right pieces, but it just— it couldn't put them together. And when it got canceled, I was really bummed out, not because I liked the show, but because I knew it could be so much better, and now it never would be. And that's what losing a parent is like. It's like Becker. Suddenly, you realize you'll never have the good relationship you wanted, and as long as they were alive, even though you'd never admit it, part of you, the stupidest goddamned part of you, was still holding on to that chance. And you didn't even realize it until that chance went away. "My mother is dead, and everything is worse now." Because now I know I will never have a mother who looks at me from across the room and says: "BoJack Horseman, I see you."
• The opening treats us to a lovely scene of Butterscotch driving a young BoJack home. BoJack had clearly been left outside in the cold for quite a long time, and he sits wordlessly as his father tosses abusive language at both him and his mother. Butterscotch's rage is normally quite loud, but here it sounds much more passive and...depressively realistic.
• The entire episode showcases BoJack's Freudian Excuse, as he consistently relates his circumstances to TV shows, even mentioning Maude by name.
  BoJack: All I learned about being good, I learned from TV. And in TV, flawed characters are constantly showing people they care with these surprising grand gestures. And I think that part of me still believes that's what love is.
• "My darling mother gave the eulogy. My entire life, I never heard her say a kind word to OR about my father, but at his funeral, she said, 'My husband is dead, and everything is worse now.'"
  • Beatrice threw away her chance at a wealthy life and a happy relationship to follow Butterscotch under the hopes that they could be a happy family. Much like BoJack, she never got a good relationship out of it, and her husband died without ever giving her that chance. Her life was worse knowing for sure that she gave up so much for a relationship that only amounted to heartache.
• For a good portion of the eulogy, BoJack keeps mentioning Beatrice's last words as being "I see you.", trying to figure out if she meant them as a sign of love, resentment, or simple recognition to him as a person. Towards the end, he abruptly realizes that she was reading a sign at the hospital: they were in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He has no concrete proof that she was reading said sign out loud, but it doesn't matter — this is the conclusion he arrives at, and for Beatrice, one that makes perfect sense. And it's how he'll remember her.
• The reason for the title - a girl at a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant gave him a free churro after having burst into tears upon hearing that his mother had died. At the end of the episode, after some Mood Whiplash about the actual meaning of Beatrice's last words, he comes to this realization.
  BoJack: My mom died and all I got was this free churro. You know the shittiest thing about all of this? Is when that stranger behind the counter gave me that free churro, that small act of kindness showed more compassion than my mother gave me her entire goddamned life. Like, how hard is it to do something nice for a person? This woman at the Jack-in-the-Box didn't even know me. I'm your son. All I had was you!
• His recollection of connecting with his family on the nights his mother hosted a supper club meeting, forcing him to sing "The Lollipop Song", and his father would always bang on the door of his study as warning to keep the noise down... but always joined them when it came time for Beatrice to perform her dance routine, implying that it was the same one (and same dress!) from the night the pair met.
  BoJack: And as a child who was completely terrified of both my parents, I was always aware that this moment of grace... it meant something. We understood each other, in a way. Me and my mom and my dad, as screwed up as we all were, we did understand each other.
  • The meaning of Beatrice's dance in her special dress, if indeed it is the one from the night she met Butterscotch, tells the audience the connection without BoJack ever getting the chance to find out: that dress is the one she had been wearing when BoJack was conceived. Butterscotch appreciated that moment because it represents the idealized image of what life with his wife and baby might have been like if he'd invested himself into them instead of trying to force the intellectual world to love his work. Just like BoJack, Penny, and Harper...
• BoJack barely mentions it, but Butterscotch died a rather pointless death in the end: cracking his skull open after tripping during a duel with a critic who didn't like his novel (or so he said, everyone doubts the kook actually read it). It also turns out that in spite of everything his father sacrificed to write it, BoJack's never read it. "Why would I give him that?"
• This line, which sums up many a Dysfunctional Family perfectly:
  BoJack: All three of us were drowning, and we didn't know how to save each other. But there was an understanding we were drowning together.
• Though it was Played for Laughs, the ending is still pretty depressing considering the fact that BoJack gave his entire raw, emotional eulogy at the wrong funeral.
• At one point he mentions Herb Kazzaz and Sarah Lynn. While he's able to bring up Herb's death, he can't bring himself to talk about Sarah's death.
  BoJack: It was written by my friend Herb Kazzaz who's also dead now. And it starred this little girl named Sarah Lynn and— (closes his eyes, unable to speak about her any longer) —and it was about these orphans...

INT. SUB

• The fact that BoJack so clearly wants to talk about his mom's death (which, given the last episode, he clearly has a lot of), but is afraid of directly asking for sympathy and had to (badly) act like he doesn't need anybody to talk to him, and they either take him at face value or don't even find it worth trying. Additionally, he really does do well in therapy, but can't own up to actually calling it therapy because he's in such denial of his own emotional vulnerability.

Mr. Peanut Butter's Boos

• It's hard not to feel sad seeing the tolls Mr. Peanut Butter's actions take on his wives because he fails to be a good husband by being inattentive and constantly not learning from these mistakes.
  • It's particularly notable when seeing how Katrina used to be, as perhaps the change from fun and cheerful to cynical and cold is the most dramatic.
• Diane is excited to meet BoJack Horseman, and he's the only person who understands her extremely convoluted costume^note Baby Bjorn Borg, so when he asks what she wants, she babbles and stammers and she confesses directly how much she loved his show growing up. BoJack, however, is receiving the phone call from his mother that his father had died, so he brushes her off rather callously. Mr. Peanutbutter's reassurance to Diane after she laments about what "an ass" she made out of herself while meeting BoJack is not to worry, because he promises that there's no way BoJack would even remember meeting her in the first place, is also a little disheartening.
  • BoJack receives a phone call that his father had died. He promises his mother that they'll figure out his father's funeral, and ends the call with a heartfelt "I'm sorry". He goes inside and immediately begins angsting over how he doesn't feel anything about it.
• The contrast between Diane in 2009 and Diane in 2018 shows how much she became a shell of her former self. She went straight from a meek and gentle girl who was so excited to meet BoJack to a cold and jaded woman who now wants nothing to do with him.

Head in the Clouds

• As much as BoJack probably needed someone to call him out on his past mistakes, watching Diane confront him about what happened in New Mexico can be uncomfortable, especially when it's clear that BoJack doesn't want to talk about it. And then Diane brings up Sarah Lynn...
• BoJack grabs Diane's arm to stop her from leaving, but immediately lets go when she says he's hurting her. Considering what BoJack does to Gina in the next episode...

The Showstopper

• The entire strangulation scene, BoJack has no idea of what he's truly doing because of his addiction. Gina can be heard choking out "Please stop". Mr. Peanutbutter and Princess Carolyn becoming visually distressed witnessing it unfold. There's also the fact that if Mr. Peanutbutter never intervened, Gina could've been killed and BoJack's life would've taken a much more tragic and awful turn.
• The ending of the episode. In his drug-induced hallucinations, BoJack climbs an ethereal staircase to a wide-open void. There, he sees the promotional balloon of himself as Philbert staring back at him. It's dead quiet. It's like BoJack is having to stare down every horrible thing he's ever done, in the form of something that represents the one thing he had going for him in a long time. In other words, that thing is judging him. And the credits lack the "Back in the nineties..." song, instead having a very quiet and eerie piano piece. It's a Mood Whiplash from the Nightmare Fuel tensity of the episode, and it really feels like BoJack is once again realizing that he will never truly be able to make up for everything he's done.
• During the "Don't Stop Dancing" sequence, the line "When you go" is marked by the stage changing to the planetarium and the actress portraying Sarah Lynn dancing away while BoJack futilely reaches for her. When he can't, he just drops his head and covers his face.

The Stopped Show

• After the last episode's moment of BoJack strangling Gina, thus ruining yet another relationship for good, this episode reveals something that just makes it a thousand times worse: BoJack doesn't remember any of it. Up until Princess Carolyn shows him, he's genuinely worried for Gina and confused about what exactly has happened. While we've seen BoJack make his (very) bad choices and then deal with the guilt and consequences, this is a sharp contrast. BoJack has to deal with the guilt and consequences of something he can't remember doing. His addiction was no one's fault but his own, but the fact that even Princess Carolyn—who has always been the one to tell him to get his crap together and push him on his feet—shows genuine concern for his mental state really says that BoJack has officially cracked.
  • The first half of the episode is an ominous but somewhat amusing "cover up" plot, with Princess Carolyn trying to get BoJack to cooperate without specifically detailing what he's done. When he eventually pushes to see what happened, her reaction to him witnessing his assault makes clear this wasn't just for pragmatic reasons, she wanted to spare him the Awful Truth.
• While it counts as being Awesome and Heartwarming at the same time, the fact that BoJack spends the episode not only soft-spoken and not even snarking until the end, he (for the first time in the series) asks to be held accountable for what he's done. He wants to come clean to the press about what he's done to Gina, and when that fails, begs Diane to write an article about everything—including the encounter with Penny (although he asks Diane not to mention Gina in the article because he wants to respect her wishes of not being known as "The Girl who got choked by BoJack Horseman). While always aware of it, BoJack has truly realized that he is an awful person and he wants to be held responsible for it. The episode ends with him going to rehab for real help. He, Diane, and the audience know that it's not going to solve every single one of his problems, but no matter what, BoJack is never going to be the same if he follows through.
• Before the interview which tries to lift the cloud of controversy surrounding them, BoJack offers to come clean about the choking incident, but Gina says that she'll lie about what happened. No matter how much she wants him punished, Philbert was her big break, and she can't afford to have the show cancelled now because of what it means for her future. Even so, Gina makes it perfectly clear that she'll only be cordial to BoJack onset, and that she wants nothing to do with him ever again. BoJack's resigned sigh about how he ruined a perfectly good thing — again — because of his rash decisions is heart-rending.
  Gina: You physically overpowered me, and if there were any justice, you would be in jail right now. But my career, after so many failed attempts, is finally starting to take off. I am getting offers, and fan mail, and magazine columns about what a good actor I am. People know me because of my acting. And all that goes away if I'm just the girl who got choked by BoJack Horseman. [...] I don't want you to be the most notable thing that ever happened to me. I don't want you to be the question I get asked in interviews for the rest of my life. You need to do this for me, okay? Because I just want this to be over.
  BoJack: Can we talk about it, maybe after the interview?
  Gina: No. I will be civil to you on set when we have scenes together, but otherwise, I never wanna think about you again.
  • And yet, Philbert is cancelled anyway for other unrelated reasons. Gina may have other offers, but how viable they may be and whether they stand after getting the ax is never revealed. Either way, she has lost something by simply getting involved with BoJack. With Hollywoo. With any golden-plated dreams she may have once had.
• Mr. Peanutbutter takes Pickles to the restaurant she works at, working up the courage to tell her that he cheated on her (multiple times, in fact) with his now ex-wife Diane. After finally building to a head, Mr. Peanutbutter seems like he's going to tell Pickles the truth... and then suddenly asks her to marry him. Considering what impulsive decisions lead to on this show, one can't help but feel this is going to end in heartache for the both of them. Diane's earlier Hannibal Lecture to Mr. Peanutbutter about how he always dates young, immature girls whom inevitably outgrow him apparently didn't stick.
• The final scene of the season, in which BoJack goes to a rehab clinic. It's a rather Bittersweet Ending since at least BoJack is finally going to admit he needs help, but it takes him ruining yet another relationship with someone to do it.
  • BJ and Diane rehearsing what he's gonna say:
    Diane's version: You say, "Hello. I am BoJack. Horseman, obviously. You've probably heard of me. I'm very famous. So sober me up, please!"
    BoJack's version: "Hello. I am BoJack Horseman. Obviously, you know who I am, because I'm very famous, and also we called ahead. And I am here [...] because I need help."
  • Diane makes it clear about her complicated feelings with BoJack in the same scene, detailing a story about her best friend in high school, Abby. Despite all they'd gone through together, Abby ditched Diance after becoming popular, but Diane was still there for Abby when her mom got really sick. The same now applies to BoJack.
    Diane: I hated her. And I'll never forgive her. But she was my best friend. And she needed me. And I loved her. Now, here you are. And I hate you. But, you're my best friend. And you need me.
    • To make things slightly worse, notice which part of the line isn't repeated.
    • If we go by that, two lines aren't repeated: the first one shows how low BoJack has fallen from Diane's view, to the point of doing this favor to him of all people out of the simple empathy one can feel for someone else, regardless of whether they like them or not. The other, however...
    • Ready for the punchline? As BoJack leaves, Diane looks his way and her expression changes. She goes from deep in thought to angry to sadly smiling to simply looking sad. Then, she gets back in the car and drives away. She may not say it, but even with all that's happened, even with the horrible stuff he's done, Diane still cares for BoJack. She no longer knows if she should, but she does.
    • There's also her weak Futile Hand Reach gesture as she stands outside....Yeesh, not to dissimilar to Hollyhock's Air Hugging earlier in the season.
    • We end the season on Diane stomping out her cig and driving into a tunnel, and with her earlier admission that she feels like human garbage, her depression doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon.
• While it's small potatoes in comparison to everything else (and doubles as rather hilarious), Todd taking his sex robot out to a beautiful field and putting him down is actually pretty sad.
  Henry Fondle: I LOVE YOU...FATHER...
• Flip’s reaction to the forced cancellation of Philbert, with his hands anxiously shaking and reaching to pour himself a drink as he tries to calmly but desperately reassure Princess Carolyn that the show’s legacy isn’t over... only to realize she’s already jumped ship. As unbearably shitty as he may be, not above putting his cast through hell for his own artistic benefit, it’s surprisingly tragic to see Flip’s creative vision forced to fold before it really even had the chance to stick around, despite the toxicity it created for BoJack and crew. Then Flip sorta goes off tangent and is convinced he was Princess Carolyn the whole time.

Season 6

General

• The trailer confirming that Season 6 will indeed be the series' last.
• Just to hammer home the fact that the show's coming to an end, the title sequence this season shows all of the most devastating moments in the series: Herb calling out BoJack, the starry sky from Sarah Lynn's death, the glowstick balloons from BoJack's trip to New Mexico, BoJack's old destroyed home, BoJack's mom in the awful retirement home, and the press release of Philbert.
• The trailer for the second half. Safe to say that the journey to the end won't be easy for the horse from Horsin' Around.
  • There is one particular shot of BoJack holding a letter from Hollyhock, while having shaky hands. This does not bode well for the two's relationship, since the mid-season finale had Hollyhock seemingly learn about BoJack's less than stellar attitude back then. It's made even worse when another shot has Diane, Todd and Princess Carolyn attending BoJack's theatre play, with an empty seat next to Diane. The implications may be clear...
    • The second half of the season confirms the worst to be true.

A Horse Walks Into Rehab

• Right off the bat we get a flashback to right after Sarah Lynn's death, where we learn that BoJack lied about being involved. He promises himself he's going to make changes in his life...then immediately downs a bottle from his car.
  • In this scene, we see Sarah Lynn's parents, especially her mother, cry over their loss, with her mother blaming herself. The sad part is that there is truth to that, her mother being the one who pushed her into show business. Then Sarah Lynn's stepfather claims it's nobody's fault, which is also upsetting, given the implications about his relationship with her, yet he seems to feel no shame regarding her mental issues or death.
• This episode treats us to various flashbacks explaining the source of BoJack's alcoholism, and we see that it really is not entirely his fault as he seems to insist, but a variety of stressful factors that go further and further back into his life, punctuated by the transition of a burning film reel as if BoJack is trying to block these memories out.
  • Early in the days of Horsin' Around, BoJack gets nervous doing a kiss scene with Cindy Crawfish, until his hairstylist Sharona offers him some spiked orange juice, which helps him get through the scene.
  • He visits a Wild Teen Party and nearly has a panic attack, causing him to flash back to his own high school party where he was bullied by everybody, except one girl, Katie, who was nice to him. He decides to try to drink against his better judgement, and ends up the life of the party because he makes fun of everyone else. However, he makes fun of Katie, getting everyone to laugh at him but causing her to run off crying, severing his chance with someone who liked him for who he was.
  • As a child, he catches his father having sex with his secretary, so Butterscotch gives BoJack a Jack and Coke. The young horse ends up passed out and asleep, Butterscotch driving him home, telling him his mother would be disappointed in him and insisting they don't tell her about anything that happened that night.
  • Finally it flashes back to him being a very young child, lying alone after his parents, now passed out from drinking, had a party. He sneaks a drink of vodka, then curls up next to his sleeping mother.
• Jameson is a self-sabotaging, unreliable young girl, but it's hard to not feel bad for her. She lost her mother to cancer and her father remarried, and seems convinced that her dad hates her for not being part of his "perfect family." Then she finds her best friend making out with her boyfriend, who berates her for being a "mess" who has to return to rehab so often, which causes Jameson to break down crying, convinced that she may as well drink, until BoJack convinces her otherwise. Then we actually meet her father, learn that she's been constantly breaking out of rehab, that her father does care about her, and most importantly, the "new baby" she's been expressing jealousy towards? It's her own baby. BoJack lies that she broke out to see her baby, but her father doesn't believe it.

The New Client

• Princess Carolyn is utterly worn down. Between Mr. Peanutbutter's increasingly erratic behavior and her lack of experience in actually raising a child, her life seems to be collapsing around her. You know it's serious when Vanessa Gecko of all people has to give her a pep talk.
• Speaking of Mr. Peanutbutter, he actually feels guilty about cheating on Pickles, to the point that it's damaging his work ethic, which is the main thing that's kept his career afloat despite his many bad business decisions. No wonder he's so eager to get rid of the guilt.
  • Vanessa Gecko is shocked when Princess Carolyn inadvertently confesses that she's always hated the latter, and says she never hated Princess Carolyn.
  • The episode ends with Princess Carolyn coaxing her baby to sleep, using some tongue twisters. They laugh together as Untitled Princess Carolyn Project settles down. She then tentatively tries out a name: "Ruthie," the name that she hopes her descendant would carry. The baby seems to like the name, and Princess Carolyn gives a peaceful smile. Cue the ending song being a lullaby arrangement of "Back in the '90s." Many viewers reported bursting into tears on seeing this scene.

Feel-Good Story

• Diane had finally found a satisfying career exposing corporate misdeeds, and it all goes up in smoke after Girl Croosh is sold to Whitewhale, for no other reason than because Stefani wanted more money.
• Diane nearly tanks her burgeoning relationship with Guy because after everything that happened in her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter and her friendship with BoJack, she has trouble letting someone in.

Surprise!

• The episode starts with a montage of Pickles making videos, first with makeup tutorials, then all the way up to livestreaming. The second-to-last one is of Pickles in the present day, about to hop out into the living room after a date with Mr. Peanutbutter, when Mr. Peanutbutter says that he has something to tell her. The last livestream is of Pickles crying, saying the wedding is off. The poor girl just looks devastated.

A Little Uneven, Is All

• We get another flashback where BoJack treats young Sarah Lynn horribly. First he complains about her being in his dressing room, and when she complains her stepfather is "being weird," he says that isn't his problem. Then he lashes out at her for expressing she misses Herb, retorting Sharona's reminder that Sarah Lynn is only ten by claiming ten is basically an adult in Hollywood. They leave her alone in the dressing room where she gets ahold of BoJack's vodka and her mother demands to know who's responsible, leaving BoJack to once again decide whether to take the fall, or dodge responsibility at the expense of someone who cares about him...guess which path he chose.
• Diane struggles to begin writing her memoir, but seems to be on a good path later, typing vigorously on her laptop. Then we see what she's actually been writing.
  I am terrible. I am terrible. I am terrible. I am terrible. I am terrible...

The Kidney Stays in the Picture

• Dr. Champ ends up falling off the wagon and completely relapses back into alcoholism thanks to BoJack holding onto to Jameson's contraband vodka that he accidentally drinks. BoJack ends up checking him into a completely separate rehab facility, but Dr. Champ still ends up parting with BoJack on negative terms. He blames BoJack for potentially ruining his reputation and likely tanking his marriage as well, since Champ had promised his husband that he would not fall back into his vices after what happened with their daughter. BoJack ends up accepting this without much argument due to his role in Champ's fall.
• We meet Todd's stepfather Jorge, and see that they have a very shaky relationship in which Jorge is deeply disappointed with Todd's whimsical lifestyle while Todd feels disrespected and resents Jorge disrupting his family dynamic. Jorge comes to Todd hoping to get a kidney for his comatose mother, and Todd seems unusually averse to talking about her in depth.

The Face Of Depression

• As soon as BoJack walks back into his house, visions of every bad thing he's done there (his fight with Gina, his abuse towards Todd, yelling at Diane that he's never going to change, throwing his mom's doll out the window, etc.) flood his mind, appearing in every corner of the house, and he's too sober to avoid them now.

A Quick One, While He's Away

• While in New York, Hollyhock meets Pete Repeat at a party, and the two of them hit it off. And then they get to talking about alcohol while hanging out on the fire escape, leading to Pete to tell Hollyhock about a bad experience he had at his prom, when he and his girlfriend were ditched at the ER when "some shitty guy" caused her to get alcohol poisoning. What's more, Pete admits his surprise to have learned that this guy is actually a famous actor... And although it's clear the dots are connecting in her head, the episode ends with Hollyhock wanting a name, which Pete starts to say...
  • Pete admits to Hollyhock that while Maddy did survive the alcohol poisoning, the incident had traumatized him for quite a while afterward. It's very likely this is why he has a psychiatrist that taught him techniques to get through anxiety attacks in the first place.
• Gina is still clearly traumatized from being choked out by BoJack last season, having a small Freak Out when her costar dips her while filming a dance scene due to his hand being on her neck. What's worse is, due to her keeping the incident under wraps, her director discourages Kelsey from hiring her for the superhero movie because Gina is "difficult". Worse still, this is the last time we see Gina in the series, so we never know if she ever got better or not.
  • On a brighter note, Kelsey apparently hired her anyway. She can later be seen on a billboard for Fireflame playing the titular role.
• Since her last appearance, Kelsey Jannings has now been blacklisted from any major Hollywoo project, being relegated to directing corporate commercials. The only way for her to rebound her career is to compromise her beliefs, sell out and direct the next superhero blockbuster. (Luckily, she was able to convince them to her more complex version of the story, so it not a complete sellout).
• One of the subplots is about two investigative journalists digging deeper into the circumstances surrounding Sarah Lynn's death. As they begin to unravel what really happened, and as their trail at the end of the episode leads them to Tesuque, New Mexico, you can't help but feel worried about BoJack... especially since these journalists are clearly planning on publishing their findings.
• It seems that Sarah Lynn's mom, despite (or possibly because of)all the damage she caused Sarah Lynn as a child, is still racked with guilt about her death, and desperately calls the news every other day to try and see if there's more information to her case.
  • Despite that concern, though, she's Dramatically Missing the Point regarding Sarah-Lynn's final voicemail, where Sarah-Lynn drunkenly castigates her over nothing ever being good enough for her, but her takeaway is "What an angel. She just wanted me to be happy." Even Sinclair and Banks are taken aback by this self-denial.

Intermediate Scene Study w/Bojack Horseman

• After avoiding him the entire episode, BoJack finally manages to get a dialogue with Hollyhock in the end where she tells him about a friend she has a fight with, but whom she still loves. She tells BoJack they're in a fight too, but is unable to tell BoJack that she loves him anymore. This might also serve as a tragic parallel to the season 5 finale where Diane had a very similar dialogue, telling BoJack about a friend who treated her badly but who she still loved, and now BoJack had treated her badly, but she doesn't tell BoJack she loves him. That not only Diane, but also Hollyhock, who has told BoJack before that she loves him, isn't able to say those words to him anymore, might be the most heartbreaking consequence of BoJack's actions to him personally.

Good Damage

• Even though Kyle noted on the phone last season that he hadn't noticed any big changes with his family, Penny's complex trauma and Charlotte's guilt are still very clear in their final appearance. Paige and Max track Penny down for her side of the Sarah Lynn story. Penny opens up about Oberlin, shocking her mom, and Charlotte tries desperately to keep Penny from telling the reporters everything. Penny worries because BoJack is still out there, but Charlotte worries they'll lose control of the story once it's out there, people will focus on the mistakes they made and notes Penny's apparent panic disorder. During this exchange, we also learn Penny keeps a photo of her prom in a box under her bed, because she couldn't bear to throw it out, though it gives her confusing feelings.
• Diane's panic attack after going into withdrawal from stopping her anti-depressants, crying that she's terrible and deserves everything bad.
• Ivy Tran is a Perpetual Smiler. She only frowns once; when Diane is having a breakdown about how she can't write her memoirs. Ivy does what she does with her retail store clients; goes over, and starts comforting her. Even so, Diane isn't completely sold on selling Ivy Tran to Princess Carolyn.
• Diane's little rant to Princess Carolyn about the Ivy Tran story she wrote. Though it's clear a part of her wants to write it over her memoirs, to the point where Princess Carolyn could tell she was having fun writing it, Diane's still hesitant. Because then it means that the lasting damage caused by her Abusive Parents means nothing, that she got nothing out of it. This is a rather unfortunate truth; people have bad childhoods, shitty things happen, and it's generally meaningless.
  Diane: That means that all the damage I got isn't good damage. It's just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could have been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives and been cheerful and popular and had good parents, is that what you're saying? What was it all for?!
• Princess Carolyn's expression during Diane's rant. At first, she's in business mode, preparing to recruit one of the horse's students, and giving a pep talk to Diane about how she knows that Diane enjoys writing the Ivy Tran books. Then Diane rants about how her childhood trauma was for nothing and she could have been happy. Princess Carolyn knows all too well what it's like living with an abusive parent, and has likely asked herself the same question on why she's not happy. She honestly says that she doesn't know if Diane could have avoided all the suffering in her life, but Ivy Tran made her happy, and she wants to share it with Ruthie, as either a book or a movie franchise. Diane's book made little girls like Princess Carolyn feel less alone, and that's why she connects with it.

Sunk Cost and All That

• Pickles leave Mr. Peanutbutter to go on tour with Joey Pogo, after a couple episodes building up their emotional connection. Mr. Peanutbutter encourages her to go and have fun, and she mentions planning the wedding when she gets back, but he clearly knows it's over and this is goodbye.
• There's also the fact that he gives the reporters everything they need to destroy BoJack, while thinking he's helping his good friend. His well-meaning obliviousness ends up with tragic consequences for BoJack.
• Paige and Max project very heavily into the emotional relations between Pickles and Joey Pogo, making it abundantly clear that they have feelings for each other. Paige, refusing to double-cross her fiance, cuts the story at Sara Lynn's death, instead of establishing the pattern like she wanted, just to get away from Max. Max is so heartbroken by this that he can't even bring himself to drink once she leaves him.

Xerox Of a Xerox

• BoJack came so, SO close to actually looking sympathetic despite his involvement in Sarah Lynn's death, but his Attention Whore personality and desperate need for validation once again ruin things for him when he agrees to a second interview, not knowing that one of the reporters had talked to the interviewer just before, and gotten her in contact with Doctor Champ, who gave away all of BoJack's dirty secrets as petty revenge, leading to his entire history with not only Sarah Lynn, but pretty much every single woman he hurt in the entire series being exposed. He ends up being portrayed as a predatory monster and his life falls apart completely.
  • In addition, everybody (including the audience) learns one detail about Sarah Lynn's death that he'd never before made clear: she wasn't dead yet, and he waited seventeen minutes to call for help because he was too concerned with coming up with a good alibi. It's said that if he'd called the paramedics earlier, they could have saved her. Even after a night where he admitted to truly loving Sarah Lynn, he threw away the chance to save her life so he could cover his ass.
  • A small one, but despite BoJack and Sharona getting some closure in "The Face of Depression", as soon as BoJack suspects Sharona told Biscuits Braxby about the incident when Sarah Lynn got drunk as a child (it was really Dr. Champ who told her), he immediately tries to throw her under the bus. It really shows that despite his growth, he still hasn't changed that much to not try and cover his own ass.
• The look on Princess Carolyn's face after BoJack states that Sarah Lynn was not like those other girls (he dated) because he loved Sarah Lynn. Princess Carolyn was one of those "other girls", and BoJack basically admitted that he never truly cared for Princess Carolyn even after all that she's done for him.
• Princess Carolyn's parting words to Bojack before she drives home. You can tell just by the resignation in her voice that she's finally done with him.
  "I think you have three hours before this interview airs and your world changes completely. You should think about how you want to spend that time. I'm going home to my daughter."

The Horny Unicorn

• The episode opens a few months after the previous one, showing that things went downhill fast after the second interview, to the point that BoJack is now an utter pariah in Hollywoo, and probably the rest of the world as well. It's so bad that even the people at his AA meeting want nothing to do with him, despite the entire point of the group is to be a place without judgment. The only people who are still willing to talk to him on friendly terms are Mr. Peanutbutter, Vance Waggoner, and a bunch of douchey fratboys, which doesn't help at all, since Waggoner hasn't changed one bit and drags BoJack along for his horrible behavior. BoJack also lost his house and most of his money in the lawsuits Sarah Lynn’s parents and the Xerox Corporation (due to BoJack referencing Xerox in his first interview) put him through.
  • Speaking of the AA meeting, sharped eyed viewers may notice one person missing in the group: Sharona. Her lack of presence in the group speaks volumes of how much BoJack hurt Sharona with his false accusation, along with him outing her as an alcoholic on TV. It gets worse knowing that Sharona never makes another appearance again, and whether she attends another AA meeting after this is left up in that air.
• When Todd throws a housewarming party for the apartment that he and Maude moved into, BoJack hears about it and he attempts to show up. Todd quickly refuses to let BoJack into the party because he doesn't want to risk anything bad happening, especially because he's expecting his mother to show up and hasn't talked to her in ten years.
  • To make matters worse, Todd's mother doesn't even show up, meaning BoJack was denied the party for nothing. Also sad on Todd's end, since he threw together that party just for her.
• BoJack loses Hollyhock. He receives a letter from her earlier in the episode after she doesn’t return his calls, and while the audience never gets to see what's in it when he finally reads it, he's utterly floored and devastated by its contents; you can even see him losing his breath because of it. What's worse, is after he confessed it was just nice to hear her voice on an answering machine, she even wound up disconnecting her phone so he couldn't contact her in any way.
  • It's also upsetting from Hollyhock's perspective. She's gone through hell and back in her fairly short time with BoJack, putting up with his instinctive rudeness and clingy behavior, as well as the incident with his mom and breaking the law to get him drugs. Then she finds out he may have done creepy things with girls her own age, as well as leaving somebody to die from an overdose and abandoned a teen who got alcohol poisoning because of him (likely triggering news for her, considering her own overdose in his house even though it wasn't his fault it happened), as well and countless other things he's done to women he has power over. This caused the realization that, as much as she cares about him, she barely even knows him at all and can't risk him getting her into further trouble.
  • The episode ends with BoJack relapsing after reading Hollyhock's letter.

Angela

• After losing almost everything else in his life, BoJack is finally forced to give up Horsin Around too, as the show got completely tainted by his actions, and the network wants to recut it and re-release it as 8-minute episodes centered only on the other characters so they can still profit off it, but can't without BoJack agreeing to be bought off for good. Desperate for money, and wanting some lasting legacy for Sarah Lynn, BoJack agrees.
  • Angela returns, and reveals that she was bluffing back when she got BoJack to agree to have Herb fired from the show. She's completely unapologetic and hasn't changed at all, still insisting I Did What I Had to Do, and mocks BoJack for thinking he's any better than her.
• BoJack breaks into his old house and proceeds to stumble around it in an intoxicated stupor. In the midst of a Horsin' Around DVD binge, he comes across his screen test for the show in the bonus features. He's shown coming into the part with Herb's moral support despite his nerves initially getting the better of him, and it culminates in BoJack turning off the TV as his younger, happier self is offered the role. The episode ends on a particularly haunting contrasted shot of BoJack staring silently at his reflection in the screen, all too aware of what he's since become:◊ alone, penniless, despised, and above all else, broken.
  Young BoJack: Perfect! Yeah, y-you think we got it?
  Herb: (happily) Buckle up, buddy. Your life is about to start!

The View From Halfway Down

• BoJack combines Secretariat and Butterscotch in his mind, and the result is an odd combination: while he's physically presented as Secretariat, the voice is Butterscotch, and the character is able to switch between the both of them as far as thoughts and failed dreams. As a result of Secretariat's amiability, Butterscotch is able to communicate to his son, for the first and final time, that he truly loved him, and Beatrice, but ultimately knows that who he was as a person meant that he would never be able to credibly claim so, he was terrified of showing that kind of vulnerability, and was convinced it would have been pointless to attempt it. Whether you interpret it as Butterscotch posthumously reaching out to his son, or an excuse of BoJack's admittedly confused desire to be connected to the parents he was terrified of, they're both tragic.
• This episode reveals that not only was CrackerJack's death devastating, setting off cycles of abuse for generations, but it was unnecessary. He volunteered for the army for a desire to serve his country, and was completely unqualified for it; his only confirmed kills in combat were from a friendly fire accident, and he never helped free a single person from the concentration camps. Though it should be noted all of this is taking place in BoJack's mind, who never met Crackerjack, so this information can be debatable.
• BoJack seems to have realized that what he did to Sarah Lynn was awful. Before she starts her show, he tries to apologize. Sarah Lynn shuts him up and says it's not his time to talk.
• The meals everyone is having at the dinner inside BoJack's mind is the last thing they ate before dying. Not a meal necessarily, just the last thing they ate. Corderoy's is the lemon he had in his mouth when he accidentally hanged himself, Herb's is the peanuts that killed him, CrackerJack's is an army c-ration, Beatrice’s is a nursing home meal on a plastic plate, and Sarah Lynn is a fast food meal from her and BoJack's final binge. And BoJack's is a bottle of chlorinated swimming pool water and a plateful of pills.
• Really, just the entire "show" everyone puts on in general before stepping, or falling through, the pitch black doorway and vanishing forever.
  • Sarah Lynn puts on a dance and song number, and her final words are "Don't stop dancing..."
  • Secretariat's poem, which is about his suicide and includes the episode Title Drop, which devolves into terrified stammering once he reaches mid-fall. The Black Door appears right behind him — slowly getting closer each time as he gets more and more scared — and Secretariat ultimately falls backwards through it as he finishes the last line of his poem, complete with a haunting Death Cry Echo.
  • Beatrice and CrackerJack's duet, with CrackerJack performing a Dark Reprise of the song he and his mother used to play, as Beatrice performs an interpretive ribbon dance, which he ties to his waist before literally dragging her into the door with him.
  • Herb is the last to leave, and has some parting words for BoJack.
    BoJack: Is it terrifying?
    Herb: No, I don't think so. It's just the way it is, you know? Everything has to end. The drip finally stops. (sticks his arm into The Black Door)
    BoJack: See you on the other side.
    Herb: (with sadness in his voice, as the darkness creeps out the door and slowly consumes him) Oh, BoJack, no... there is no other side. This is it. (is eaten entirely by the darkness)
• BoJack insists that he can't be dying, because he remembers getting out of the pool and making a phone call to Diane. Finally, we find out it went to voice mail, and BoJack went back into the water after leaving a final message on her phone. The episode ends with the sound of a flatlining heart monitor...

Nice While it Lasted

• The Hope Spot at the beginning for BoJack, when he wakes up in the hospital, realizing that he's still alive... only to find that he's handcuffed to the bed, with a disgruntled Officer Meow-Meow Fuzzyface guarding him. He might not be dead, but breaking and entering was the final straw, and he's finally hauled to court for everything he's done.
  • The young son of the family who bought BoJack's house becomes an overnight celebrity after appearing on a talk show talking about the experience of finding BoJack in the pool, and articles about his rising stardom appears alongside the ones about BoJack's legal troubles. Anyone keeping track would know that the same thing that happened to Sarah Lynn and countless other child stars is likely about to repeat themselves with him.
  • The fact that BoJack admits that he deserves the Kangaroo Court trial he received, with a jury made up of former enemies, as well as a sentence of 18 months in a maximum security prison. He says prison helps him stay sober, and gives him a routine as well as a purpose. Heck, when Princess Carolyn pulls strings to let him attend her wedding, he considers going back to prison because it's safe and familiar, and he won't have to face his past.
  • If you look closely at the jury during BoJack's trial, you'll see that literally every single one of them is someone who had their life ruined or were otherwise negatively affected by BoJack's actions throughout the series. BoJack's past reprehensible behavior has truly caught up to him in the worst way possible.
• BoJack's Attention Whore ways resurfacing when Princess Carolyn mentions that The Horny Unicorn is likely to be a hit. He calms down eventually, but one thing is clear: even after all the trauma and all the change, he'll never get over that one Fatal Flaw. The look on Princess Carolyn's face at that moment makes it even sadder; you can see that as much as she loves BoJack, she's afraid of letting him too far back into her life because of the chance that he could relapse.
• We never hear anything about Hollyhock's whereabouts, confirming that she's truly gone from BoJack's life once and for all. Keep in mind, she's the only family member he had left, and one of the only people he truly cared for. So when she leaves BoJack, he lost not only a family member, but also a part of himself.
  • James Hunt of Screen Rant best describes this;
    "Hollyhock doesn't appear again in BoJack Horseman, and while she's presumably still attending the University, we don't know if things will ever be resolved between her and BoJack. We can perhaps assume, then, that her letter was saying as much; drawing a line under their relationship, explaining what she knew of his actions, and that she no longer wanted to be a part of his life."
• "Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if this night was the last time we ever talked to each other?"
  • While it's never outright stated, it's heavily implied this is the last time that Diane and BoJack see each other, moving on with their own lives. At least for BoJack, however, he's able to have one thing that sets it apart from other people that he lost: closure, as well as accepting Diane's decision. He and Diane speak with one another for the last time, and then just stare at the sky together. A bittersweet end of such a heavy series.
  • The song played, "Mr. Blue," represents BoJack and Diane's relationship as a whole; while they know that they'll always remember each other, and that they're better off for having been friends, they have to move on.
  • Diane has a vent about trusting that BoJack would be okay when she left for Chicago, and then he calls her drunk and suicidal, putting all the responsibility on her if he takes a swim or not.
• The finale as a whole had a fair few lines that could be interpreted as Leaning on the Fourth Wall about the show itself ending, including BoJack and Todd's conversation about whether what the artist put into the art or what the audience gets out of it that matters?

Horsin' Around

• During the Christmas special, the Horse tries to convince Sabrina that Santa Claus is real and will give you what you want if you're good. Sabrina then asks if Santa can bring her parents back. The Horse goes Oh, Crap!. Sabrina appropriately goes into Heroic BSoD when on Christmas Day she gets a letter supposedly from her parents and says that's not the same.
• Sabrina saying that Olivia told her that you get pop quizzes at school, and she goes Dramatically Missing the Point as in the quiz makes you pop. She then hides under the breakfast table in her pajamas, refusing to come out for chocolate chip pancakes. (To say nothing of what the Horse's actor said to Sabrina's actress in between takes of this scene, which would mess her up off-camera.)
• The Sudden Downer Ending: the Horse developed a heart attack, just as the kids are entering teenage years, and the doctor on call lambasts them for not loving him enough. Then a Child Services agent shows up to return the trio to foster care. You can't blame the Stage Audience for giving a Big "NO!".
• Ethan Around would have retconned the Horse's death, so that he grew old and supported Ethan taking in three young foals. It meant Olivia and Sabrina also grew up with their dad and gotten happy endings. Thanks to the show getting canceled before it could even become a pilot, the horse is still dead.

Promotional Material

• In preparation for season 5, BoJack binge-watched the entire show, and live-tweeted his thoughts. While this leads to many heartwarming and funny moments, it also means that BoJack is forced to confront his biggest failures again. Whenever he sees something he isn't proud of, (The bitter end of his and Herb's relationship, Sarah Lynn's death,) his response is just to get more alcohol. Even worse in hindsight of what happens in season 5.

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