YMMV / Bojack Horseman S 5 E 03 Planned Obsolescence

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Granted it's meant to be a joke, but actually actually seeing Yolanda's parents being Good Parents rather than just being told with some on-screen text would have made for a much more interesting story, especially for a show where everyone has a traumatic, abusive upbringing. What do respectable parents look like in the Bojack world? Alternatively, it might have meant more to show Yolanda's parents accepting her while still ribbing her about being asexual without realizing that it upset her (as is often the case with asexual people coming out to their allosexual peers or families).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There was a lot that this episode could have done besides just another "Fawlty Towers" Plot.
  • It would have been far more interesting to show Todd and Yolanda coming to terms with the fact that their sexuality is the only thing they have in common rather than merely tack it on at the end. Todd realizes that she's trying to build him up as an ideal boyfriend because of this, but why? Is she just hoisting her expectations on her partner like someone of any sexuality might do? or does she feel inferior to her hypersexual family and want to still appeal to their idea of normality? We'll never know.
  • It also eschews the opportunity to do what Love, Simon did and have her angst about her sexuality be entirely self-imposed and that, despite every indication that her family would be fine with her being the only one who wasn't interested in sex, the one-in-a-million chance that they wouldn't was enough to scare her out of it.
  • Also, rather than continue to treat asexuality with a significant level of dignity like the previous season, this episode more or less does what that one deliberately avoided and turns it into an excuse for gags^note Granted, they're all at the expense of stupid people who don't understand asexuality and not Todd himself. It could also be the showrunners saying "It's ok to make jokes about this now" after the previous season went out of its way to depict asexuality to an audience that might not be as familiar with the topic, so it really all comes down to whether or not you find said gags funny.
  • Imagine if Yolanda's family didn't accept her and Todd was forced to stay with her so he wouldn't be leaving her when she needs it the most. Seeing as Todd is a character who usually has responsibilities thrust upon him by other characters, which he sheds the second the writers decided it's been milked for all its comedy, putting him in a far more emotionally complicated situation where doing that would have had greater dramatic consequences would have gives him a much more interesting arc than Henry Fondle.

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