BoJack Horseman

Also the show has been very much about the message that life isn’t like television (ignoring that the show is a show) and having a neat tied off ending would be counter to that

I agree, the whole point of the show is that it's often cruel or brutal towards its characters, but it's never mean.

Sort of tangential, but I wonder if Keith Olbermann could've been successful if he'd pursued a more comedic career after Sportscenter like Craig Kilborn did. I think Keith has kind of a newscaster version of Tom Hanks Syndrome, in that he became famous for being funny but really wanted to be known as a serious guy.

Edited by MFLuder on Feb 4th 2020 at 4:28:19 AM

I liked that ending, I felt very emotional watching.

Now to avoid what the internet thinks, but the internet has never liked an ending ever.

While I like the idea of an open ending, I am not completely satisfied with how the show concluded. I think the main reason is that the overall situation (for Bojack, at least) feels very similar to the ending of Season 5: he hit a new low, his standing in Holliwoo is ruined, but now is in a place where his addiction can be managed, with no way to know if once he is out things would improve or spiral out of control. One can even say he is now is a worst place with respect his own demons, because his support network has thinned - he lost Hollyhook, Diane may well be out of his life, Todd and Princess Caroline have moved on. So there's no way to know if his life will improve or if it will be just a case of Here We Go Again!.

Perhaps it would have been better if Bojack did not fell into the deep end. Instead of having a time skip between Xerox of a Xerox and The Horny Unicorn, I feel it may have been interesting if the last four episodes would have shown the lawsuit between him and Sarah Lynn's parents and how Bojack clinged to the idea of possibly being redimed - only for him to lose and having to leave his house, ending the series with a completely different status quo (no acting career, no money, but he is now sober), but sill completely open. (Obviously, in this way we would have lost The View From Halway Down, which would have been a shame.)

I finally got around to watching the last few episodes. It's maybe not the absolute best of the entire series, but still remarkably consistent and the way it ends just makes sense for the tone and themes throughout the entire run. Nothing is perfect and there is always a chance things will get better or worse but Bojack, and the audience, will just have to deal with that uncertainty. I do think the pacing of part 1 and 2 is off compared to the previous seasons, part 2 in particular has like four episodes covering Time Skips of several months.

It's a small thing but the decision to show Diane gain noticeable weight once she moved away from LA helped set the tone for the last batch of episodes. I think everyone knows someone this has happened to, but much like Bojack letting his hair go grey it's a subversion of trying to keep your characters the same age even though the show has been on for ten years.

I love that Diane's weight gain is implied to be because she is finally happy and at peace. At least to me.

It's connected. It's a side effect of the depression medication she's taking.

It's portrayed pretty neutrally, the closest to even acknowledging it is her mentioning her boobs are bigger. It does represent a culture and lifestyle change, she doesn't seem necessarily happier (she struggles with her medication stabilizing her moods but clouding her thoughts) but the less appearance focused environment with a supportive boyfriend helped her to realign.

Diane mentioned the future weight gain as one of the reasons she didn't want to go on the anti-depressants in the first place.

My interpretation is that the show actually leans in to a Hollywood ending and ultimately rejects reality.

Rather than having to face the consequences of drowning in a pool, ie dying, the main character gets a miraculous reprieve, gets several uninterrupted and heart-to heart chats with the rest of the cast allowing them each one last scene. How convenient they're all around. Like it was written and set up to be that way.

It's as staged and phony as a too-sappy sitcom ending, but Bojack the Netflix series wasn't a sappy sitcom. It was a "sadcore" character study and it got the perfectly-engineered bittersweet ending its audience expects it "should".

The realistic ending for ALL of us is "you die. the end". It's not satisfying. You seldom get closure. No farewell to the important people in your life. Not usually. Life is not a narrative, but Bojack can't escape this.

Bojack's finale is just as "Hollywood" as anything from Horsin' Around; the only difference is the genres changed.

Edited by CitizenH on Feb 11th 2020 at 12:53:25 PM

Except most of us were expecting that he actually would drown in that pool while the ending explored the reactions of the other characters.

Subverting expectations is now expected.

The funny thing is, Horsin' Around itself actually ends with that kind of ending. The Horse dies because he thinks his children didn't love him enough.

Horsin' Around is a sappy sitcom with a Sudden Downer Ending, whereas Bojack Horseman is a dark dramedy with a Bittersweet Ending - they're practically complementing each other.

One of the most poignant moments of the show was "Free Churro" where Bojack recalls a season ending cliffhanger where Sarah Lynn would get back with her birth mom, but such a happy ending is impossible in a sitcom because "There's always more show." It turns the idea of sitcoms as happy fantasies on its head, and that maybe they are closer to reality than others would like to believe.

That's why Bojack Horseman was in a position to at least thematically reference that in its own finale, any sort of conclusive ending goes against the idea that you have to live with your choices. Bojack dying is awfully conclusive.

It is interesting, though, that it seems that Todd of all people seems to have come to terms with Bojack and their relationship is better at the end than it has been in years.

^ Another part of that episode I liked was where Bojack talks about when a fan asked him about a coffee cup that disappears between shots and the fan thought there was some deep significant meaning behind it, when really some PA just forgot it there. While a lot of people see it as a Take That! towards fans who overanalyze everything, I kinda see it as being a part of one of the central themes of the show; that not everything in life is a part of some grand narrative or has some greater purpose, sometimes things are just accidents or coincidences.

Then again, maybe I am one of those fans....

Would anyone watch a Paige Sinclair spin off?

Honestly if I was going to watch a Bojack spinoff I'd actually be kinda interested in a show centering around Princess Carolyn or maybe a prequel (midquel?) about Sarah Lynn's rise and fall.

So I'm currently in the process of re-watching Bojack from beginning to end to see if there was anything I missed, and with the re-watch you kinda realize the show perfectly captures the sad guy tendency to latch onto women as a solution for their problems, often at the expense of those women. Bojack doesn't actively intend to cause harm, but until the final season he often basically uses the women in his life as de facto therapists, foisting his own problems on to them with little regard towards their thoughts, feelings, or wishes. He just doesn't do the same thing to men, which makes sense. I've known a lot of guys like that in my life and as a general rule, men tend to feel far less comfortable opening up to or being vulnerable around men as they do women. That's why the end of the show makes a big deal over his general treatment of women rather than his treatment of people in general; he may be a jerk to men as well, but at the end of the day he mostly uses women to cope with his issues in one way or another, often hurting or damaging them in the process. The only man we've seen him act somewhat similarly to might be Todd, and even then just barely. All of this brilliantly plays into the overall narrative of how real life doesn't function like movies or TV. In most fiction, when a man has some deep emotional issues or baggage all he has to do is find some endlessly patient woman with no inner workings of her own and most of the time she helps him, just look at the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. You can just foist all your problems on her and she'll fix all of them, and if she ever looses patience and becomes "bitchy" you can just move on to another young ingénue, perfectly justified in your actions because of your internal strife and pain. Bojack, like many men out there, internalized this idea. Bojack's been shown to, on some level, think that things in real life do largely work like they do on TV. Consciously or no, he's come to expect the women in his life to just be there whenever he needs help, and only starts to break out of that mentality after rehab and therapy. I mean, I don't need to tell most of you that while Bojack is not actively malicious, he is selfish, often times acting without thinking of how his actions could negatively affect others. I think what's really more interesting is how the ones who feel the brunt of his worst actions are all women he sought out in order to fix his own problems.

What the Hell was Birthday Dad about?

Isn't that the joke?

According to Will Arnett, there are tentative plans for some sort of a spin-off:

I've seen theories this might be a play or a musical.

For some reason, I would expect a Bojack Horseman spinoff to revolve around the misadventures of Todd Chavez.

...Would be nice if we found out what became of Hollyhock.