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It's funny, though, a lot of Season 3 was basically how Bojack keeps ruining his own life and the lives of those he has any healthy relationship with, but now he's keeping his distance he is well on the path to becoming a better person, and it's everyone else, -minus Todd- whose lives are falling apart.
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I don't know. This season could be the last season and it wouldn't be the worst way to end the show, but I honestly I felt like the end of season 3 would have been more of a complete ending actually. It still feels like we're in the middle of things, but the show is definitely speeding towards endgame at this point. I wouldn't want more than a couple of more seasons. I'm sure you could make season 5 a really solid final season with the set up here.
Good point! Princess Carolyn was on a hell of a bender, and while stuff might come together for her she ruined at least two healthy relationships. I'm really not sure where Diane/Mr. Peanutbutter are going. It feels like this finale was a subversion of the epiphany they had last season. They're relationship can be amazing, but holy shit it's been so much work. Diane breaking down and saying she was tired of squinting hit me right in the heart.
The thing that's so great about the last two episodes is that we finally see Bo Jack not being selfish anymore.
The last scene in episode 12 is perfect. The last shot of BoJack is beautiful, it is magical, and it manages to do so much with so little. If it's the last thing the show ever has, that'll be enough.
I feel like their brief moment together kind of reiterated Diane's previous belief that the two bring out the worst in one another. as soon as the two are together, they go on a week-long drunken bender. The two of them are too much alike for them to ever be a functional couple.
Yeah he's pretty literally that. And I think Bojack sort of already had one in the form of Lisa Kudrow owl in season 2, and we know how well that went.
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And to be quite honest, I'd prefer being on a 10 day drunken bender holed up in my room to dealing with the chaos that was going on in the rest of the house. I'm too introverted for that nonsense. I guess really I'm just surprised by how subtle a Will They or Won't They? it is since the answer is probably most assuredly that they will not.
edited 9th Sep '17 1:00:14 PM by iamthecircle
- Holy shit. Bojack manages to, for the most part, be less of an asshole for the entire season. He is also not the primary source of conflict. And no destroying his relationships. Let's see if it'll last.
- I feel bad for Judah, but I understand why Princess Carolyn fired him. I was also expecting Ralph to be controlling, so I'm glad he was mostly a good boyfriend. That entire episode killed me.
- Not so sure. Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter seem to have finally reached a breaking point. I can't see BJ and Diane having a healthy relationship, but I could see them having an incredibly toxic one.
edited 9th Sep '17 1:35:10 PM by SilentColossus
God I hope Judah and Ralph both come back. It was awful to watch Princess Carolyn self destruct like that. Especially since by the end of the season she's opened up to adoption and her new assistant is a moron. And I really can see a scenario where Diane and Bojack wake up in bed together and both immediately regret it. Then the show like deconstructing When Harry Met Sally or something. It seems inevitable in a way. But are we sure this is the beginning of the end of Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane?
edited 9th Sep '17 4:29:09 PM by iamthecircle
I think it really is the end for those two. There's so much work they put into the relationship, but their personalities clash and so completely opposed to each other that I can't see it lasting. Good friends maybe, but PB constantly idealizes Dianne which in its way is just as condescending as neglect.
Beatrice's childhood if possible was even worse than Bojack's, not that it makes it any less shit for him, but after losing everyone that meant anything to her, being betrayed and told what to do and how to think, after seeing what her mother became, she grew into the same horrible person and ends up in the same horrible place. The acting in those scenes with the various stages of her life from child to confused teenager to rebellious young woman, and then the bitter self-hating wife we've always known, and the distant, broken old woman she became, it's absolutely fantastic.
The doll burning scene really got to me, it's the most horrifying and saddening scene of the show for me.
Taken as a whole, it feels like the show this season presents any romantic and or sexual relationship as a doomed failure in advance.
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One could argue that the season presents the notion that Opposites Attract but don't necessarily work well together in the long run. Diane and Peanutbutter, Beatrice and Butterscotch...their differences were what brought them together, but ultimately helped drive them apart.
Bojack and Wanda were this to an extent too, though the big problem there was that they barely knew each other when they got together and didn't fully acknowledge how different they really were.
I'm also reminded of Bojack's rant in the previous season about how nobody really "completes" another person.
Also, yay for Bojack this season. He starts repairing some burned bridges, actually manages to form a new positive relationship with his half-sister, and manages to make peace with his sad upbringing.
edited 9th Sep '17 10:30:51 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedHmm, have we actually seen a Birds of a Feather relationship? Maybe Ralph and Princess Carolyn, but that's about as close as I can think of. Emily and Todd are pretty similar, but Emily isn't interested in an asexual relationship.
edited 9th Sep '17 10:57:06 PM by iamthecircle
Re: general couples in the show, but more specifically PB and Diane: I think it's just the main five (minus Todd, perhaps) who are just flawed in establishing relationships - Bojack for reasons that should be obvious by now, PB and Diane having oppoising personalities that, yes, may have initially attracted each other but now have merely led to them antagonizing each other and PC.. well more on her later. Outside of that, Hollyhock's 8 dads seem pretty well-adjusted, and I'm assuming Charlotte and her family aren't that shaken up post-"Escape to L.A."
But yeah, I'm honestly worried how PB and Diane will go forward. The whole Belle-room reveals some pretty glaring flaws on both ends (though imo 'more' on PB's side), and even if it'll break me - will have to end up in them divorcing of some sort. :( Though maybe they can at least be amicable enough to not reach PB's previous relationships with Katrina/Jessica? :>
Re: Princess Carolyn, honestly was a fan of both Judah and Ralph too, and even if I could see where their faults lie (her pointing out how Judah went behind her back, and how Ralph not being prepared for heartbreak with her) it really was her emotions makign the worst out of her. Man, PC episodes are probably some of the most devastating ones each season, after the penultimate ofc :(
(oh and that 'new' assistant was actually one of her old idiot assitants back in Season 2 jsyk)
Anyway, besides all that I've still got LOTS more thoughts about the season, but the main thing I want to focus on right now is that: Beatrice is(/was?) surprisingly progressive for an antagonist of the show? She namedrops feminism and civil rights when talking back to her father, and it's her husband who does most of the 'politically-incorrect' ranting ("Imaginary friends are freeloaders invented by communists..."). iirc the only 'problematic' thing she'd done is out her friend's son 'as a gay' and even that it seems more boilerplate asshole than cultural/societal insensitivity?
I get the implication that Beatrice could have been more progressive, but still absorbed some pretty toxic shit from her parents. After all it's her ingrained fatphobia that makes her drug poor Hollyhock, and she seems to hate foreigners. She's also handed down her father's toxic masculinity that shuts down expressing pain in healthy ways to Bojack. In a way Butterscoth is similar as he totally name drops the Beat poets, and is very countercultural. It's what attracted Beatrice to him in the first place.
Oh right, good point there I somehow passed by her responsibility in getting Holly hooked on the amphetamines and her passing down that toxic advice from her father to Bojack. Yeesh
It's funny though because just days before season 4 came out I was positing a theory that Sarah Lynne reminded so much of Clay Puppington when with these batch of episodes we now have Beatrice following his character arc even more closely (her meeting Butterscotch is uncomfortably close to Clay meeting Bloberta). The main differences though being 1) Orel manages to stop the toxicity from repeating another generation in the family, unlike Bojack and 2) I don't think Clay ever does anything as 'nice' as what Beatrice did for Henrietta
It's arguably the one purely selfless thing she's ever done. Even putting her up for adoption still gave her a happy home life. At that moment she saw her mother and her own mistakes in Henrietta and resolved that Henrietta had too much time left ahead for her to waste it on something she only saw as a .burden.
Beatrice's backstory makes the Horseman/Sugarman family cycle of abuse so much worse. That it's not just B Ojack's suffering projected from Beatrice's bitterness, but that it comes from her own, even more horrible upbringing on top of her mother's misery and getting lobotomized. It really makes you wonder about the self-aware guilt seen in season 2.
Did she finally understand not just what made her fail as a parent, but the "you come by it honestly" speech taken to mean she sees the horrors of her own family and only now realizes that she ended up continuing her father's abusive legacy. That's three generations of ruined relationships, no wonder why she believed Bojack would never be happy.
If it was a person who read Maus, the storyline would look more straight out of Rick and Morty than Bojack :P Honestly it just comes off as culture clash with the tribalism's ante upped a bit to me.
Finally wrapped the season, and god damn that smile. Is that the first genuine, full-blown smile we've ever seen out of the titular horse? He's done some small/shy ones before, but he was damn-near grinning, and it was marvelous.
edited 10th Sep '17 10:40:51 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Then it hits you that he's been hearing that voice for decades. Your worst day? That's everyday for Bojack.
Even worse, Bojack doesn't really have to work for a living. So he has no demanding job to distract him from that voice. And he's reached a point where booze, drugs, and meaningless sex are no longer enought to keep that voice at bay. The catalyst was the biography Diane wrote for him in season one, which more or less pointed out that he's a washed up asshole whose glory days are behind him.
Disgusted, but not surprised

I think it was over all a very successful season, but yeah sort of a janky one with Bojack being so isolated from the inner circle. But really I'm sort of glad he was, because he was just burning all the bridges in season 3. And I like that it seems like things have started to be mended, but there's a far way to go. I guess it will be a major moment when Todd and Bojack fully reconcile for example.
Episode 6 in particular I think is one of the best media depictions I've see of intrusive thoughts. I really enjoyed getting the full portrait of Bojack's family history in episodes 2 and 11. What happened to Bojack's grandmother is particularly haunting since it's an honest to God thing that happened in wealthy, elite families. John F Kennedy's little sister was lobotomized for example. And honestly the fact that it seems like Bojack is really starting to better himself was refreshing after the last season was pretty much rock bottom.
So...I gotta ask. Can Diane and Bojack be defined as Will They or Won't They? I mean obviously she's with Mr. Peanutbutter, but the show has now time and time again shown the audience how similar the are. And really if the beginning of this season is any indication she has a deep emotional attachment to him and there was Ship Tease in episode 7.
edited 8th Sep '17 3:52:25 PM by iamthecircle