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Consider the following spoilers for all of BoJack Horseman if you’ve not yet seen the series.
The final moments of Season Four of BoJack were typical in a sense, a weird feeling of positivity and hope, despite all the darkness and detritus surrounding it. Season Five continues that set of themes, trying to make an unusual point about redemption and celebrity. The point it seems to be trying to make is that people can be evil or good through their actions, helped or hurt by the systems and societies around them, but nobody is inherently good or bad. Perhaps this could mean no one is without redemption, but the show forces an unsubtle point on this too.
In the fourth episode ‘BoJack the Feminist’, a Mel Gibson look-alike (played with aplomb by the voice of Bobby Cannavale) is barely more awful than many real world scumbags in Hollywood and elsewhere, utilizing the cult of celebrity personality and inherent sexism (a point made not with subtlety, but with enormous punches to the face throughout the season), that he can be forgiven simply by saying he’s sorry.
Thus at first, the season shows us a show-within-a-show, a classic technique to mirror the struggles of our characters through the characters they portray on the stage or screen. BoJack (perhaps some of Will Arnett’s best work) is playing a clichéd anti-hero detective named Philbert in an eponymous show, on a set that exactly mirrors his own (with a very funny joke and callback to the last season). Philbert is a silly name, yet so is BoJack, setting up an obvious parallel that breaks reality in a horror show at the season’s end.
The show also introduces us to clichéd auteur Flip McVicker (Rami Malek), an obviously over his head showrunner and head writer aping pretentious in the most over-the-top ways, a character meant nearly entirely for comedy. More three dimensionally, there’s BoJack’s costar, actress Gina (Stephanie Beatriz of Brooklyn Nine-Nine), someone nearing forty who’s basically given up making it big and simply trying to do her best. And yet, she forms a connection with BoJack, with an age difference that is basically nothing in Hollywood terms, a potential for something mature, until it’s destroyed through delusion and painkillers.
There is a huge turning point in the season, which is episode six ‘Free Churro’, better suited to a play in some respects, a painful, often funny, very real monologue/eulogy about BoJack’s mother. I can see how some might find it pretentious, but I found it very well done. The show immediately follows it with the hilariously absurd ‘INT. SUB’, so you know the show loves combining pain with nonsense.
The season ends once more with a spiral into horrifying confusion and unforgivable sins, yet it also once again ends like it always has, attempting to say that maybe, just maybe BoJack might do better. One of the astonishing things about BoJack is that it elevates the lower quality animation with a barrage of easter eggs, fantastic animal puns, and legitimately well drawn facial expressions. It also uses the animal metaphor to trick you into seeing vicious critiques of the entertainment industry, but sometimes the show tips over that silly line. Todd (Aaron Paul) is a funny character, but I felt like his sex robot storyline was just that, funny, not as interesting or insightful as many other storylines on the show.
It’s also a credit to the show that you can feel legitimately something real for the relationship complications of Diane and a dog named Mister Peanutbutter. Alison Brie and Paul F. Tompkins are so good in those voice acting roles, it’s a shame they’ve received no real recognition (outside of a single Annie nomination) — honestly I’m still annoyed she didn’t get nominated for GLOW.
Why do we care about troubled people and their troubles? Well, it helps if they’re interesting or entertaining. BoJack has a way with his insults that’s freeing to the point of making you wish you could be the same way, even if his destructive behavior is nothing to reach for. He’s filled with such pain, shown slowly over the flashback of his traumatic childhood, that empathy is naturally built towards him. So should we also excuse his violent drug-filled choking?
The show doesn’t exactly answer this question, but it uses Diane, often the ‘smartest’ person on the show, to raise the possibility that perhaps we should hate but love, because unlike Vance Waggoner, BoJack isn’t a monster through and through. The fifth season of BoJack Horseman to me doesn’t hit the heights of the fourth season, but it had some exceptionally funny moments and very clever ideas that it manages to pull off, despite the absurdity of the world of animals and humans.
The show is still one of the great comedy-dramas out there, comparing favorably with Rick & Morty and You’re the Worst, if not eclipsing either. I don’t evangelize the show like I do with The Good Place, of course, but I am always willing to sing its praises.
What did you think of the fifth season of Bojack Horseman? Tell us what you think!
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