The Final Insult (BoJack Horseman)

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks "Why the long face?"

There are two types of tragic falls. The first and more common one is when a writer gives us a likeable hero who becomes corrupted by outside influence, failing to keep their flaws in check. The second, and my personal favourite, is a character of what I call “self-assured destruction.” Regardless of where they find themselves at the beginning of a story, regardless of whatever self-betterment is shown, their fall was inevitable because of the fundamental people they were. Three of my personal favourites are Attack on Titan’s Eren Yeager, Better Call Saul’s Saul Goodman, and BoJack Horseman’s… BoJack Horseman.

Self-assured protagonists are an extension of Alfred Hitchcock’s idea of the bomb under the table in which the audience is aware of imminent danger in a relatively mundane scene. The dramatic irony created by the ignorance of the characters only heightens the sense of dread and panic in the audience. The show plays with the audience’s role within this concept, using our exclusive knowledge of events like the overdose of Sarah Lynn to convey one singular idea: the story of one BoJack Horseman was always going to be a tragedy on the part of him failing to consider others throughout the entirety of his supposed character growth.”

The visuals of the opening credits are a representation of the entirety of the show, embodying BoJack’s toxic relationships with the rest of the characters. It begins with an aerial view of the Hollywoo (formerly “Hollywood”) hills before zooming into BoJack’s house and cuts to a shot from above of him, continuing the zoom. The viewer begins with the freedom to soar before being grounded to BoJack’s level, but the majority of the opening places BoJack’s face in the centre of the screen, taking up almost the entirety of the frame as he blindly stumbles through his day-to-day life. The viewer does not see the world through BoJack’s eyes, but rather through the unwitting eyes of those around him as he takes up all of their attention and stress. This is the second person perspective, and it is thematically diegetic. His problems become their problems until the very end when he sinks into his pool. We see, from his perspective, Diane and Mr. Peanut Butter watching helplessly as he drowns, unable to reach him and forced to process the trauma that he has inflicted on them.

The theme song becomes synonymous with BoJack’s struggle, this being most evident in the penultimate episode of the second season “Escape from L.A.” The episode does not begin with the theme as BoJack has gained some semblance of peace with his old friend Charlotte and her family. When she ultimately kicks him out after he comes on to her underaged daughter, the episode ends on him drinking on his boat as he makes his way back to Los Angeles, the theme song playing. The credit sequence reveals itself for what it truly was. It was not showing BoJack as a victim of L.A., but rather the fact that he WAS L.A.. The city, no matter how far he ran from it, would always be a part of who he was. There was no outside influence, no external threat to blame for his problems. It is the signature theme for the show, one named “BoJack Horseman.”

Self-hatred is not opposed to pride, but a symptom of it. It is one of the extreme manifestations of being self-centred as the individual becomes divorced from reality to lose themself in their limited world view in which only what they believe matters. Self-betterment is prevented by two major factors: a belief that their pathetic state is their deepest, truest self, and, more importantly, the fact they take comfort in the familiarity of self-hatred. The former can be remedied with love and support, but so long as the latter exists, no change can occur.

Existentialism is regarded as the optimistic outlook of Nihilism as the individual decides what gives their life meaning. But BoJack’s existence is a pessimistic one. He has an Absurdist understanding of his life’s lack of meaning, but does not face it head-on in a Camusian sense. Rather, he, as the individual, finds what numbs the pain.

BoJack’s drug and alcohol addiction are more than a simple coping mechanism. Rather, they are indicative of his self-centredness. Like the viewer in the opening credits, the people around him are never his priority. For a man who claims to hate himself, he thinks so highly of himself as to place his own self-perpetuated suffering above the struggles of those around him. He even claims that is his greatest victim to which Diane asks about Sarah Lynn’s overdose. He is so often unwilling to acknowledge them unless he can relate their suffering to his own, preferably through taking “responsibility” for hurting them all the while never striving to change it.

Each season’s narrative climax comes in the penultimate episodes to further convey how his struggles, despite being in a show named after him, impact more than just himself. Throughout the series, he is repeatedly told by those around him that his bad behaviour cannot be excused by a troubled life. This is strengthened by sparse inclusion of the profanity “F*ck” which only appears once per season. In all but two instances, it is uttered by someone deeply hurt by his actions. Season five’s is uttered by Gina who, after being strangled by BoJack, asks in horror:

What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Season six’s utterance is identical but directed towards Gina by her co-star who has an extreme reaction to his improvisational dancing which reminds her of her physical assault. Even when BoJack is far removed from the lives of others, the scars he leaves do not so easily fade. Now, they begin to have far-reaching consequences to the rest of the world. And it is not the world that is at fault, but rather himself.

In season four, BoJack plans to tell his mother, who finds herself with dementia, “Fuck you, mom!” once she remembers who he is. But he cannot go through with it. The show presents this as an act of mercy, to allow the woman some peace, as he knows that he will gain no satisfaction from lashing out at her for her years of abuse and neglect. But it is more significant in how it is BoJack choosing to carry the burden of guilt for his own actions. He cannot blame anyone for how he chooses to act.

The birth of BoJack Horseman was not an insult to the world, but he chose to live a life of such. The final insult is drawn attention to in season six’s penultimate episode but never explicitly stated until the finale. Throughout the entirety of the episode “The View From Halfway Down,” BoJack is surrounded by ghosts of his guilt whether it be the people who raised him or people whom he let down and had a hand in ruining.

At the same time, he remembers calling Diane and tries desperately to recall what he said before ultimately accepting in an imaginary call with her that she never answered and he instead sent a voicemail before diving into the pool and drowning. He takes comfort in the familiarity of her voice, but the audience is left with a horrifying revelation, that Diane was unwillingly sent the final words of a dead horse. In his final moments, he could still only hurt people and selfishly drown it out. Like with the death of Sarah Lynn, BoJack’s eventual comeuppance is a ticking bomb under the table that only the audience is aware of.

But death was too easy of an out, it was one free of consequences for the self. It, like every other one of BoJack’s self-hating actions, was an act of selfishness. By the time BoJack sees Diane after an entire year, she was in a better place with a husband in a new city. Her medication had led to weight gain but it did not affect her psyche for she was, for the first time in her life, happy. Unlike with Sarah Lynn, we are not shown the bomb blowing up nor its aftermath, only the new normal that followed it.

BoJack: Are you still angry at me?

Diane: No. I don’t know. What good has being angry at you ever done for me?

BoJack is denied the satisfaction of the fallout. By the time he learns of the bomb he set in leaving the final voice note to Diane, she has already moved ahead of both him and the audience. In what he believed to be his final moments, it always was about him. But the show named “BoJack Horseman” could only ever end with that self-importance being taken away. They would most likely never see each other after the night of Princess Carolyn’s wedding. The wedding itself was only for the industry’s sake with the real one occurring in private weeks before as the world moved on without BoJack. The final insult would never be properly resolved as Diane denies BoJack the ability to wallow.

When BoJack tries to challenge Diane with one last bit of pessimistic faux-Absurdist humour, he relents after an entire show of telling her how alike the two of them are. While he is allowed the final words of the show, it is not an assertion of something internal. Rather, he gives up on his selfishness and lets Diane’s words matter more than his own in his first true act of complete selflessness.

BoJack: Well, what are you gonna do? Life’s a bitch then you die right?

Diane: Sometimes. Sometimes life’s a bitch then you keep living. But it’s a nice night, huh?

BoJack: Yeah. This is nice.