“I’LL SELF-CARE WHEN I SELF-DIE” And Other Small Brilliances of “BoJack Horseman”

In which St Francis de Sales watches season 5 of the depressed-horse show and exclaims, “If only we could have your abjection without, you know, strangling a lady!”

So on purely technical grounds, season five is BoJack’s weakest. But it also might be the show’s bravest. BoJack has always left disaster in his wake. His own self-loathing has damaged countless lives—mostly, though not only, women’s lives, even now that he’s trying to do better, to get off the treadmill of seeking praise, oblivion, and then dramatic, no-cost redemption. He’s so intent on playing the hero that his attempts at noble self-sacrifice backfire onto other people. (You never want your feminist stance against exploitation to end with somebody calling, “Can we get some nipple ice for Yolanda?”)

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