{"id":10891,"date":"2017-09-22T13:12:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T17:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10891"},"modified":"2017-09-22T13:19:13","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T17:19:13","slug":"bojack-adultman-extra-notes-season-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2017\/09\/bojack-adultman-extra-notes-season-4.html","title":{"rendered":"BoJack Adultman: A few extra notes on season 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I wrote this ridiculously emo<\/a>, \u201call my tattoos are Catholic!!!!\u201d-type piece about the new season of BoJack Horseman<\/em>, and that\u2019s fine, probably, but I do have a couple extra things to say about this cartoon about a depressed celebrity horse. One small and one large.<\/p>\n

The small thing is that the season couldn\u2019t quite figure out what to do with Diane and, especially, Todd. Diane works best for me as stealth-BoJack\u2013someone who doesn\u2019t seem like she\u2019d be a self-destructive nonsense mess, but totally is. Here she\u2019s mostly reduced to standing in the midst of other people\u2019s swirling comedic chaos, rather than creating it herself. (The gun-crazy subplot is an exception but it gets all knotted up with the show\u2019s constant, dutiful attempts to address politics, which is not a thing this show does well.) Todd works best as a guy BoJack tolerates and even helps for absolutely no reason.<\/p>\n

The bigger thing is\u2026 well, a guy<\/a> on Twitter said, \u201ci liked the depression horse show\u2026 it was funny, to me, how he does the bad thing, and keeps to do the bad thing\u201d<\/p>\n

After the harrowing end of last season I hoped we\u2019d get to see some bleak humor wrung from an actual, serious, and sustained attempt by BoJack to change his life. And voila! Because the thing people don\u2019t seem to have noticed about this season is that BoJack takes enormous, shambolic strides toward responsibility. He tries to do right by Hollyhock even at the cost of personal humiliation; he tries to do right by his mother even though he\u2019d like to tell her to take a running jump into a lake of fire; it all blows up in his face, but not actually because of anything he did wrong. It blows up in his face because of the things he did right!<\/p>\n

What happens to Hollyhock isn\u2019t because of BoJack\u2019s self-destruction, his Inner Monologue of I Think I\u2019m Kicking My Own Ass With Honesty But Actually I\u2019m Paralyzing Myself or his hilariously wrong attempts to solve problems. (My favorite of these was when he distracted a lady by having sex with her. Sure, it\u2019s disgusting to his possibly-daughter and degrading to both himself and his paramour, but why should that matter?) And BoJack even handles the collapse of his jury-rigged family with what is, for him, frankly shocking maturity. I love that he genuinely grew and changed, I love that it didn\u2019t \u201cwork,\u201d I love that he didn\u2019t just immediately and completely give up, and I love how totally miserable it all makes him.<\/p>\n

One of the weird things about the whole \u201cpromises<\/a>\u201d part of 12-step philosophy is that a lot of it is true for a lot of people, but all of it feels terrifying, shaming and unattainable for a really long time even after you have sincerely started to turn your life over to a Higher Power. I ignored the whole promises shtik and basically reached a place of, \u201cI need to quit drinking even if it makes everything in my life worse.\u201d It in fact made my life better, you\u2019re shocked I\u2019m sure, but tbh I think the \u201cpromises are garbage, let\u2019s fling ourselves headfirst into Suck\u201d mentality is a more reliable basis for recovery.<\/p>\n

This was a less consistently-funny season than the previous ones. And more of the comedy took place around the edges, rather than being how<\/em> the show expresses self-loathing and flailing attempts to change. (My favorite exception was BoJack\u2019s reaction to the Pop Tart fire. We\u2019ve all been there.) Since I got my wish for this season, I shall make a wish for next season: I think it would be hilarious to see BoJack trying to cope with actual positive outcomes of his better actions. How on earth would BoJack cope with things going well?<\/p>\n

I feel nice. Oh no, is this the \u201cpink cloud\u201d? Do I feel good because I\u2019m making awful, impulsive decisions? I mean, my decisions seem roughly okay if you grade on a curve, but I\u2019ve never judged that correctly before so I am not very likely to start now. Is\u2013is this how normal people feel all the time?<\/em><\/p>\n

Ugh, I bet I feel this way because something really terrible is about to happen. It\u2019s unfair that I can have moments of peace of mind when I\u2019m such a worthless piece of garbage. The responsible thing would be to feel worse. Which suddenly I am! Hey, good going, Boj.<\/p>\n

Crap, now I feel better. This isn\u2019t working.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I honestly think you could do a whole season of that and I\u2019d laugh and laugh. Add in him being genuinely supportive as Diane spirals into madness, tolerating and even helping Todd for no reason, and trying to make amends to his mom while still hating her and trying to pretend her cruelty was his fault (because that\u2019s taking responsibility, right? this is forgiveness??)\u2026 and you could have a season whose comedy gets sharper and more painful even as its disastrous star\u2019s life gets sunnier.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I wrote this ridiculously emo, \u201call my tattoos are Catholic!!!!\u201d-type piece about the new season of BoJack Horseman, and that\u2019s fine, probably, but I do have a couple extra things to say about this cartoon about a depressed celebrity horse. One small and one large. The small thing is that the season couldn\u2019t quite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,177],"tags":[1286,52,55],"class_list":["post-10891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-too-much-is-never-enough","tag-bojack-horseman","tag-if-whiskey-were-a-woman-id-be-married-for-sure","tag-prayers-to-ven-matt-talbot"],"yoast_head":"\nBoJack Adultman: A few extra notes on season 4<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I wrote this ridiculously emo, "all my tattoos are Catholic!!!!"-type piece about the new season of BoJack Horseman, and that's fine, probably, but I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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