Adrift in Hollywoo
The Brilliance of “BoJack Horseman” Season Two
If season one offered BoJack a shot at reclaiming his former glory by allowing him a chance to play his childhood hero of Secretariat, season two shows both the audience and BoJack that no one thing is ultimately going to fix him. BoJack starts season two doing everything he can to eschew the misanthrope he was in season one. He jogs regularly, has significantly cut back on drinking, and has an overly sunny outlook on life to the annoyance of everyone in his life. He’s so desperate to nail “Secretariat” that he can’t allow himself any negativity in his life which almost causes him to blow it because the role requires him to show himself embracing his inner demons. The problem is with BoJack there are no half-measures. Through a flashback in the beginning, we see his mother disdainfully watching a taping of “Horsin Around” and later at lunch feeling degraded because she had to sit next to someone in a t-shirt. BoJack realizes in that moment that he’s just never going to get his mother’s approval and later we learn that while his dad’s verbal/physical abuse was awful, it was his mother’s emotional abuse that sunk deeper. She never wanted BoJack and he’d spend the rest of his life having to justify his existence to her. BoJack overcomes his inability to dig deep on set but it comes at a hefty price as the incident that shakes him out of his overly positive new self is a phone call from his mother where she tells him she read his book and then proceeds to apologize to him for giving him faulty genes. She claims “you’ll never be happy, you’re broken it’s your birth right”. That truth bomb coupled with BoJack already doubting whether he’s an actual actor or just a guy who can hit his mark destroys the positive self he tries to project. He does revert back to his curmudgeonly self but not all at once. Sure, he’s still pretty negative towards Todd and the opening of his knock off Disneyland but he extends himself an olive branch by pursuing a relationship with Wanda (an excellent Lisa Kudrow). Wanda is a network executive who wakes up after a 30 year coma (hence why she’s good at her job) and while she’s behind the times she’s still a strong enough person to both see the good in BoJack but not put up with any of his shit. He’s a better person when he’s with her and he knows it, the only problem is deep down he doesn’t feel he deserves her. While BoJack deals with his existential crisis, the rest of the characters deal with their own self realizations and the results in almost all cases aren’t pretty.
The second season has done a tremendous job at giving every principle player various shades of depth. Mr. Peanutbutter for instance is still the loveable dimwit he always is but I was blown away by how much sadness is underneath his persistent optimism. During “After the Party”, an episode with three vignettes centered around a seemingly dumb argument regarding whether or not Tony Curtis was dead causes Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane to have a very real conversation about their marriage. At first it seems that she is just annoyed because he doesn’t get her and she has a point considering her party is something HE would like rather than a party for her but as their fight gets deeper she reveals what’s really eating at her. Their relationship shouldn’t make sense but it does because as she laments “Mr. Peanutbutter, you know I think you’re a good dog, yes you are, yes you are, and I love your cute funny face, but…”, he makes her life fun and whether he knows it or not keeps her out of her own head because as we’ll see later in the season, when left to her own devices she’s just as self-destructive as BoJack. He also is enthusiastic about anything and everything Diane does and that kind of support is invaluable. Mr. Peanutbutter is just as lonely as BoJack but without all the baggage that Bo Jack has. He confesses to Diane he does nothing all day and the best part of his day is when she comes home (I know that feeling all too well) and that he’s an old dog. If that was the only time Mr. Peanutbutter got to show some shading I’d be happy but in the episode “Let’s Find Out” he gets to have it out with BoJack and the results aren’t pretty.
As a favor to Wanda BoJack agrees to be a contestant on a new game show for her network (created by JD Salinger no less). The show entitled “Celebrities, What do they Know? Do They Know Anything? Let’s Find Out”, is hosted by Mr. Peanutbutter who asks BoJack general knowledge questions that are damn near impossible to answer. BoJack is humiliated at every turn by Mr. Peanutbutter’s insults and he reaches his breaking point when A-list contestant Daniel Radlcliffe is allowed to win the game. He wants to stave off humiliation so he plans on going off script and correctly answering the last question. Wanda asks him not to and he swallows his pride and acquiesces to her but not before tearing into Mr. Peanutbutter. In response, Mr. Peanutbutter gets real with BoJack and asks him why he’s so mean to him all the time and why he kissed Diane. BoJack replies “I’m jealous” which Mr. Peanutbutter can’t understand considering BoJack is arguably more successful than he is but that’s not what BoJack is jealous of. BoJack is jealous of the fact that Mr. Peanutbutter has the ability to feel good about himself and asks Mr. Peanutbutter to forgive him. Of course Mr. Peanutbutter does because the game show demands it plus he’s a dog and thus he’s naturally forgiving.
Getting back to Diane, her quest toward meaning causes her to discover her inner BoJack and admit to herself that she’s just as adrift in the world as he is. In season One she’s out entry point character and the ghost-writer for BoJack’s autobiography. As the season progressed we learned that her life is far from figured out and like BoJack she comes from a family that couldn’t be less supportive. At times it seemed like the show would pair the two together but wisely they chose to make them remain friends. She turned down a chance to go the fictional Republic of Cordova in order to be a consultant on the “Secretariat” film. She attempts to speak out against Hank and his decades of exploiting women but finds herself drowned out by people who both don’t want to hear the ugly truth nor want to hear it from a woman like her. Her feeling of uselessness and her misgivings about her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter cause her to finally go to Cordova to document the heroic exploits of Sebastian St. Clair and at first she thinks she’s doing something worthwhile but as her time goes on she realizes that St. Clair isn’t helping the starving children of Cordova because he cares, he’s helping them to help himself. His egocentric behavior and callousness regarding the citizens of war torn Cordova causes her to return home in shame. Her guilt causes her to lie to Mr. Peanutbutter about still being there and because he’s Mr. Peanutbutter he buys into the lie immediately. She crashes at BoJack’s house and her downward spiral coincides with BoJack’s. She can’t bear to tell Mr. Peanutbutter that she quit because he legitimately admires the work she’s doing and she also can’t admit that she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life. By seasons end, she comes clean to Mr. Peanutbutter and again he proves very forgiving but Dianne is still adrift and as much as they both love each other, they will always come back to the same argument had in “After the Party” because they are fundamentally two very different people. This sounds like doom and gloom but in a way it’s refreshing that the two get to have this very real marriage and the show doesn’t just split them up.
At first glance, it seemed like Princess Carolyn was getting shorted as far as storylines this year but her arc ended up being the only one to result in something positive. Her career appeared to be stuck in neutral. Sure, she has some clout around the office because she resurrected BoJack’s career but her boss doesn’t seem to notice and she ends her relationship with Vincent Adultman (who was great in his own right this season). The only bright spot in her life is a budding romance with fellow Hollywoo agent Rutabaga Rabbitowitz but that has the lingering issue of his being married. He promises that he’ll leave his wife and she’s willing to believe him. Her life remains in flux and she starts to doubt whether she still wants her life. It isn’t until “The Shot” that she reaches one of two major epiphanies. While Todd, the cops, and character actress Margo Martindale are involved in a shoot out, Princess Carolyn stares at a Thomas Kinkade and imagines her life in the cabin depicted in the painting. At first it appears she wants the cabin in Maine like BoJack but then her daydream tells her that while she may want some inner peace she doesn’t want to stop being a boss bitch. Her tranquility is derived from squashing her competition and being the best damn agent she could be. This leads to her second epiphany. Rutabaga reveals himself to be the d-bag that everyone could see a mile away by admitting he won’t leave his wife and that he just wanted to hop aboard the agency Princess Carolyn wants to start. He also burns their bridge at the old agency by making an ass out of himself (and Princess Carolyn by proxy). Once in the elevator she calls him out for being an ass and he tries to take her down by remarking on how because of her age and career she’ll be alone the rest of her life. Her whole arc is summed up with her response “I’m not afraid to be alone” she then reveals that her name is the only one on the new agency leaving him unemployed. When he yells out “Carolyn” she snaps back “It’s Princess Carolyn”. There’s no guarantee her new agency will be a success but of all the characters this season Princess Carolyn is the only one who is able to take control of her life and live it entirely on her own terms. Now to bring it all home let’s get back to BoJack.
The entire season has been one massive let down after another for BoJack. The dream role he coveted turns out to be a disaster. He gets the director fired because he convinced her to help him steal a shot in the Nixon Library because the studio wants to whitewash the story and the new director is a hack that’s determined to make BoJack’s life a living hell because BoJack insulted him. He contemplates doing a play for an old associate of his Jill Pill but he can’t place her so he’s not entirely enthused. His relationship with Wanda collapses because Dianne allows BoJack to revert into his self-destructive ways and after BoJack eviscerates Wanda’s love of network TV and her role in it (and she tries to remind him that he owes everything he has to network TV) she realizes that she “can’t be with someone fueled by bitterness and hate”. BoJack can only respond that the relationship was doomed anyway because eventually she’d get to know him. She then digs deeper and tells him that “when you look at something through rose colored glasses the red flags look just like flags”. His mother’s proclamation that unhappiness is his birth right causes him to ruin everything he has ever built. Unlike Mr. Peanutbutter he can’t make peace that while he was on a lousy show it still made people happy and because he admitted that he doesn’t know if he can even attain happiness he looks at every relationship he has as a march towards failure. He bails on the movie and heads to New Mexico in order to track down Charlotte because that’s the life he eschewed in favor of stardom and he thinks that if he can reconnect with her it’ll solve all his problems. Much to his chagrin, she has a family and two kids. She owns her own turquoise jewelry store and has a nice quiet life. She welcomes BoJack and he seems a little uneasy at the fact that she doesn’t really remember her time in LA the way he does. He remembers everything so vividly because those days meant so much to him yet she treats it as another lifetime ago because unlike BoJack she found a way to evolve. He ends up staying in New Mexico for two months living on his boat “Escape from L.A.” (this is parked in her driveway). The kids like him and her husband it totally cool with him even when BoJack passive aggressively tries to horn in on Charlotte. The only real time he seems to have hope is when he and Charlotte hangout in the backyard where they reminisce about making glowing lanterns and sending them into the night sky. It’s a gorgeous visual and one that truly stands out because it seems like one of the few legitimately happy memories he’s ever had.
Things go south however, when BoJack’s daughter gets stood up by her prom date so BoJack escorts her and her friends to the dance. At first it seems like a nice gesture but unfortunately BoJack can’t seem to understand his place as the adult chaperone. He gets one of her friends so drunk that she has to be taken to the hospital then he and Charlotte’s daughter hangout alone. They recreate the glowing lanterns that he and her mother made decades ago (although she doesn’t know that). Its clear that he’s trying so desperately to recreate this period in his life that he doesn’t realize what he’s about to do to his present day relationship with Charlotte. They go back to his boat and Charlotte walks in on the two of them and its clear that something is about to happen. Since BoJack doesn’t understand that he’s 50 years old he doesn’t entirely see how this is wrong but it is. Charlotte kicks him out and warns him that if he comes near her or her family again she will “fucking kill him”. Olivia Wilde’s delivery is tremendously devastating and signals another area in BoJack’s life that he’s destroyed beyond repair. He returns to his trashed house where Diane is still crashing. He finds out that through motion capture his role as Secretariat has been finished without him and he’ll have to go on the awards circuit. His friendship with Todd is more or less saved when he rescues Todd from the cult of improve and is offered to do a play in New York from a writer on a yet to be named second show he starred on. BoJack’s life remains in flux like every other character save for Princess Carolyn and while trying to get back into running an elderly jogger reminds him that running is easy but the hard part is doing it everyday. George Carlin once said “Life is not complicated. You get up, you go to work, you eat three meals a day, you take one good shit and go back to bed. What’s the fucking mystery?” This sentiment is true and for BoJack Horseman and the rest of the people in his life the hard part is finding a reason to get up everyday, go through that process while also finding a way to make it all mean something.