So... Nothing happened this season, right?
Everyone's pretty much exactly where things were before.
Bojack is back in LA being himself.
Diane and MrPB are happily married
MrPB is not governor
PC is single and runs her management business
Absolutely nothing happened here.
Status quo is king
>Diane and MrPB are happily married
they admitted to one another they are unhappy and Diane sounded like she had all but decided to get divorced
Oh yeah. I guess that's a thing.
I just feel like they dawdled so much about the pointless governor thing when they should have wrapped it up half-way through the season and have that conversation then instead of at the end.
I swear that fucking clown dentist thing was the "retarded Todd idea" that took up the most time of any season
You forgot that we learned Beatrice had a shitty childhood and she took it out on Bojack and her husband.
What a game changer
This season was how everyone else life is shitty and not because of Bojack. At the end of the other season it seems that the poison on everyone life and common denominator is Bojack. He always feel bad how much of a shitty person he is and is aware he brings everyone down. Now in this season all characters are able to have him out of their life for a whole year. Funny thing is that everyone life is shitty and not because of Bojack. Their scapegoat is gone and they have only themselves to blame for their shitty life.
BoJack took control and is not repeating past mistakes what happened. He made heartfelt apologies to Todd and PC, he did PC a solid instead of flipping out over Philbert, Hollyhock is glad to have met him, and he simultaneously got over his hatred of his mom WHILE spitting on the "you were born broken" schtick she gave him during Secretariat. Him actually doing sitcom plots like "prove my daughter's gf is shady" is in a way him living the Horsin' Around life he always wanted, or at least the Gonzo BoJack version of it
Question is if this is lasting or if they give you hope in Even-numbered seasons just to yank it out with downers like S1 and S3
That's all true and what not, but the absence of things (i.e. Bojack's fuck ups) doesn't make for compelling storytelling.
If you want to have a season about how everyone is fucked up, with or without Bojack, that's ok. But make sure something happens anyways.
Have characters DO things instead of just being sad around each other.
In terms of his life, this was a gap year that ended with him setting up a return . He returned to LA after a year of being AWOL, rebuilt his destroyed inner circle, and at the end, landed a job gig with Lenny despite all past screwups. Time was taken to sort out family baggage. Expect to see more of BoJack doing things with his life when he's back on set.
I didn't understand the point of this at all.
>Bojack is back in LA being himself.
>Diane and MrPB are happily married
Did you
I mean did you even watch this season?
You don't have a choice for how you act because the source of trauma can go back generations.
No wait, Bojack is getting better on his own without knowing this.
the point is that Bojack decided to let her be happy rather than try to punish her for making him miserable. She was a shitty person and made his life miserable but he'd done the exact same thing to others. He can't blame her for all his flaws and ignore her own negative influences that made her what she is at the same time. So he forgave her, at least a little and decided she didn't deserve to die miserable, and in turn made the same decision for himself.
>That fucking smile at the end
That got to me.
Anyway, did anyone else feel like the F-bomb just came out of nowhere? I mean, I'm glad I didn't see it coming but I was expecting it to have a bit more of an impact
>What a game changer
No, not really. Like, not at all, really. Pretty damn expected and on par, to be quite honest. The show has almost never portrayed anyone in a completely black and white sort of manner.
No, that was the point of the last scene with her in the shitty dumpster home.
Bojack never knew the details of Beatrice's life and why she acted like she did.
All that stuff was for the audience only and... Nothing came out of it. There's no tension about how we know something everyone doesn't.
It was just a story with no pay off at the end. Not for us and not for the characters
>Diane sounded like she had all but decided to get divorced
But this is Bojack Horseman, so either that won't happen or it'll be resolved in two or three episodes.
>Anyway, did anyone else feel like the F-bomb just came out of nowhere?
What was it again?
I remember it being in the early episodes and thinking "Oh they're saying fuck twice this season"
But then nothing happened
Idk, PC might actually end up taking adoption seriously. So Diane and PB might get a divorce and more than likely Diane will move back in with Bojack (not sure how PB would feel about that, I don't want him to suffer) and just embrace being like Bojack.
As an aside, learning that she was just imagining that cute little cat girl in the future made me sad
Bojack didn't need to know the exact details of why she was so shitty to forgive his own mother and recognize his hypocrisy. Its the audience that needs the exact context to forgive a character
When he was talking about wanting to do a play of Horsin Around in front of his mom to jog here memory and then he would get up in here face and say fuck you.
He said it to Hollyhock when he was planning that horsin around episode at the nursing home. Was going to say it to his mom
PC is in a downward spiral and Bojack is her only hope.
MrPB and Diane now have a gigantic schism in their relationship
Todd is just Todd.
Bojack actually had healthy growth he accepted PCs offer as a way of saying sorry for all the shitty things he did. Todd didn't accept his apology but it was sincere. In his mother's moment of lucidity he told her she was in her lake house on Michigan as opposed to telling her to fuck off which he was very excitied to do. He has a sister and was happy when she told him she wants to have a brother.
Season 4 was great because it felt like a refresh for Bojack. Everyone's problems weren't a result of Bojacks actions like previous seasons. the world grew a lot this season and I liked it.
Actually us knowing about bea' s past means we know she was lying at the end too. She never had ice cream but she was trying to just let bojack tell his story
>Its the audience that needs the exact context to forgive a character
No, not really.
All we needed to know is that Beatrice lived a rough life too. We didn't need two episodes about it. Since she wasn't lucid, there was plenty of opportunity for her to blurt our something about her childhood.
Maybe Bojack overhears it and puts it together and that's why he suddenly forgives her.
This season had shit economy of time.
>but he'd done the exact same thing to others
He always acknowledged this, though; if not through his very obvious self-loathing and sabotage then certainly when we finally get to see his inner monologue in episode 6.
Also, like said, Bojack didn't actually see all of the shit that we did in the flashbacks and whatnot. I actually thought the end of Time's Arrow was kind of inappropriate because from Bojack's perspective nothing has changed and there's no obvious explanation for his sudden attitude change.
Also , it feels like the show has succumbed to the shitty modern writing trend of needlessly explaining shit that was already implied and didn't need to be explained. Furthermore, all the flashback stuff felt extremely rushed and glossed over an entire era of cultural history for the sake of squeezing in Jessica Biel engaging in cannibalism and Todd training a bunch of clown dentists.
You really think she went 80+ years of her life and never had icecream?
She never had icecream as a kid, yes, but shit, you think she never "went wild" in the 80s and bought some icecream?
why was PC so resistant to bojack in the first place? just going out of her way to prevent anything with him
>I swear that fucking clown dentist thing was the "retarded Todd idea" that took up the most time of any season
They don't appear before episode 8 or 9
>Todd didn't accept his apology but it was sincere
I feel like Bojack in general has become more sincere this season. I think back to all those canned spiels he'd pull on Dianne, PC, and Charlette, shit like "I KNOW WE WERE MEANT TO BE, I'VE NEVER BEEN MORE SURE OF ANYTHING IN MY LIFE" and cringe. The way he reaches out to Hollyhock, the way he just unloads on his mother feel very real to me, not some regurgitated sitcom shit
>there was plenty of opportunity for her to blurt our something about her childhood.
sure but that's not what they did. they told the story, which had the point of making the audience feel sorry for her. they may have been able to accomplish that in a shorter time frame through a number of other ways but that doesnt make it pointless.
i wouldn't say it was great, the first half beyond Beatrice's story was just sluggish and filled with really awful parts(episode 5 anyone?) i think the political commentary ended up being just as tired and misguided as i feared, but some stuff pulled through.
also i'm really fucking tired of the will-they-wont-they with Diane and Mr PB, their relationship is exactly where it was earlier, they feel love but their relationship is stormy and they don't get each other, Diane getting an abortion doomed them to stagnating and i wish that had been the plot instead.
So why did the post office send the letter from Hollyhock back to Beatrice?
Was Bea like some kind of backup addressee? I don't think I understand the postal system
>I actually thought the end of Time's Arrow was kind of inappropriate because from Bojack's perspective nothing has changed and there's no obvious explanation for his sudden attitude change.
It would have been better if Bojack lashed out at her after Beatrice was lucid enough to recognize him.
Hollyhock nearly dying because of Beatrice should have been unforgivable for him because of what happened with Sarah-Lynn.
Making him think that he had killed another daughter because of his hedonism.
He was mad before and that should have been the final bridge. It was one thing to fuck with him but his "daughter" who he had never had a chance to fuck up?
Even if Bojack is being more sincere, I don't buy that last bit of kindness as it was presented.
It should have had Bojack railing into Beatrice when he thought she was lucid, and have her suddenly recoil and say something like "Daddy, I'm sorry, I won't do it again".
NOW Bojack can stop, feel shitty, and forgive her, at least a little bit.
It adds up to making the whole story sadder. Clearly the show is about feeling bad and looking at life through a depressing lens.
>Bojack established a relationship with Hollyhock
>Bojack had a tender moment with his mother
>Bojack overall is a less malicious person
>Mr. PB and Diane's marriage is going down the dumpster
>Diane is realizing that she's depressed no matter what
>PC fired Juda
>PC broke up with Ralph
>PC is becoming an alcoholic
>Todd started a relationship with an asexual girl
>still haven't revealed what ever happened to Bojack's father
That's the last remaining part of his family that's not been addressed. Focus for the next season besides TWOOO SCOOOOPPPS hopefully.
Beatrice probably used her address and infos in the adoption papers since Henrieta didn't have an address and Beatrice didn't want the kid to contact her anyway.
All she could describe it as was a generic delicious. And she had been on pretty pills since she was young. Also she was supposed to be with her family and all they would let her have would be a lemon with sugar
I think Todd's antics are at their best when he's just a victim to all the absurd shit that happens to him, as opposed to coming up with some retarded scheme. With the clown dentist thing, it's made worse knowing he's capable of stopping this dumb running joke, but just won't
Who's still angry Bojack killed Sarah Lynn and didn't really pay for it ?
What annoyed me about the PB/Diane storyline is that none of them had any real agency about their relationship problems. Things just happened passively, it seems.
What should have happened, imo, was make it clear that Mr PB was going to win, and then have Diane use her blog to say something that destroys him. And then have them fight about that.
Now you have characters doing things instead of just going along with the ride
I wouldnt be surprised if they get a divorce next season and she tries to fuck Bojack. What if the one season fuck is MrPb to Diane?!
He smiled.
>>Todd started a relationship with an asexual girl
And a business where you run from rabid dentist clowns and clown dentists
100% agreed, that's pretty much what I was thinking. I'm spitballing but it feels like the only reason they didn't do this was because they were already trying to cram way too much into the episode and wouldn't be able to fit an exchange like that. That's what most of the episodes felt like to me, that they easily could've(and should've) been twice as long as they were.
>my daughter's gf
She's actually shown having an ice cream pop in episode 2, before her mom slaps it away. I don't think the ice cream part really matters, it's just her forced yet removed reaction to the story that shows she's aware Bojack's lying to her. Her VA did a great job that entire episode.
He's dead.
She went away for sometime during which she got a bachelor's degree and became rebellious.
Honestly, I don't really mind that there wasn't any major changes to the status quo in the end, this is solely because I found the season's narrative to be much more engaging than the last.
One thing I don't understand is why this show tries to be a comedy at all when they're so much better at character drama. The animal gags and the tongue twisters are amusing, but the jokes this season amounted to little more than liberal rhetoric with a sarcastic tone. The scene of the two show hosts in Thoughts and Prayers was the most egregious. The set up was there for how a show funneling celebrity gossip is not an appropriate platform to address a mass shooting but instead they opted for an unrelated dig at "straight white males" because they just had to fit that in somewhere I guess.
It should have happened this season when Diane and Bojack are getting shitfaced together.
She tries to fuck him. Bojack actually says no.
She insists and the "Fuck" this time is actually by Bojack to Diane.
What a lame thing that episode segment was. They get drunk with each other for days and absolutely not character growth between them happens
It was addressed to "henrietta c/o beatrice", which means the letter is for henrietta but being delivered care of beatrice, who is then supposed to deliver it onto henrietta
beatrice probably gave her own contact info instead of henrietta's giving away hollyhock
for me it was that Diane fumed and gritted her teeth at his political decisions which were based entirely on the voters' opinions, and she noticed she held power over that, but instead of actually fucking discussing things with him and get involved in his campaign(that she clearly actually cared about), she decided to stand back and let him fuck up like she had no choice to guide and educate him along the way.
the problem in their relationship is that Diane is lazy and doesn't want to communicate with PB, and expects him to magically know her bullshit, contrived thought process.
also seriously, that fucking gun control episode, it made no sense, it didn't parody anything in particular, it wasn't funny and just wasted runtime.
i honestly agree with you totally, it would have been a giant trial of fire for Bojack too.
Bojack changed his ringtone, you asscrumb.
Todd being a victim of the others selfishness was more realistic than this Tood-Homer character running his clown-doctors and actually making sense with it, I don't get why they decided to turn him into this boring caricature. The asexuality made it worst.
FEELINGS
>The asexuality made it worst.
I fucking hated the preaching they did this season.
I expected some kind of joke or dramatic undercutting with Todd's meetings and shit
But no, they're just the perfect bunch of people who don't have sex. Don't worry, they'll explain it to you that they don't have sex, but they still feel and have romances! Gosh, how could you not know this?
At this point Diane is too much a femBojack that fucking Bojack would mean the point of no return. They work as bitchy friends that shit on everyone and everything but they would destroy each other if they try something more intimate.
There was a great setup to having them show Todd's growth was stunted because Bojack let a (at the time) teenage boy move in to his house and just let him do whatever he wanted and provided unlimited resources to do whatever he wanted with. No attention, no direction, and no motivation. Finally getting out there and away from Bojack to experience life could have had him grow into a real person.
Instead they decided made up bullshit like 'asexuality' which doesn't even gel with his established past would be a better way to go and they've made it impossible to go the character growth away from Bojack arc. Now he's just a wacky super being and just is because.
Is Escape from L.A. still the best episode of the series after this season?
...
I don't know why Todd needed to be asexual at all. I was literally never once interested in Todd's romantic exploits or lack thereof. It feels like they needed a character on the special snowflake spectrum and went for the most toothless option for a character who doesn't need to be the mouthpiece for that kind of commentary. Their patting themselves on the back for it by sharing articles on their social media just galvanizes the fact they were trying to tick a progressive box.
I don't get why they mocked politics throught Diane and MrPB but didn't dare the same with Todd and his subplot, I mean celebrities labelling themselves as bi, gay and so is a trend but they just used it to praise the wacky Todd, I just hope they are just planning to make Todd spill spaggheti the final season.
>At this point Diane is too much a femBojack
They wanted us to think this, especially with her drunken cry about how she's broken and she ruins shit.
But the difference between how they handle the two is that Bojack actually fucks shit up.
He doesn't bad things and then bad things happen to him.
Diane just bitches and complains and nothing happens to her.
If they want to highlight Bojack's growth by having him not fuck up majorly this season like he always did before, have Diane be the fuck. Have the Big Fuck Up be by Diane.
I dropped this show after season 2 when nothing had developed and it seemed like the writers just wanted to maintain a holding pattern forever.
Would I be correct in this assumption?
Season 3 is good.
And it ended with the possibility for major change
>possibility
Not good enough. Have major changes to the status quo actually happened?
What happened is that the show got all kinds of buzz about "OMG first show that brings up asexuality. How awesome!"
The writers got drunk on the praise and then took it upon themselves to continue being praiseworthy at the cost of quality.
Which is totally ironic because the show makes fun of vapid entertainment industry blogs with Diane's job and yet they still honestly think they're important
What needs to be addressed though?
>he wanted a romantic working man artist lifestyle and to write the great american novel
>knocked up a debutante in a one night stand >when she called him out took her out to California and got married
>lived a miserable life of domesticity supporting the broad and the kid while slaving at a cannery for at least half a decade
>broke down and picked up that corner office job
>developed heart problems at some point, wife is shown fucking with his heart meds as early as around this time
>slowly watched his dreams shrivel and die just like his failed marriage
>in the 90s he fucked the maid, knocked her up, but pussied out of the whole thing and begged his wife to clean it up
>in the 2000s (after BoJack's second show had come out) he dies, at a believably old age and probably from heart complications
>probably had BoJack's and Hollyhock's "stupid piece of shit" syndrome eating away at him the whole time, likely causing the stress that resulted in heart complications
I don't think whatever his childhood was like before he met Bea really matters. It was probably pretty average.
Well the show essentially is a holding pattern since they've indicated they'll make as many seasons as Netflix will renew them for so they can't do anything insane or else there's nowhere to go. Unfortunately they will eventually get to a point where the character arcs are finished and it'll just become terrible
My personal high point is That's Too Much, Man! I mean, hell, it made me cry about Sarah Lynn when I previously cared absolutely nothing for her character.
they just don't know what to do with him, which is a shame, it'd have been nice to see Bojack really trying to make amends. Perhaps that's asking too much for now
Yes.
Not as much as I would have liked, but things are different.
We didn't need to see Beatrice's early life, and yet here we are
The main characters essentially don't have any interaction with each other in this season and it's four parallel stories running with brief periods where they interact. I'm personally not really feeling it.
Anyone else think they were going to do something crazy with the timelines during the second episode?
Like Bojack was going to start seeing the past around him, literally.
The trippy new part of the intro made me think they might go full blown unreality for Bojack's story.
But I guess it was just a one episode Emmy bait conceit
The guy was a prick, I wonder if he ever finished his novel, did they mentioned it on previous seasons? Can't remember.
>it's four parallel stories running with brief periods where they interact. I'm personally not really feeling it.
Yeah same
I can't waiting for it all to come crashing together
But nah.
I guess not, but at least in seeing Beatrice's life story, most of Butterscotch's story was tied in.
I used to think the intro is going to be the last chapter of last season, with Bojack spiraling again.
Am I the only one that thinks Bojack isnt as shitty as everyone else? At least he's self aware of how shit he is, everyone else is just lying about/to themselves regarding how self sabotaging they are.
In season 1 when BoJack is telling Diane about his childhood for his biography, both Butterscotch and Beatrice's status while raising Bojack is brought up a couple times, and Butterscotch being an aspiring writer does come up a little, ususally in the context of abusing young BoJack. I think it offhandedly gets mentioned in other seasons too.
I like when they shake things up and do episodes like that. Like season 1 episode 11's drug trip, the episode about BoJack's inner thoughts, and the silent episode. Those are fun.
I actually like this season a lot, maybe because I'm glad they didn't just status quo todd and bojack back into being friends just for the sake of convenience.
I don't know why they did it this way because it makes it really obvious Todd's story is retarded and isn't a story at all, just a series of wacky antics that cheapen the setting because of how outlandish they've gotten. Every time it switched to him I was just frustrated they're wasting screen time I waited a year for when they could be showing something interesting.
Get off the internet, BoJack.
>So... Nothing happened this season, right?
Doggy Dog No.
If anything this is the best Bojack has been ever. Yeah he's still going to be a jerk in a sense but now his character is complete.
I still say its because Todd acts like a sitcom character, who can never be shown actually having sex as a result.
Whats worse, knowing the problem but not doing anything different or not knowing?
Same action either way. The sorry comes at the same time.
After bingeing the whole season, I'm showing it to a friend now, and I hate how they made the episode introducing Hollyhock 90% about Todd. A fraction of that episode is way too important plot wise to the season to skip, but more than half of it is just stupid Todd fluff.
What did everyone DO this season?
PC... Lied about her miscarriages. Ok?
Todd... Did some stupid clown shit?
Diane did... Nothing but cry at Mr PB
Mr PB did nothing but... be nice to Diane
He is a shitty person but he got the "privilege" of reaching bottom too many times that he finally somehow learned the lesson. At this point he is a guy whealty enough to live a comfortable life of despair and negativity.
He does try though. He sucks at it and usually fails, but every other character just lies to themselves about what their problem is.Its not that he isnt shit, its just that everyone else is a little shittier.
We can all agree, at least, that MrPB is a bitch, right?
The trippy intro was foreshadowing for Beatrice spiking the coffee. All the visuals start happening after Bojack sips his morning coffee.
>We can all agree, at least, that MrPB is a bitch, right?
lmaoing at your life, friend, you're about to get shat upon, hard
Honestly though, why do you think that?
I hope Diane spirals next season.She just bitches and moans about everything anyway, may as well make her life shitty so it fits.
>PC is constantly fucking up her relationships and her life by being inconsistent with her priorities between work and a personal life, all because she has some vapid notion of what she should be
>Todd is just Todd
>Diane is essentially a female Bojack but with no self awareness, and can't be happy no matter what. She, too, sabotages and/or strains her relationships because of trivial notions of what she should be
>MrPB is an asshole who at first glance SEEMS like just a well meaning buffoon, but is really just focused on getting people to like him no matter what, and is willing to fuck with politics and his own relationships just to LITERALLY get points for it
>We can all agree, at least, that MrPB is a bitch, right?
No, Mr.PB is just trying to live a good life. He has no opinions really, he written to be a Lab and thats what we get.
I did enjoy Todd and Hollyhock's interactions though. It kinda felt like whereas when BoJack and Todd interact, BoJack is the butt of the joke, that dynamic was flipped with HollyHock. Like when they were pulling the hair sample.
I also found it ironic that Todd had lived in that house for years and BoJack was constantly telling him to clean up his shit, but it took this crazy illegitimate child plot after he'd moved out for him to clean the place top to bottom.