Review: "Bojack Horseman" & the 8 Dad Polycule (Patreon)

I’ve been searching far and wide for more complicated polycules in pop culture. (By which I mean ⁠— “we have plenty of triads on TV, where are the quads and beyond?”)

Enter Hollyhock’s 8 dads on Bojack Horseman. 

(This contains spoilers for Seasons 4 and 5 of Bojack Horseman.)

If you haven’t seen the show, it’s a dark comedy about an alcoholic, nihilistic horse-man. In season 4, Hollyhock is a young horse-woman who tracks him down. She says she’s Bojack's long lost daughter, and wants to find her mom.

Casually, she shares she was adopted and raised by “eight men in a committed gay polyamorous relationship.”

Bojack: “If I’m her father, where is her mother?”

Dad 5: “Well that’s an extremely heteronormative way of looking at things.”

The dads are super cute. They’re not the main focus of the story, but that’s also what makes this so great. Their love isn’t radical to anyone. They’re just accepted and allowed to exist without becoming a sensational side plot.

Since their non-monogamy is relegated to the background, I thought we could look instead at how the show portrays the mental health of a child raised by a polycule.

Bojack: “I can’t offer you parental guidance or advice or love or support or prolonged conversation or interest in you.”

Hollyhock: “I’m not looking for another dad.”

From the beginning, she’s super well adjusted. Hollyhock arrives to Bojack fully aware of his instability and alcoholism. She just wants to find her mom. She doesn’t even call him her dad, just her “biological … sperm guy.” Turns out that’s good, because Bojack lives down to the hype.

Hollyhock: “Papa Steve told me this was a bad idea. But Papa Greg said, ‘Follow your heart.’ Then Papa DaShawn said, ‘I agree with Greg.’ Daddy Quackers said, ‘Let’s put it to a vote, quack-quack.’”

THIS gave me a big ol’ smile. Speaking from personal experience (as a child raised by a bunch of adults), it’s always better to have a lot of role models for children. More experiences, more examples, more life paths to offer guidance. 

I love the way they disagree and how they resolve it. This is reminiscent of a lot of polycules I know who raise kids.

Bojack: “Mom is ‘totes’ into a baby? Is it possible the baby got dipped in brandy at some point? Or cigarettes, or regressive ideas about immigrants?”

Hollyhock: “I think she just wanted a baby.”

Soon, we see the kind of parenting Bojack got from a dysfunctional “monogamous” household (unethically polyamorous, truth be told. His dad cheated on his mom all the time. It’s wild what gets accepted as normal, btw. Ubiquity is not the same thing as normalcy.)

Hollyhock knows this woman isn’t perfect, but she accepts her and doesn’t need her to change. She even goes out of her way to make her happy, if possible. She's got a lot of love to give. (Go 8 dads!)

Bojack: “Hollyhock, I’m glad you’re here. If I’m shitty, it’s because I’m shitty. And you’re allowed to be mad at me, but you need to know that whatever I do, it’s not your fault.”

Hollyhock: “I know. I mean, I know, but I don’t always know. You know?”

She only starts to decline in spirit and mood after spending time with Bojack and his mom. (The former abandons her so he can get drunk; the latter insults her and secretly poisons her to lose weight.)

But look at her start to advocate for herself, pushing back on Bojack’s behavior. She then owns her insecurity in the very next moment. She has way more communication skills than Bojack, who’s more than twice her age. Since they’re biological family, we’ll assume the show is saying her coping skills are the byproduct of nurture, not nature.

Bojack: “It’s ok to want a mom.”

Hollyhock: “No it’s not! Because it means my dads weren’t enough for me, and they are!”

This is such a nuanced portrait of an otherwise happily adopted person.

To our knowledge, her dads have done nothing but be supportive. Maybe they wanted her to go about it differently, but we never hear them feeling insulted by her quest for a mom. This isn’t necessarily a byproduct of polyamory, but it does help to have people in our lives who understand that many types of love can coexist.

Finally, we learn that Bojack is actually her brother. (She’s the byproduct of an affair from Bojack’s dad.)

Not only does she take this news really well, but she finds her real mom and establishes contact immediately. She’s young and vulnerable, but has high self esteem, total agency over her life and is just a sweet person. Well, horse-person.

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TLDR : For portrayal of child-rearing in an ethical polycule, I give Bojack Horseman an A. Who would’ve thought that such a debaucherous show about the depths of human depravity would represent ethical polyamory in such a wholesome way? Such a pleasant surprise.