Episode 603 - Feel-Good Story (Patreon)

Diane is on the road.

Traveling for her “Crooshin' USA tour,” she is suffering the ills of the pivot-to-video strategy (read: crippling albatross), but actually making good use of her power by uncovering local scandal after scandal. Along the way, she’s forming a lovely partnership with her editor / cameraman Guy (a low-key and playful buffalo voiced by the incredible LaKieth Stanfield). It’s one of those relationships forged in the fires of proximity, where the lines of intimacy and flirtation meet the pressure of constant time-spending to create a unique affection for the other person (or if you’ve seen The Lighthouse, true animosity). It should also be said that these same conditions can create deeply-uncomfortable, one-sided, creepy circumstances, too. But Guy and Diane are having a loving, consensual little road affair (the “one bed” bit is great). But as BoJack’s prescient letters tell us, their road romance is just like his experience in rehab: “temporary, summer camp, easy.” And like all things that feel safe and easy, we attempt to prolong the magic. 

For Diane and Guy, that attempt will exist on two fronts: the professional and the personal. The professional attempt deals with them trying to extend the tour by creating some “feel good” stories to please their corporate bosses. Diane’s work thus far has made great impact in bettering the world, but it’s not exactly feeding the vacant click-bait positivity of the brand. But what starts with a simple attempt to highlight the feel-good efforts of the “Every Animal Girl” toy company (started by two best friends trying to make dolls that capture realistic beauty standards) turns sour when it turns out their company is being bought out by “Whitewhale,” a mega corporation that absorbs every company it can and ruins their ethical business practices in the process. Diane grits her teeth through the feel-good despair, but the situation immediately becomes worse when Whitewhale buys Girl Croosh, too. Diane protests the sale to her boss, but Stefani can only relish in her personal happiness…

Stefani: “I’m gonna be rich!” 

Diane: “You already are rich!” 

Stefani: “Oh yeah. Haha. Oops.” 

With that, Girl Croosh becomes “Content Spew” and the terrifying dance of runaway capitalism goes on. 

Cue orientation! Guy and Diane are brought into the Whitewale fold with a welcome video from Jermiah Whitewhale himself! He begins walking the two of them (read: the audience) through the horrible basics of Vertical Integration and Oligopoly via two old-timey cartoonish apparitions. Jeremiah then guides us through the history of laissez-faire capitalism by telling us the story of his grandfather, “who started small with a modest petroleum refinery he inherited from his father!” But turns out Grandpa Ezekiel was angry that someone else getting the oil, while someone else was selling it! So he bought rigs and gas stations and, “by controlling both the means of production and the delivery system, Ezeikel cornered the market and choked out the competition until they had no choice but to sell to him, too!” But of course, the greed didn’t stop there. In the 1980’s they buy a telephone company, a sports team, and “when he didn’t like the way the newspapers were talking about him, he bought his own newspaper!” The intention of which comes crashing down on Guy and Diane when they realize they can’t make videos about any of the other Whitewhale subsidiaries. Yes, they likely bought Girl Croosh just to kill the expose video that they were doing.

Sigh.

Now, you might have noticed there’s been a lots of angry talk about capitalism in the world lately. Why is that? Because we really have hit a societal breaking point. Since the 1980’s, there’s been a rapid slide of unchecked Reaganomics that has swallowed more and more of the underclass, while there are fewer and fewer people hoarding the privilege. It’s not “just as it’s always been,” folks. By every metric it has gotten conceivably worse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States and we’ve effectively returned to the horrors of the Guilded Age. We’re at the tipping point moment, one that has rightly been given a villainous poster child in Donald Trump. 

But Jeremiah Whitewhale embodies so much more than just Trump. He embodies of long-form ghost of capitalism itself, from the the Vanderbilts, to the Hughes’, to the Disneys, to the Murdochs, and ever on. It’s all part of the same monopolistic, all-consuming mega greed that depersonalizes all decisions in the name of capital and will thus swallow us whole. As the two of them search for a solution to their problem, Guy tries to argue that their ills are not born of malice, “Whitewhale’s not evil, they’re just capitalists!” But Diane responds, “What’s the difference?” It’s a pertinent question, because it’s so easy to see the system itself as out of our own control, indifferent, and impersonal. But if that’s the way it causes damage? Then that is exactly what makes it evil. It is amorality incarnate.

But then they catch a major break! It seems a worker died mysteriously a warehouse! With horrible working conditions! And a cover up! All the makings of a true scandal. They work their way up the case to catch the Whitewale corporation red-handed. But then Jeremiah Whitewhale confesses to doing the murder himself. WHAT!? And he doesn’t even care because it turns out murder has been legalized for Billionaires! WHAT?!!?! This amazing joke may seem cartoonish, but it’s sadly one of those “effectively true” realities of the legal system that puts everything about our culture into stark relief. Moreover, Jeremiah doesn’t care because any stories about how horrible Whitewhale is only helps them in the stock market. It proves they are “uncomplicated by morality” and committed to the bottom line. The feelings of helplessness and fatalistic doom set in with Guy and Diane. They, like us, are just victims of a billionaire ruling class. And of course, no matter how much all of this is hopelessness is true, there is the personal story underneath it… One of intimacy, emotional distance, and love.

There was a point in watching this episode that I said to myself, “Oh, this was 100% written by someone who also did a long-distance relationship with someone in Chicago.” You can just tell in the outrageous specificity of it all. But it so much more than the references to the landmarks and discussions of sandwiches and winter coats. It’s in the emotional truth behind those things. It’s in the pressure of space, the parts of other people’s lives that you are and are not allowed to see yet. It’s in the feeling of what it’s like to be surrounded by people who are all familiar with each other, and way more interested in a baseball game than they are interested in you (or at least more than the multitude of narratives going on in your head, which are all about how you’re unsure of your place). 

But at the crux of every conversation in long-distance relationships is not the specificity of a given region. It’s not about Chicago’s two seasons or L.A.’s endless summer. It’s not about Lake Effect snow or earthquakes. It’s not about comparitive theater scenes or above ground trains or baseball games or who has the better sandwiches. It’s about the intimacy behind those nouns. It’s the way we know a coat isn’t just a coat, but what the coat could really mean. The way small objects and tooth brushes act like tiny plans for the future. Guy says he is not the person who pleads, but that’s just what he does, “you could be so happy in your warm winter coat” he tells her. And Guy means it so damn much. But it’s not that Diane is afraid of commitment, it’s that she knows what’s really going on inside her. And summer camp relationships are fun, but a winter coat means telling someone the truth about what’s inside.

Diane’s depression has been one of the running aspects of the show that has rarely come to the forefront. To the point that you might even express some surprise at that notion she is depressed. She’s smart! She understands the world! She speaks so confidently! You might have even been reading all the ways she’s a mess as quirky little details that show how she’s human. But the depression has been sitting there the entire time. From her smoke breaks on the roof in the first episode of the show, through the quiet desperation of season’s past, she’s long been a passenger in her own life. Talking about the problems of society or capitalism? For a certain kind of person like her, that’s the easy stuff. But handling the intimacy of her own life, wants, and happiness has remained far more allusive. 

And after seasons of pulling back the rose colored glasses with Mister Peanutbutter, she has now accidentally found herself being offered something real. Something so damn real, and flawed, and earnest, and tricky. Guy is a good person, but he also doesn’t quite understand what’s really going on with Diane’s hesitance (at least not yet). He accuses her of having “the idealogical objection to feeling good,” but it’s not an objection. Diane retorts, “I would love to feel good!” with abject clarity because she really would love it. Of course, she would. It’s just that like BoJack, she’s just dealing with her own internal, starry void of deep depression, just as she’s dealt with her how deeply unloving parents and home life.

As they say goodbye Diane tells Guy, “I can’t be with you if you’re the only good thing in my life, it’s too much pressure, I’m sorry.” To someone who has never dealt with the throws of depression, it can seem a line of nonsense, but it is the very opposite. The need to get yourself in order and feel balanced and is the only way you can feel open. There are so many people out there who don’t understand this, likely because they’ve on autopilot and never really had a true crisis of selfhood. People who don’t understand that, for others, learning to “be okay being yourself,” is really a herculean task when you hate yourself completely. And right now, Diane is like her a book: a million thoughts, a million feelings, and they’re all so real and true. But, like the same book, she doesn’t have a sense of direction of what to do with them. So she returns home to LA. She sits in her shitty, unpacked apartment. And she reads BoJack’s thoughtful, prescient final letter which asks, “would it have been better if the whole thing never happened?” and then, “I spent so many years being miserable assumed it was the only way to be.”

Diane takes a moment, then she calls Guy and tells him a story about how when she as young and poor, having first moved to LA, she got obsessed with making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. And it wasn’t just about the fact that they were cheap, it was that they gave some kind of singular purpose to the swirling unknowability and loneliness at the center of her new life. Effectively, they gave her direction. And now, here she is. Another shitty apartment. With the same empty feeling once again. It’s even the same punishing lesson she learned in her trip to Vietnam. As the saying goes, “everywhere we go, there you are.” She’s realizing she doesn’t have to try and outrun it. Just as she doesn’t have to try and find direction alone. Everyone deserves love. She can wear her warm winter jacket.

And she doesn’t have to wear them alone.

OTHER NOTES

-The restaurant “Parmadillos” is, of course, the famous Portillo’s and Guy is trying to show her delights of the Italian Beef sandwich. As a giant food person, I would like to settle all Chicago-vs-LA food arguments right now by pointing out that they two cities just have different flavor profiles. Chicago likes foods with more fat and sugar (and is quite good at them) and LA likes foods that use a lot of acid and spice (oaxacan, korean, etc) and is also quite good at them. These differences create what we’re “used to” and it’s the entire reason we argue about this stuff. But it has nothing to do with relative goodness… Even though i still think they’re food could be improved by more acid! It makes your mouth water! It’s great! Try it!

-Spronk is a not so thinly veiled shot at tronc media (which is the owner of the Chicago Tribune) 

-The level of Moby Dick punnery in this one is lovely (along with the fake outs).

-There’s one amazing dig in the BILLIONAIRES ALLOWED TO MURDER news headline where it says underneath, “Wow, we finally agreed on something!” by Prancy Fillosi. I wonder who they are talking about!

BEST JOKES

-“There she is ‘The- Second Windy Muddy Big Shoulder City By the Lake!’”

-“There goes Waa Waa! the Chicago Baby Human, stumbling around like the furless, featherless dolt he is!” (I would love more examples of human racism in the BoJack world, please).

-“That’s a Gatsby reference, read a book!”

-“How is it snowing in October!?!?” said the Angeleno. Also, I’m going to do it. I’m going to have a nitpick. She grew up in Boston! She would know this!

-“We were spread thinner than a shitty New York slice of pizza and working harder than the 96 bulls!” (Note: I will accept this joke, but I also clutched my pearls at any slight against New York pizza, even the ironic).

-“If you want to do something about it, just make a billion dollars and murder me!”

-Best Tongue Twister: Did I miss one?

-This Week’s Mean Joke Target: “Directed by Brad Bird.” Can’t tell if this is a thinly veiled dig at the objectivist streak in his work, or just a funny goof.

-Best Bit Part Animal: Wide Eyed Lemur directly in front of the TV, watching the Chicago Baby Humans game.

-Moment That Made Me the Most Emotional:I think I’m going to stop saying moment that made me “happiest” and go this way instead. Because the closing credits song “High Above Chicago” by Fialta is just one of those gutting things https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf5yBXFbXK4&app=desktop