Episode 605 - A Little Uneven, Is All (Patreon)

When are we ready?

We like to think that readiness is an attainable feeling. Like one day we’ll just feel completely prepared to do what we want to do and that feeling emotions like fear and bravery won’t be necessary. But it never works like that. New things are always scary. It’s actually one of the central lessons that last year’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse taught us so well: attaining these moments only come through leaps of faith. Such leaps are terrifying, often to the point that we can’t even emote the feelings, we just get paralyzed by the thought. But, like the movie also shows us, it can result in some of the most rousing, self-confirming, and thrilling forms of catharsis in our lives. 

But if we’re being honest, most of the time our leaps of faith are quieter than that. They aren’t built off grand singular feats (like “i’m gonna jump off this high dive and make the team!”), but long-term important decisions, like trying to change our most problematic behaviors. These are often the most difficult leaps. Because we aren’t really moving toward a moment celebration, but instead letting ourselves wade into the deep pools of guilt, shame, and sadness. All in the terrifying prospect of having to live, day in, day out, in a healthy manner we never have before. In reality, it is making a leap of faith every second, every day, and just trying to get better at them.

All of this hangs over BoJack as he prepares to leave rehab, for real this time. He’s been stuck in a loop there and re-upped three times for a total of six months. But he knows it’s time, he knows people are starting to get fed up, and he even knows he’s done the work. But as the audience, we also knows he’s scared shitless precisely because he starts putting a grand emotional shine on things that feed his own ego (but in that slick Hollywood way he does sometimes, like when he was reliving Horsin’ Around episodes). But right when he’s at the moment of leaving the grounds, his most selfish habits and fears come rushing out.

But before we get to them, let’s cover a few other plot-lines because this episode is the first traditional “ABC sitcom plot” they’ve had this season. Actually there’s even a D plot if you count Todd employing various assistants to do inane Todd business, while he’s busy in his new (great) job as Ruthie’s nanny. But things get a bit meatier in the B blot with Mister Peanutbutter, who can’t seem to internalize the idea he’s getting bad press in the wake of his very-public cheating on Pickles (resulting in young women throwing hot beverages at him on set). In typical Peanutbutter fashion, he thinks this will all magically work out if does nothing, but Princess Carolyn knows better and is immediately trying to revamp his image by getting sympathy via meme. Specifically, the “Sad Dog” meme she invented a la Keanu (damn she’s good at her job). 

But then Princess Carolyn pushes it one step further, literally so, when she improvs a “suicide attempt” for Mr. Peanutbutter by pushing him in front of Joey Pogo’s car. Sure, he was twelve feet away and going a half a mile per hour, but people immediately rush in with comic-level-of-sympathy for his mental health state. To be clear about the depiction here, this is a show that so clearly understands the reality of depression and other mental health issues and wouldn’t dare to trivialize them. Nor is it trying to trivialize the way people talk about mental health and take it seriously. What the over-the-topness confirms is the immoral nature of Mr. Peanutbutter and Princess Carolyn taking advantage of it. And if I understand anything about this show, it’s that this immorality will be further explored.

Meanwhile, our C plot is appropriately back in Chicago, where Diane is trying to settle in with Guy and handle the looming specter of writing a book. The space of working from home is an odd one, where doing the morning dishes easily become “a days work.” It’s easy to make fun of this, but when paralyzed by writing you can just let so much time slip by unnoticed. Guy also gives the way-too-true advice that “the hardest part is starting,” but it will be even harder for Diane than he realizes. For the second Princess Carolyn takes care of the deal and gets her a deadline, it all becomes too real. 

Later, when Guy returns home and asks how she’s doing, Diane tells him everything he wants to hear, about how he was right and after writing about other people for so long, it’s great to focus on herself! But she’s lying. We already know that it’s so much easier for her to write about others, just as we know the depression is eating her away inside. And all she could really do today was muster out the simple, repeated line, “i’m terrible.” … I say it a lot in this show, but oof. And to anyone surprised by this, to anyone who can’t understand why someone who is such a good person like Diane would feel this way about themselves, that’s exactly what depression does. It lies to you. It breeds self-hate. It makes you think the sad, hopeless feeling you’re feeling is exactly who you are. And it makes you fixate on all that you’ve ever done wrong.

Appropriately, this is where we come back to BoJack.

As he’s leaving Pastiches for what he believes will be his final time, he learns that hot teen sensation Joey Pogo (Hillary Swank killing it as a Justin Bieber type) will be taking over his spot in the “fancy room.” This sudden, ugly, selfish fear of losing what’s “his” causes BoJack to run up and try and take his room back. Of course, this is an act of displacement, because his fears having nothing to do with Joey Pogo, they just activate it. Here we see Doctor Champ angry for the first time, because BoJacks fear is now preventing other people from getting help. But BoJack can only continue his spiral into bad memories of errant responsibility… And it all has to do with Danny Bananas. 

He’s the man who replaced Herb Kazzaz as showrunner on Horsin’ Around. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t seem to have much talent, wants to stick to the formula, and will tell everyone what they want to hear. In other words, he’s someone who can work a long time in Hollywood’s middling scenarios (Also, it’s pretty clear season one BoJack would love this guy). BoJack seems unsure at first, but when other people talk about missing Herb, he rallies behind Danny because he wants a clean start to alleviate his feelings of guilt. Again, it’s a moment of fear and running away from responsibility. We even see the building architecture of BoJack’s assholery when Sarah Lynn tries to talk about her feelings on all of it and he lashes out for presumably the first time at her. There’s so many devastating little details in the scene, especially when she talks about her stepdad “being weird” (oof). But Sharona’s defense of Sarah Lynn isn’t even enough, because in the end, they’re both varying forms of enablers.

Back in present day, BoJack hides under sheets, remembering this moment inhumanity. He yells, “you don’t know what i’m like out there!” but Doctor Champ can only try to offer kind words in response, “just think of all your amazing friends! Waiting to love you as you love them!” But these words ring hollow because BoJack still doesn’t know how to really love. If his friends loved him the way that he loves them? Then it would likely mean one-sided rejection, jealousy, and pain. But later when he opens up angrily to one of Todd’s many assistants, he starts getting into the meat of it: “I keep thinking I’m special and the rules don’t apply to me.” 

This thinking has invaded BoJack’s whole life, especially when it comes to dealing with his toxic behaviors. Like the idea that he could “moderate” his drinking, but not have to really. And the idea that he can drink and still be professional. And that if something bad happens, he’s too important to face the responsibilities of it. That’s exactly when there’s a moment of horrible responsibility, when he accidentally gets Doctor Champ drunk. It would be easy to see this moment as funny (and it is) and not his direct fault, just “an accident.” But it is completely BoJack’s responsibility because he’s the one who kept the vodka AROUND REHAB for his own selfish fixation and memory. And this is what brings the plots of the episode full circle to his memory and the time he got away with something so similar…

That would be the time Sarah Lynn got into his vodka (presumably at the end of the last memory). What could have been another huge, show-ending scandal was now in the hands of BoJack and Danny Bananas. Turns out that the kind of guy who “tells everyone what they want to hear” will also be the guy who slides off responsibility. That’s the thing about power hierarchies, they make you think you’re invaluable and irreplaceable. It hurts everyone if a show is cancelled, but blaming someone under you is an easy fix. And so the idea to blame their hairdresser, Sharona is set into motion with Danny’s little innocent-but-insidious comment about BoJack’s hair being a little uneven. And it’s the kind of thing that shows how ruthless cunning and evasive Danny really is… 

BoJack sits with this memory, as he is now sitting with a drunk Doctor Champ. It’s another secret, another responsibility, another moment of damage to someone, just because they’re close to his proximity. In other words, it’s all another moment in the void. No, BoJack’s not “ready” to move on because, even now. But that’s because he has to deal with the consequences of his past and present. Then when the episode ends, we realize that it was a rare episode of the show that is largely about plot set-up. Because for BoJack, Diane, Princess Carolyn, and the assistants of Hollywood…

Things are about to change.

OTHER NOTES

-The stuff with the assistants I am going to cover more in depth in later episode recaps!

-Sam Richardson’s drunk Doctor Champ performance just confirms he is a fucking genius.

-This show really captures the existentially dilemma of what it’s like being some poor kid who just wanted to make movies and then finding your unqualified, awkward self having to direct traffic as angry drivers yell at you all day and you get to tell yourself “I’m a part of things!”

-“Oh yes, I thought I heard retired dads in the distance, praising the 95 Chicago Bulls!” This a super specific reference because it’s the “Jordan comes back year” where they didn’t win it all. It’s also a year surrounded in conspiracy and the city’s innate defensiveness of their not winning it all.

-The specific people the assistants criticized in this episode were likely a result of something that happened when the writers of this show were young assistants. 

-“Hey, why’d you try to kill yourself you stupid idiot!!” Of course the paparazzi would say that.

BEST JOKES

-“Literally, here we are in the 90’s and these are the guys we think are sexy!”

-“Is it me or has the crew turned on you?” / “Nooooo, what they’re turned onto is hating me!”

-“Thanks for breakfast!” / “Thanks for calling it breakfast!”

-“Owwww, my gluten intolerance!”

-“Finally perfected my eggwhite omelet order, the secret is egg yellows.”

-“Oh, sorry, this is not a fetish-based cuckolding scenario.”

-“Ohhhh! A KERFUFFLE!”

-“It sounds like a delicious disaster!” / “Five people are dead!”

-“What do you say, B7? One more hike down funyun canyon?”

-[Out of breath] “It’s only… funny… if it feels… extemporaneous” 

-“Wait, how could it be part one if it’s definitive?!”

-“What happened? You’re packing your things backwards!”

-“Well I guess that makes as much sense as the rest of it.”

-“I didn’t mind because he wasn’t screaming at me, he was screaming at death!”

-Best Tongue Twister: “Boho go bye bye for jojo pogo? That’s a no go, bro. [collapses] Worth it.”

-This Week’s Mean Joke Target: “Assistants are like Deadpool movies, I couldn’t just stop at one even though I probably should have… Now I have 12!” I actually disagree with this, kind of!

-Best Bit Part Animal: Narwhal using horn to clean ice off windshield.

-Moment That Made Me the Most Emotional: BoJack admitting to Todd that he can’t do it by himself / “I’m terrible.”