BoJack Horseman is a show like no other. It’s animated, its protagonist is a sitcom actor horse past his prime, and it looks like a comedy, while it touches on serious themes like loneliness, addiction, and depression. That strange mix allows BoJack to be a one-in-a-million, where everything is possible, but there are real emotions and truth behind it. It also has an incredible cast: Will Arnett, Aaron Paul, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie, Paul F. Tompkins, and many more. Let’s sit on BoJack’s couch with Todd and rank every season of the show:
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6 Season 1
Netflix
Season one created this world and the relationships between characters, but until the last episodes, it just looked like another adult animation show with some jokes and social commentary. The show became more heavy and dense with each season, and in the first episodes, there were a lot more jokes without many consequences; and when there were consequences, they were just sight gags, like when BoJack (Will Arnett) steals the D from the Hollywood sign, and from there on, they always talk about “Hollywoo”.
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The last episode, when BoJack goes on a drug bender and asks Diane (Alison Brie) if he’s a good person, started showing where BoJack Horseman would go, taking itself and its characters more seriously than a show about a talking horse would’ve suggested. About the show, Alison Brie told Vulture: “I was struck by how smart, funny, and moving the show was. It was the most honest portrayal of loneliness in Hollywood that I’d ever seen.”
5 Season 2
The second season still took most things lightly and made fun of the Hollywoo apparatus. Its most important story was the shooting of the Secretariat movie and BoJack being able to portray him in the role, as the racing horse was his idol when he was a kid. Some of the darker tones and mature themes surfaced, while keeping things very, very funny. Especially in “Escape from LA” where BoJack’s actions start to be very uncomfortable, as it might look like he’s going to sleep with a seventeen-year-old, and we can see why BoJack is an antihero as much as Don Draper or Tony Soprano.
4 Season 4
The season delved into BoJack’s family past, especially in “Time’s Arrow”, where we saw the story of his mother, Beatrice, taking full advantage of the animation world to express something as tough and complicated as mental health issues and dementia. She’s dying, and BoJack has to learn to forgive her and stop the generational cycle of abuse. By this season, we already knew most of the lead character’s undoings, so the rest of the characters got more nuanced and profound stories: from Princess Carolyn’s (Amy Sedaris) journey to be a mother, Todd’s (Aaron Paul) asexual identity or the problems in their marriage between Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins).
3 Season 6
Although released in two eight-episode batches by Netflix, we’re counting it as one season; the last season. As so, the show makes BoJack face the consequences of his mistakes, creating a bittersweet, if earned ending. In this final batch of episodes, we understand why BoJack is one of the most depressing TV shows, and the final two episodes: “The View From Halfway Down” and “Nice While It Lasted” are evidence of that. BoJack is a much better person than when the show started, but that doesn’t mean he’s cured, as there’s no cure for depression, addiction, and loneliness; you just have to take it one day at a time and be kind to yourself and others, a lesson BoJack took the whole show to learn.
2 Season 5
By season five, the show was rolling and had become one of Netflix’s best original series. It was a critical darling, and many actors wanted to appear in it, so the creator and writers decided they could be more self-reflective and self-critical with their characters’ fears, hopes, and desires. There’s Diane’s aloofness after her divorce from Mr. Peanutbutter, shown beautifully in “The Dog Days Are Over”; there’s the beautiful scene between Bojack and Diane when she takes him to rehab in “The Stopped Show”, and especially there’s the masterful “Free Churro”. This episode is a monologue of BoJack talking, giving the eulogy at his mother’s funeral. It’s just him rambling and expressing his feelings, but it’s thrilling and maintains our attention throughout it.
About the episode, creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg told Variety: “We did the table read, and Will read the whole thing, and it was like, “oh, we’re done.” We could’ve just filmed him doing the table read and had an incredibly compelling episode. He brought everything to life in such a beautiful way.”
1 Season 3
By season three, things were getting more experimental and real as the show truly found itself. There were still jokes and social commentary, but there was also much more drama and characters in conflict with themselves and the world. As BoJack’s career keeps getting better (he just got nominated for an Oscar for Secretariat), his personal life crumbles, and BoJack cracks under that pressure. The experimental “Fish Out of Water” showed how great the animation was without almost any words; Todd finally leaves BoJack and their toxic relationship, and especially, the tragic death of Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal) in “That’s Too Much, Man!”
Sara Lynn started as this one-note joke about child actors becoming wild teenagers, but during the third season, she had become sober. BoJack destroys all that when they go together in a bender; the last one in Sarah Lynn’s life as she dies of an overdose. Hurtful, real, and raw, but with incredible animation and some jokes in between, that was the BoJack Horseman formula, and in the third season, they perfected it. That’s one of the many lessons comedy TV can learn from this incredible TV show.
