BoJack Horseman's excellent penultimate episode gazes long into the abyss
TV Reviews BoJack Horseman
“You ready for the headliner? Please welcome to the stage… the star of Horsin’ Around and The BoJack Horseman Show! Philbert! Secretariat! The upcoming Horny Unicorn! Son of Butterscotch and Beatrice! Husband to no one! Father to none, that we know of! Stand-up comedian, actor, crippling alcoholic! A talented charmer and a stupid piece of shit! It’s… BoJack Horseman!”
On a television show, death never has to be the end. Unless the actor or actress in question passes away—and even that’s no barrier in today’s world of hologram musicians and CGI Star Wars actors —it’s always possible for a character to make an appearance after they’ve shuffled off their show’s version of the mortal coil. Science fiction and fantasy series can always contrive a way to resurrect a character, conjure a doppelgänger, or overlap a parallel universe into the primary world. Even traditional shows without that element of unreality can always pull out a dream sequence or near-death experience, giving the audience a chance to spend a little more time with a character they love. And even more valuable, it gives the other characters a chance to get some sort of closure or realization, something they were more likely than not denied by their departure from the world.
That’s probably one of many things that made living a life of television such an attractive thing to a young BoJack Horseman. A world without a sense of finality, a world where there was always a chance to make up for even the worst mistakes, and a world where the unknown was always put off by the ability to go on to the next episode. And as he got older and had to learn the hard way that those rules don’t apply and when people leave the stage they’re not coming back, that unrealistic world became even more of an ideal to strive for, a place to retreat when he couldn’t handle the realistic one.
Now, BoJack has never needed to retreat more. He’s lost his friends, his family, his career, his reputation, his home, and his legacy. He seems to only have one thing left to lose, and with only two episodes left in all of BoJack Horseman, “The View From Halfway Down” gives the feeling he might lose that as well. It’s an episode that drowns the viewer almost as much as it’s drowning BoJack, slotting firmly in the pantheon of A-grade BoJack Horseman penultimate installments. It continues that second-to-last episode trend of impossibly finding a darker place to take the series, and it takes BoJack right with it—taking him to the place where, at least, he may never come back.
That cold feeling begins immediately in “The View From Halfway Down.” It’s clear from the beginning that this is some sort of dream sequence occurring in the wake of BoJack’s “Angela” bender, given away by the fact BoJack would never voluntarily attend a dinner party at his mother’s house. And as it goes on, the clues aren’t subtle as to what might have transpired: a constant dripping on his head he can’t seem to dodge, his water at dinner tasting like chlorine, his trademark “Portrait Of The Artist (Pool With Two Figures)” painting on the living room wall showing a swimmer no longer swimming. (That last one is more subtle, but BoJack fans pounce on those little details in my experience.) Prior fantasy journeys like “Downer Ending” and “The Stopped Show” traded on an ambiguity between what was real and what wasn’t, but there’s no such blurring here. This is fully a distraction being constructed by BoJack’s brain, hiding from him and us that something very wrong has happened.
But if it has and everyone must be distracted, what better way to do so than a séance? BoJack’s sitting down to dinner, and to quote Joseph Sugarman on the old Sugarman place in winter, there’s only ghosts here as his dining companions. Sarah Lynn, who died in a tragic circumstance that he’s spent years running away from. Beatrice Horseman, who let him know every moment of his life that she wished he’d never had one. Herb Kazazz, who told him to his face that any chance of forgiveness was following him right to the grave. Corduroy Jackson-Jackson, who he acted with in Secretariat and later found swinging in his trailer. Crackerjack Sugarman, the uncle who he never met but whose death consumed his grandmother and mother. And even Zach Braff, real-life friend of Donald Faison who tried to unify the terrified masses and wound up food for the Biel-ievers.
As far as a dinner party guest list goes—and a list of BoJack Horseman guest stars goes—that’s pretty hard to beat. It’s a callback to long-lost rhythms of the series, from Herb and BoJack’s comedy routine-as-conversation dynamic, to Bea’s unmatched ability to cut down any of BoJack’s achievements, to the attention-starved vibe of Sarah Lynn as she morphs through every one of her career stages. (Little Sabrina grew up right before our eyes, right, Todd?) Bit players like Corduroy and Crackerjack get a chance to shine, displaying an enthusiasm that’s off-putting given the circumstances of their deaths. BoJack comments that he’s woken up from this before, and there’s definitely a lived-in feel to the interactions, that this game of Best Part/Worst Part has played out in an area where time doesn’t matter.
And while all the voices are distinctive ones thanks to the masterful voice acting on display, there’s a clear feeling everyone is having the same conversation. It feels right that this episode is in the hands of Alison Tafel, who also wrote season four’s “Stupid Piece Of Sh*t,” because it has an equal grasp on just what’s jumbling around in that not-at-all-suited-for-phones skull of his. Listen to the argument that Herb and Corduroy are having about just how much joy you can take in an action, even charity, before it goes from selfless to selfish. Or hear the twitchy panic in Sarah Lynn’s voice as she demands someone tell her that entertaining people was worth everything she gave. Or pick up on the way Crackerjack’s ebullient tones waver when he tries to come up with anything he did during the war. This isn’t a true haunting, this is BoJack desperately trying to rationalize where his life has ended up, using the dearly departed to make arguments one way or the other.
While BoJack implies this is a recurring dream, even he seems taken aback by the last attendee of the party—as is the audience. BoJack’s issues with his mother have been discussed to death in prior seasons, but his relationship with his father remains blocked off as Butterscotch died well before the start of the series. Instead, we’ve been limited to the occasional flashback, and a eulogy tangent in “Free Churro” explaining how he met his ignoble end. A distant figure who sealed himself away in his study, chasing after a novel one pages-long sentence at a time, emerging only for Scotch and the occasional resentful pickup from soccer practice. It’s small wonder that instead of seeing Butterscotch in this moment, BoJack instead has to create a hybrid, a post-race Secretariat who’s speaking in his father’s voice and slips into the same bickering cadence with Bea he heard around the table growing up.
Stepping out for a smoke with this ButterSecretariatch figure, BoJack can’t keep himself from confrontation, and the weight of that interaction is overwhelming for just how much is being covered in the moment. He’s confronting the father that he could never connect with when he was alive. He’s confronting the first hero that television ever gave him and whose tortured legacy he tried and failed to bring to life. And thanks to the early choice to have Will Arnett voice both Butterscotch and BoJack, there’s the added layer that he’s confronting himself. Case in point, BoJack’s dismissal of ButterSecretariatch purporting to care: “You cared about getting drunk and telling everyone how miserable you were.”
What follows out of ButterSecretariatch isn’t fully an apology, an explanation, or even a regret—it’s some synthesis of all three as he speaks wearily about the degree that he cared and tried so hard not to. And that’s something you can see in BoJack as well. Despite Biscuits Braxby’s accusation that he hurt so many people because he didn’t care, BoJack does care about the people he’s close to and the people that he’s hurt. He’s terrible at showing it and often only does so in hindsight, but his actions aren’t those of a sociopath, they’re those of someone so emotionally stunted that defense mechanisms would always be the default. He’ll never get the answer from his father or his hero that he wanted, because their problems are his problems. How can he get them to admit they love him when he doesn’t love himself?
As that conversation takes place, the show must go on. While it’s a showcase for the talents of the deceased, the real star of the show is series composer Jesse Novak. At this point, barring an overly ambitious twist for a series finale, my dream of a BoJack Horseman musical episode is dead. But from the first bars of the Horsin’ Around theme playing over the efforts to get a bird out of the house, “A View From Halfway Down” reminds you just how much Novak’s themes added to the series. The creativity is on display to the end, less refrain than it is remix: taking songs that had a tragic connotation and somehow finding a way to make them even more tragic. Sarah Lynn offers a cover version of “Don’t Stop Dancing,” loading the lyrics with an even more fatalistic direction and putting a “Prickly-Muffin” spin on the second verse. Crackerjack picks up the trumpet to accompany his older younger sister’s dance with a few bars of “I Will Always Think Of You,” and then lets the power of the song keep the trumpet afloat.
And as they perform, one by one, they exit stage left through a door frame that shows nothing on the other side but the purest blackness. A blackness that matches the tar pits of Hollywoo that Charlotte said so long ago would drag BoJack under, and that matches the dripping ichor coming from the ceiling. An ichor that’s growing tendrils and ensnaring anyone who approaches it as the show heads towards the end. There’s always more show until there isn’t, as the saying goes, and Tafel’s script makes it very clear that both this show and BoJack have the end in sight. In the most potent moment of the entire episode, BoJack tries to latch onto some hope for where things are going, and Herb’s final words are a matter-of-fact dismissal that he’ll ever see those he’s lost outside of his oxygen-deprived brain:
“Is it… terrifying?”
“No. I don’t think so. It’s the way it is, you know? Everything must come to an end, the drip finally stops.”
“… See you on the other side.”
“Oh, BoJack, no. There is no other side. This is it.”
“This was gonna happen to you one of these days,” Bea tells BoJack in a tone surprisingly devoid of malice. And hasn’t this been teased from the very beginning of the series, right there in the opening credits? Think back to driving his Tesla into the pool during an Oscar nomination party and being in no hurry to get out. Or his long fall with Ed into a cold Michigan lake. Or his memory during Bea’s eulogy of how the Horseman family’s shared misery translated into the feeling of drowning together. Hell, even think back to the fate of not-John Stamos. (“We thought night swimming would be fun, but the current was too strong!”) Foreshadowing has always been part of BoJack Horseman’s reality, and paying this off would make a sad amount of sense.
But to his credit, BoJack fights as hard as he can to escape this reality. I’ve had several conversations about whether or not BoJack Horseman would end with BoJack committing suicide, and I’ve always fallen on the side of never seeing him able to do that. For BoJack to commit suicide would be a betrayal of the show’s ethos regarding mental illness, that giving up is never the answer and that as hard as it may be to get there it is possible to find a way to save yourself. Despite flirting with the possibility and almost letting go on a few occasions—most notably in the final moments of “That Went Well”—BoJack doesn’t want to die. ButterSecretariatch is the avatar of BoJack one last time in that regard, realizing halfway through the titular poem that he wants to take that plunge back, all his bold talk about ending his life on his terms just talk. And BoJack fights every last hint that his death is a foregone conclusion: He tries concocting an explanation for how he couldn’t still be in the pool, he runs as fast as he can from the ichor, and he desperately grabs at a phone to call Diane to come save him.
And none of it works. And at last, BoJack decides to stop fighting. It’s a brutal final moment as he asks dream-Diane to just stay on the line a little while longer, turning his head to look out at the full moon as the darkness consumes everything around him. Whatever happened in the past or present becomes irrelevant against the encroaching darkness, that lack of any epiphany or clarity in what is ostensibly his final moment. The chatter stops, the crowd departs, a needle drops, the music starts—only that music is one long beep of a heart monitor that sounds identical to the series finale of Horsin’ Around.
Then the monitor starts beeping again. It looks like for once, the idea that real life isn’t an episode of television might work in BoJack Horseman’s favor.
Stray observations:
- Achievement in Voice Acting: You can’t pick any favorites in this murderers’ row. Wendie Malick, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Schaal, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brandon T. Jackson, Zach Braff—every one of those ghosts shows up ready to play and to remind you of just how much they brought to the show in the first place.
- What dream episode from other series did this one remind you of? Personally, I had serious flashbacks to “The Test Dream,” which was a masterful deployment of past images and passed-on characters and expertly captured the implausible logic of dreams.
- I cannot say enough about how good this episode looked. These dream/hallucination/internal monologue episodes are always the showcase for BoJack Horseman’s animation team, and everything is masterfully done here: the choreography of Bea and Corduroy’s performances, the flourishes of Sarah Lynn’s show, and the undertow of the black ichor consuming everything.
- I mentioned the spoiler alert of the drowning horseman in “Portrait Of An Artist (Pool With Two Figures),” but the house’s art gallery is a reference smorgasbord. The Sugarman family portrait, the Horseman family portrait, Crackerjack’s military headshot, the Horsin’ Around house, and the painting Bea gave BoJack from Joseph Sugarman’s collection are all on the walls. And when he’s fleeing the void, you can see the holes Sarah Lynn’s friends drilled through Joseph’s painting to build their cocaine closet and the chunk Ruthie took out of “Portrait Of An Artist.” Again, no show knows its references like this one.
- BoJack brings a hydrangea to dinner, and in the first half of the season he spent time growing a hibiscus at Pastiches. Even when it comes to her namesake, Hollyhock is just out of his reach.
- Appropriate last meals: Bea’s eating hospital/nursing home food, Crackerjack’s eating Army rations, Herb’s eating the peanuts he was deathly allergic to in life, Corduroy has his autoerotic asphyxiation lemon, and Sarah Lynn gets her long-counted carbs. BoJack? His water bottle and a plate full of pills.
- As potent as the decision was to merge Secretariat and Butterscotch, I do wonder how much of that choice was motivated by John Krasinski’s availability or lack thereof.
- “With a drop like that, you’d think she was the ratings for Veronica’s Closet when it moved to Mondays.”
- “Sacrifice is good. It has to be, because I sacrificed a ton, and I was freaking awesome.”
- “We don’t need to compare apples to Auschwitzes.”
- “I’m running out of patience with you running your mouth!” “And I’m running out the clock until we both… Well. Here we are.”
- “You’re being very rude. I was about to do my roller-dance routine!”
- “This is the hard part. And now, the easy part.”
- “…Yeah. My day was good.”
- Today in Hollywoo signs, symbolism edition:
77 Comments
Another reference about the Bojack drowning is the idea that he died in a lake because he was too old to swim and then he just let the water consume him. This happen when he tried to write his own book while high on drugs with Todd and Sarah Lynn, remember?Also, did Beatrice transform in something in her last jump in the dance scene? All we see is Bojack face, but we can see some abstract shadow of her. I wonder if it has some meaning in a episode full of references.And a super anticlimatic part of the discussion of sacrifice in the table was the Crackerjack reveal that all of his kills in the war was friendily fire. Holy shit. And that’s coming from the most noble death that from the table.
This is not a critique, but a question I’ve wrestled with.I really wonder why Dream!Herb didn’t taunt Bojack about Hollyhock during his introduction. “Brother of Hollyhock” would have slotted in perfectly. Would it have put an even nicer underline on Bojack’s absolute failure as a (horse)man? Or does her total absence do a better job of this?
Agree. It does feel like Hollyhock would have weighed more on BoJack’s mind at the end. And it also feels like her absence at the end of the series is one of the larger tragedies of the series.
I think her absence does the same- because, to Hollyhock, he doesn’t really count as her brother, he’s just some guy she met and happens to be related to biologically. She’s erased him from her family tree and so he doesn’t even get her in his eulogy
Seeing Herb and Bojack vibe together like that the whole episode was so bittersweet. It’s not often a show can show you two people’s chemistry like that, especially when it’s not one of those “lived in” aspects that builds up over time.
Did the reviewer not know this was an extended riff on Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz or just forget to mention it?
Let’s go with the reviewer not being familiar with a 40-year-old movie that isn’t exactly in the cultural zeitgeist.
I mean, it’s not like there was a major FX mini-series about its creator last year.
Net(F)li(X)
Yeah, huge hit watched by upwards of 1.2 million people. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/live-feed/fosse-verdon-tacoma-fd-ratings-show-value-finding-a-niche-1203454
“not in the cultural zetgeist”.Seriously? All That Jazz? If any modern musical is the most referenced over and over in TV, movies and comedy, it is ATJ.
You’re going to need to show your work on that. The only time in the last decade I’ve heard reference to All That Jazz was people talking about Roy Schneider’s career. It’s not even Fosse’s most famous musical (see Chicago), and a number of other musicals (e.g., Grease, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and even the super recent Hamilton) are almost certainly more well known to the general public than All That Jazz.
I know a bunch of musical theatre nerds and I couldn’t have told you there was such a show as “All That Jazz”.
Folks! What can I tell you about my next guest? This cat allowed himself
to be adored, but not loved. And his success in show business was
matched by failure in his personal relationship bag, now — that’s where
he really bombed. And he came to believe that work, show
business, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz, was
bullshit. He became numero uno game player — uh, to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended and the reality began. Like, for this cat, the only reality — is death, man. Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never nobody’s friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life — uh, you can applaud if you wanna — Mr. Joe Gideon!
That is exactly what I thought while watching it. I expected Herb to start singing “Bye Bye Life”.
I didn’t think BoJack Horseman could top Downer Ending. Then Escape From LA was released. Then Fish Out of Water, That’s Too Much Man!, The Old Sugarman Place, Time’s Arrow, Free Churro, and The Showstopper were released. Now, for the final penultimate episode, the series tries one last time to leave viewers stunned at what they just witnessed. I can’t speak for everyone, but they sure succeeded for me. I found The View From Halfway Down to be one of the very best episodes of BoJack Horseman ever produced, a stunning piece of animation and one that further cements this show as perhaps the best cartoon since the Golden Age of The Simpsons. Six seasons in, the show can *still* add new dimensions to its antihero.Okay, gushing over. -I’m surprised I didn’t consider Crackerjack’s sacrifice more closely before, but it makes total sense that his death would not only cause the family to harden emotionally, but also internalize the idea that self-harm is good, and feelings of happiness are not something to strive for. It makes so much sense as one of the many roots of BoJack’s problems.-The color palette in this was absolutely gorgeous. That shade of purple outside the windows when they were all eating dinner? Nice.-There were a ton of details Les pointed out that I didn’t notice. Again, this episode takes full advantage of animation as an art form. It’s brilliant. -The happiest moments in BoJack’s life were him doing stand-up with Herb back in the 80s, and him teaching at Wesleyan. That those are the only two that really come to mind (or could even be remotely considered happy) is telling. And heartbreaking.
I totally agree. Best episode of the show, best cartoon ever. Certainly my favorite, at least. Everything that makes a superb episode of bojack was needle sharp here. And you have six seasons of weight behind it.
BoJack Horseman is one of those rare shows where, when they decide to take a huge stylistic and narrative risk, it *always* pays off.
I had to look it up and I was kinda shocked that the poem ‘View From Halfway Down’ wasnt already a poem, it was written just for the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if that line becomes a popular saying to reference a bold decision you only clearly see as a mistake once youre powerless to take it back. That part gave me the chills.
Stanley Tucci made me actually shudder with the delivery of “stand-up comedian, actor, crippling alcoholic and a stupid piece of shit”. If this was the last episode it would’ve been a different kind of show, but it also would’ve worked.
I respectfully disagree with Les’ assertion that a winner can’t be named for the voice acting – aside from Arnett himself, as far as the guests go, Tucci ate this episode. Herb ran the gamut: from reprising the “just say the thing!” bit, to the “sit down” bark, to the menacing introduction, to the absolutely chilling “There is no other side. This is it.”Like, everyone was amazing but Tucci was on another level here.
I have to say, considering his character died way back in season 1 and has barely appeared since then, I was thrilled by how much Stanley Tucci we got this season. Every line just makes Herb such a beautiful and tragic character.
* season 2
True, but from memory that was an off-screen death. I guess I just counted his death as season 1 since that was the only time we saw present day Herb.
I first knew of Tucci in a syndicated cop show called The Street, which I watched, maybe all of? Anyway, I read about three pre-air reviews of it, and they all went like this: “Stuff, stuff, et cetera, this guy Stanley Tucci is fantastic, more stuff, stuff.”
I have watched a total of five episodes this past year. I have to be in the mood for this type of show and usually I am not.Nice to know the finale is going to be good if I ever get there, motive to pay attention.
The most chilling part of the episode was, in my opinion, the poem which the episode itself is named after. Will Arnett’s delivery of the calm-turned-frantic perspective of a jumper realizing what a terrible mistake they’ve made gripped me for the rest of the episode, and even after the show ended. As soon as I finished Nice While It Lasted, I went back and rewatched The View From Halfway Down. There are so many haunting, bittersweet and gutwrenching moments in this episode, but Secretariat-Dad’s reading of The View From Halfway Down will stay with me most of all.
It definitely painted a very painful picture, the poem was definitely the standout for me too.
Yeah, that brought a friend’s suicide by hanging forcefully to mind. Time to think.
Sorry you have that weighing on you, hope your thoughts take you good places.
As someone who routinely deals with suicidal depression (thankfully not that bad right now), I was pretty shaken by Herb casually mentioning he would have committed suicide if the Knicks weren’t having such a great season.“but what if the Knicks WEREN’T having a great season?!”“I probably would have gotten into baseball”
I think that was so beautiful: it wasn’t that he *would* have committed suicide, per se: “I probably would have gotten into baseball” is a clever, cloying, lovely reminder––we *want* to stay alive, and you’ll take any good excuse for happiness. Thank you for reminding me of a favorite moment I’d forgotten!
As someone who struggles with passive suicidal ideation and The Meaning of it All literally most of every day this episode was brutal.
Someone pointed out to me that the poem moves from third to second to first person and it’s so moving.
I definitely got that terrible claustrophobic feeling when Bojack couldn’t get out of his dream too. The best part of the episode was the poem that Secretariscotch (Buttertariat?) read. That really hit hard.
The poem was absolutely a high part – but the dagger what done me in was the phone conversation with Diane at the end. “Well if it doesn’t matter… can I stay on the phone with you, at least?” That resignation mixed with a need for some kind of comfort. Man – it’s getting me to well up here at work.
Agreed. That phone call made me want to cry.
Allison Brie’s line readings at the end were so creepy/syrupy/perfect.
Yeah, the way she said “BoJack…it doesn’t matter” was haunting.
Yes! Her calm almost sleepy voice was perfect. It was so sad.
This episode really got me, especially at the end — due in no small part to stupid Netflix and their stupid UX that prioritizes the next episode over watching the credits. If you don’t play the credits, you don’t hear BoJack’s heart monitor coming back to life. I was rekt until I heard those beeps.
I assume that was intentional. Surely the show’s team is aware of a core UX feature of the platform they were developing on.
That was sneaky and also brutal.
They must have tampered with that since. I watched it yesterday and where the new episode should have started the buttons disappeared and the credits played all the way through including the international cast. It gave me the illusion that it truly was the finale. I had to start the next episode from the main menu even!
Yeah all I heard was the flatline until just now reading this review and I was so mad the last episode copped out on his dying. Turns out I should be mad at Netflix.
If we’re going to make Sopranos dream episode comparisons, I actually thought this reminded me more of “Join The Club” and especially“Mayham”. Very similar conception of what it’s like moving from life to death, reality bleeding into the illusion on the edges, even a reckoning with his mother at the threshold. Hell, the lighting of the interior where he hadn’t been before felt almost the same. As much as I love the Sopranos, this felt a little too similar to that for this episode to get into the absolute highest pantheon of Bojack episodes for me. That said, it was still a fantastic episode that did what it needed to as the penultimate of the series. The poem (both text and performance!) and Bojack’s desperation to connect with Diane at the end really crushed me. And probably goes without saying, but the visuals and sound were stellar. We got resolution or allusion to too many threads from the series to count.
Haven’t seen The Sopranos in a long time, but even if it is a similar story, it’s executed very differently.
I very much agree with you, LongTermParking. BoJack entering the house to have dinner with Bea et. al felt like a continuation of Tony’s coma/death dream sequence Mayham, with him (as Kevin Finnerty) standing outside the the house where the family reunion is taking place and not wanting to go in. But the similarity didn’t detract from the greatness of The View from Halfway Down for me. BoJack has given many subtle and not-so-subtle nods to The Sopranos. I think of it as the continuum of great television. I would love to connect with episode writer Alison Tafel and ask her if this was a deliberate choice.
Two finales (or almost finale in this case) of terrific shows where a door at the end means two completely different things is some fascinating timing.
Well, actually fairly similar things – it’s just only one show has character(s) that can choose when to go through it.
There’s a world of difference between The End 🙂 and The End 🙁
An artistic representation of a nightmare. I couldn’t tell you if there’s a single joke in this masterpiece, it’s just sheer horror and tension.
Zach Braff brought like 1% comic relief, maybe.
Just like in real life!
Zach Braff was literally the only respite from what a beautifully cruel and haunting episode this was.
This episode is probably the greatest example of why I’ll miss this show so much. Brilliant character work, gorgeous animation, phenomenal voice work and pure absurdity like Zach Braff rollerskating and saying tongue twisters like: “the Zach Braff Short Stack Breakfast Attack at Shake Shack. Cash-strapped hashbrown fans who hashtag #ZachSnacks get cash back fast with the Braff bucks-.”
App. It ends with him yelling “Aaaaapp!”
“As potent as the decision was to merge Secretariat and Butterscotch,
I do wonder how much of that choice was motivated by John Krasinski’s
availability or lack thereof”Let’s be honest, I doubt it was Krasinski’s availability so much as… like, he’s good, but absolutely no-one could’ve read that poem like Will Arnett did. It’s literally the centrepiece of the episode, and I’d bet money that they merged Secretariat and Butterscotch just so Arnett could deliver it – with the added bonus of all the implications about how father figures failed Bojack and contributed to him being where he is nowAnyway, amazing episode. In the top 3 best the show ever did, I think
This review would have been a great opportunity to give some credit to director Amy Winfrey, whose Bojack resume also includes “Downer Ending”, “Escape from LA”, “Hank After Dark”, “Ruthie”, and “Free Churro”. It’s no coincidence that so many of the series’ most effective episodes have her at the wheel!
Amy Winfrey?! Just remembered why I know that name. A few weeks ago I had a vague memory of an amazing show i hadn’t thought of in years. After racking my brain all I could remember was a school, monsters and a web series on Nickelodeon. That was enough (I love the internet). It was called Making Fiends, delightfully twisted, it had the home made feeling of the web series on a slightly higher budget with simple drawings and her voice work. Apparently Nickelodeon had no interest and shoved it on Nicktoons. Glad she’s done well for herself, the episodes you listed are some of the best of the series. I will now look up everything she’s done in the interim. Also, everyone should check out Making Fiends
I don’t see a lot of people talking about it, but the whole last verse of the ‘Don’t Stop Dancing’ reprise where Sarah Lynn goes quiet and repeats the last line while staring into the doorway sadly really stuck with me. So many incredible performances this episode, but what a perfect final act by Kristen Schaal.
Yes, plus the line where she talks about it was “A song you taught me when I was small” was chilling as well, being a callback to what he tells little Sarah Lynn way back in season 1.
A testament to how good the song “Don’t stop dancing” is, that when I heard it in this episode I kept trying to think what real Broadway musical it was from. It wasn’t until I read this that I realized it was from last season. Good music.
All That Jazz anyone?
It’s quite funny describing this episode to somebody who has never watched the show.“oh yeah, Zach Braff is there as he was previously burned alive and eaten by Jessica Biel”.
Fucking harrowing.
Between The Good Place, Arrow and now this, I can’t believe how many TV shows have made me contemplate the after life this week…
After taking significant breaks every 2-3 episodes to recover and prepare and savor, I decided to head out to a coffee shop for lunch, just to get myself a coffee and sandwich and do things to take my mind off of the tragic end the series was obviously coming to, even if just for an hour or two before heading back home, more prepared for whatever final disaster was in the cards for BoJack.But even then I couldn’t help myself. I’d brought my laptop with me, so I cued up the last 3 episodes while I was sitting at a table in public. Which led to me crying in public, at first just trying to downplay my teary eyes and wipe them off when a napkin. Then I realized I hadn’t breathed, and I tried to take a deep breath through my nose, but it had gotten all snotty and gross and made appropriately snotty and gross sounds. So then I opened my mouth and gulped in a huge breath of air, and it was so loud, and then I couldn’t breathe out without sobbing a few times.And I kept really hoping nobody saw this or heard this or came up to ask what was wrong, because then I would’ve had to say, “No, really, it’s nothing. I’m pretty sure I just watched a cartoon horse die. Probably. I’m not really sure. I have another episode, and it was all a dream, but even if he’s not dead, it’s just really sad, you know?”
So this episode pretty much legitimately disturbed me. I never thought anything would top “Time’s Arrow” in that department, but here we are. Will Arnett deserves all the awards just for his reading of Butterscotchretariat’s poem alone.
As visually neat as this episode was, I will never praise the actual animation of it. It’s like moving shadow puppets – their limbs and bodies can only move a certain way. Just think how this show would look if it were animated traditionally like, say, The Simpsons or Gravity Falls.
I absolutely held my breath when that last tone of a heart monitor hung in the air like that, until it finally started beating again. This show continues to find ways to top itself and i’m sad it’s gone.
You forgot Bojack’s meal: pills.
Pretty sure the character’s name is Corduroy Jackson-Jackson.
I think its worth pointing out that the dance routine deaths owe a big debt to the movie of Chicago.
Herb’s final words, “Oh Bojack, no. There is no other side. This is it.” I can’t get over them. That was the most chilling moment of the entire series for me, and I do not say that lightly at all. And Stanley Tucci nailed the delivery. It’s perfect and terrifying.
Because it’s the little things that count, the line that had me laughing the hardest was Sarah Lynn mentioning her (I’m trying to remember the exact line here) “confidently sexual virgin tour.” Such a bust on the Britney/Jessica Simpson late 90’s/early aughts era of female pop star stars
And her hit “No, No, No! (No Means Yes)”