Bojack Horseman and Infinite Jest
Bojack Horseman is no stranger to experimental narratives, unflinching examinations of the self, and dives into the nature of addiction and brokenness, all while skewering media and celebrity through elaborate references and self-referential humor. Therefore, it makes sense that it borrows many of these themes and at times seems to directly reference Infinite Jest, the 1996 novel by David Foster Wallace.
Narrative Experimentation
Postmodernism is a school of literary thought which generally relied on fragmented, experimental literary structure, and this style is taken to the extremes in Infinite Jest (to a degree that some have argued that the work is no longer postmodern, but rather an exaggeration in a post-postmodern style — Infinite Jest comments on this itself, but the distinction is left ambiguous by DFW — p. 140–142). The novel itself is structured as a series of vignettes, treatises, mathematical proofs (p. 1023) all painting only a partial picture of the true convoluted narrative.
In this sense, Bojack Horseman engages in this same form of narrative experimentation, albeit to a lessened extent. Most episodes follow the traditional sitcom format, described by Dan Richter as follows:
Sitcoms, minus the commercials, are typically 22 minutes long. Thus, a sitcom script is generally between 25 and 40 pages long. Every sitcom episode has the main plot (story A), as well as one or two subplots (stories B and C). Sitcoms usually have three main acts (divided by two commercial breaks), as well as a teaser scene in the beginning. Make sure that the problems or challenges of stories A, B, and C are wrapped up or have some conclusion by the end of the third act.
Many episodes of Bojack Horseman operate under this format. A good example of this is the episode “Live Fast, Diane Nyguyen” — while Bojack and Diane are off in Boston dealing with the ramifications of Diane’s father’s death, Todd is engaging in the subplot of passing off Bojack’s house as David Boreanaz.
But Bojack Horseman’s most emotionally impactful episodes have come when it rejects this traditional narrative, and opts for a more experimental narrative structure. “Time’s Arrow”, “Fish out of Water”, and “That’s Too Much, Man!” are among the show’s most acclaimed episodes, and all of them eschew the traditional narrative structure.
In the fifth season of Bojack Horseman has a similar reliance on experimental narratives for emotional impact — “Free Churro”, “INT. SUB”, and “The Showstopper” all rely on this idea of using experimental narratives to enhance emotional impact.
But while both Infinite Jest and Bojack Horseman operate with these postmodern ideas as a basis for their narrative structure (even if Bojack Horseman looks at this idea in a far more sincere lens than Infinite Jest maybe), it does not inherently link the two works together, merely gives them a common starting point.
The true connection between the narrative structures of Infinite Jest and Bojack Horseman can be found in the episode “The Amelia Earhart Story”. The episode deliberately draws focus to Princess Carolyn’s story, searching for a baby to adopt in her hometown of North Carolina, and the main subplot does not involve the characters back in Los Angeles, but rather, Princess Carolyn’s backstory (a technique similar to that used in the season four episode, “The Old Sugarman Place”). Our glimpses of what goes on in Los Angeles occur only as Princess Carolyn answers her phone on occasion, talking about an upcoming stunt for the Philbert television-show-within-the-show.
The tertiary subplot is that Bojack pridefully stated that he wished to perform his own stunts, and as a result, was thrown off of a building on a motorcycle as a part of a stunt, injuring his back. This is a pivotal event in the context of the season! As we see in later episodes, it is this injury that introduces Bojack Horseman to opiate painkillers, which later results in Bojack’s addiction that drives his struggle for much of the latter half of the season.
This parallels the main narrative device of Infinite Jest — the crucial event of the book, the climax of the story, is never truly written about. The main conflict of Infinite Jest is that Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants (or the A.F.R.) — Quebecois separatist terrorists in wheelchairs — are seeking the footage of a tape known as Infinite Jest (or “The Entertainment”, a term I will use in referring to the tape henceforth to avoid confusion), a film that saps the will to live from anyone who sees it to use as an instrument of destruction.
The creator of the film, James Incandenza, died and took the tape with him to his grave, and so the A.F.R. seeks out the Incandenza family and those involved in the film to discover it. This culminates in the A.F.R. forcing James’ son Hal and a friend of the film’s sole actress, Donald Gately, to locate and dig up James’ body and possibly the film. But the only mentions of this event occurs on page 16 (“I think of John N. R. Wayne [a tennis star from Montcerf, Quebec and A.F.R. double-triple-agent], who would have won this year’s WhataBurger [an amateur tennis tournament sponsored by the title company], standing watch in a mask as Donald Gately and I dig up my Father’s head”) and page 934 (“He dreams he’s with a very sad kid and they’re in a graveyard digging some dead guy’s head up and it’s really important, like Continental Emergency important…”).
The most pivotal scene in the novel is not written about in any depth, and it is only mentioned in passing, early in the novel (at a point where no reader would know why John Wayne would be forcing Hal Incandenza to dig up his father’s head, or who Donald Gately is), and late in the novel as a fever dream. Just like in Bojack Horseman, the most important event is buried, and the consumer of the work is given no time to process its significance. In the next episode of Bojack Horseman, Bojack gives a twenty-minute-long eulogy for his mother and displays almost no ill effects from his growing addiction, and we almost forget that the accident occurred in the first place.
Thus, it is this specific narrative device — the downplaying of the climax, to the degree that it is not even mentioned — that leads me to draw a specific parallel between the narrative experimentation of both works.
Note that both works use this narrative device to achieve different effects. Bojack Horseman uses this avoidance as a means to shock viewers with how Bojack has changed as a result of his addiction, whereas Wallace intentionally avoids the ending of the book to allow the tone of the book to “to stop and then kind of hum”. People have commented on the circular nature of Jest, how the end of the work directly connects to the beginning (meaning that, in a sense, Infinite Jest is also an “infinite” work) — perhaps Wallace did this to avoid the traditional linear plot, with a rise and fall, and the removal of the climax helped smooth out the circular plot path.
Examination of Addiction
Season five of Bojack Horseman is distinct from other seasons in that, while still taking an unflinching look into the life of a truly broken person, it specifically explores the nature of addiction. In the episode “Ancient History”, we see the lengths Bojack Horseman is willing to go in order to obtain some form of opiates to numb him from his own personal pain, and his addiction begins to spiral out of control through “The Showstopper”.
Infinite Jest as well deals unflinchingly with these themes of addiction — the book frequently references stories from Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and Joelle van Dyne, the sole actress in “The Entertainment”, meets Donald Gately in a halfway house for recovering drug addicts. Wallace spends an extraordinary amount of time discussing the exploits of a druggie on the streets of Boston by the name of “Poor Tony Krause”, who violently detoxes in a Boston Public Library Bathroom for a substantial portion of the book. While Wallace partially uses these stories of addiction to draw parallels between those consuming entertainment and media in the modern age, Infinite Jest is not without its commentary on the nature of addiction:
You see now that It’s your enemy, and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It’s gotten you into is undeniable and you still can’t stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can’t stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. (p. 347)
As a thousand-page-encyclopedia, Infinite Jest has far more to say on the nature of addiction than a half-season of television — but its examination and unflinching nature of The Disease compares to the way Bojack Horseman engages with this theme and with the mentally ill.
But perhaps the biggest clue linking Bojack Horseman to Infinite Jest is the ending of Infinite Jest and the ending of the penultimate episode of the season, “The Showstopper”. Already, the visual clues of the ending of the episode alone evoke Infinite Jest. The white-and-blue dotted sky already evokes the image of the novel.
But arguably of more relevance is the content of the ending: at the end of Infinite Jest, Gately, the recovering narcotics addict, is in a hospital bed dealing with the intense pain of a gunshot wound while refusing narcotics, and he experiences a transcendental experience:
Gately felt less high than disembodied. It was obscenely pleasant. His head left his shoulders. Gene and Linda were both screaming. The cartridge with the held-open eyes and dropper had been the one about ultra-violence and sadism. A favorite of Kite. Gately thinks sadism is pronounced ‘saddism’. The last rotating sight was the chinks coming back through the door, holding the big shiny squares of the room. As the floor wafted up and C’s grip finally gave, the last thing Gately saw was an Oriental bearing down with the held square and he looked into the square and saw clearly a reflection of his own big square pale head with its eyes closing as the floor finally pounced. And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out. (p. 981)
Gately is a rather-non-lucid state, and the highlighted part of the passage refers to a previous line on p. 934: “He dreams he looks in a mirror and sees nothing and keeps trying to clean the mirror with his sleeve.”
There is an inherent obsession with the recognition of the self throughout Infinite Jest — the late Aaron Schwartz believed that James Incandenza created The Entertainment as a means to help his son’s own emotional disconnections, believing it to be some physical symptom, when it was really Incandenza’s own treatment of his son that resulted in his problems. It was this inability to confront himself for his own problems that drives much of the action of the book (drawing parallels to Bojack Horseman, who is himself largely unable to confront his own shortcomings for his personal failures). Therefore, it is poetic that the novel ends with Gately (himself an addict) making this recognition, finally seeing himself in the mirror, as Incandenza could never do.
Both Infinite Jest and Bojack Horseman are driven by egocentric artists who cause harm to those around them despite well-intentioned actions because they fail to recognize themselves as the fundamental root of their problems and the problems around them. And both book and episode end with this ethereal recognition of the self. In Bojack’s case, it is this recognition that spurs him to action, and its significance is fundamental to the rest of the series.
The Ph/Filbert Connection
There are still other similarities that would seem to imply a greater-than-passing connection between the latest season of Bojack Horseman and Infinite Jest. On p. 1006, Wallace “reproduces” a letter sent from Avril Incandenza (James’ wife) to Orin Incandenza (James’ and Avril’s son). Curiously enough, the letter is addressed not to Orin, but to “Filbert” — a name implied to be a family nickname (the Incandenzas used many nicknames, including “The Moms” for Avril and “Himself” or “The Mad Stork” for James), though the nickname itself is not used frequently in the book at all.
The name “Philbert” in Bojack Horseman is an unusual choice for a baby name initially, and an even more unusual choice of name for a television show — even as a comedic choice. That the writers of Bojack Horseman might use a homonym of an obscure nickname of an important character in Infinite Jest seems beyond the realm of coincidence, especially in the face of the rest of the similarities with Infinite Jest.
Consider the potential significance of “Ph/Filbert”: the first episode of season five, “The Lightbulb Scene”, goes to great lengths to establish how much Bojack Horseman sees himself in the character of Philbert, where the beginning and end of the episodes mirror each other. Indeed, when Bojack confronts himself at the top of the staircase at the end of “The Showstopper”, he is wearing the costume of his character and confronting the balloon wearing the clothes of this character.
In the sense that Philbert reflects the character of Bojack, Orin/Filbert reflects the character of James Incandenza. As Incandenza’s oldest son, Orin was raised to be a superb tennis player (James was also raised to be a superb tennis talent by his own father but fell off the track along the way), but falls off the same tennis-wagon and ends up as an injured NFL-punter instead, with a habit of sleeping with young mothers and ruining their lives. Schwartz points to Orin specifically as reflective of his father’s worst parts: “Orin … is such a partisan of his father that he feels the need to repeatedly ruin the lives of people like his mother…”
Butterscotch Horseman is frequently framed as a narcissistic artisan who struggled frequently with art. The pre-title scene in “Free Churros” establishes that Butterscotch has an almost fanatical devotion to his craft, and reacts with anger at anyone who dares disturb him from his work, including his own child. It is these psychological wounds and feeling of inadequacy directly stemming from art that leave Bojack so damaged throughout the series, and yet, Bojack still falls into the womanizing ways of his father while pursuing some form of “true art”, something beautiful. Orin too struggles with these feelings, and likewise, engages in vice stemming from his parental issues.
Further Connections, Final Notes, and Related Readings
There are still further winks and nods to Wallace and his influence on the stories and themes of Bojack Horseman.
Consider the Lobser, one of Wallace’s later works and a collection of his essays, is included on Princess Carolyn’s bookshelf.
For the Secretariat film, the “You Are Secretariat” billboard looks just like the cover of the paperback version of Infinite Jest.
And there are other thematic connections as well, specifically regarding the nature of entertainment as a toxic, paralyzing influence, addiction, and other themes shared between Bojack Horseman and Infinite Jest but without a combination unique to both shows.
I suppose that’s the problem with this entire analysis — there is no specific parallel that truly aligns Infinite Jestperfectly with Bojack Horseman, just as there is no set of themes truly unique for each show. Both Infinite Jest and Bojack Horseman draw from the same pool of nihilistic culture, and as much as I can make some things align when looking at them from one perspective, they fail to match up from another.
Still — that’s how things should be. If Bojack Horseman is drawing inspiration from Infinite Jest, it would be doing itself a disservice as a television adaptation of the novel. Connecting the themes of the work while changing around the narrative mean that the television show provides audiences with fresh perspectives. Both Infinite Jest and Bojack Horseman are excellent perspectives on entertainment, addiction, and mental illness, they still tell an engaging story while confronting these themes similarly — so it should be no surprise that these works deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.
Related and Referenced Works
- The Infinite Jest Liveblog: What Happened, Pt. 1 by Michael Moats
- The Infinite Jest Liveblog: What Happened, Pt. 2 by Michael Moats
- Infinite Jest Notes by Rob Friesel
- Cracking the Sitcom Code by Noah Charney
- How to write a 30-minute sitcom script by Dan Richter
- What Happens at the End of Infinite Jest? (or, the Infinite Jest ending explained) by Aaron Schwartz
- BoJack Horseman and Infinite Jest Are Basically The Same Story by Katy Koop
