Finality and Forgiveness in the ‘BoJack Horseman’ Finale
There is no right answer to the question of whether you should forgive someone who has hurt you but is trying to get better.
After BoJack Horseman’s final episodes hit Netflix in January 2020, much was written about the penultimate episode, “The View from Halfway Down” — and rightly so. Over the course of its six-year run, BoJack Horseman had a lot to say about addiction, celebrity culture and the entertainment industry, mental illness, trauma, and mortality. “The View from Halfway Down” was one last hard look at all of that, plus it featured some of the show’s best-ever examples of surrealism and absurdity, those scenes that felt uniquely BoJack because where could they work but on a funny-sad show about a depressed cartoon horse and his friends?
But a year on, the episode I’m still thinking about most often is the less-adulated finale, “Nice While It Lasted.” Following an episode that was the natural climax of six seasons of tackling big topics in big ways, the finale feels like almost an epilogue, but for me it sticks the landing in a way that I’ve rarely felt during this era of TV. “Nice While It Lasted” zooms way in and gets very quiet and finally, once and for all asks one very specific question: Can BoJack Horseman be forgiven? And whereas “The View from Halfway Down” finds BoJack dwelling on now-dead people from his life who can no longer confront him and to whom he can no longer make amends, the finale allows three women in BoJack’s present to weigh in.
The first answer comes from BoJack’s sister, Hollyhock, and it actually comes several episodes before the finale, in the form of a letter. After watching BoJack leave increasingly frantic voice mails for his sister, begging for acknowledgment and a restoration of what is, at least on his end, his most healthy personal connection over the course of the show, viewers don’t get to read the letter he gets in response. But we can deduce easily enough what it says. After learning too much about who BoJack is and what he’s done, Hollyhock is cutting BoJack out of her life; she became one of the best things in his life, but he is not one of the best things in hers. Can BoJack be forgiven? Hollyhock says no.
In some ways, this might seem like not such a big deal; Hollyhock was a relatively late addition to the show and didn’t have time to become one of BoJack’s long-term relationships. She wasn’t with us from the beginning, so losing her before the end could have had an easy-come, easy-go feel. But Hollyhock is BoJack’s only living family, and the only family member with whom he managed to have a not-completely-toxic relationship. We can’t say that she knows him better than most other characters, but if blood runs thicker than water — and given BoJack’s well-established trauma related to his familial upbringing — perhaps Hollyhock’s rejection weighs more than someone else’s would. When BoJack loses Hollyhock, he loses something he can’t replace, no matter how much he improves and how many new people might enter his life later.
But rejection is Hollyhock’s prerogative, and although we don’t get to see much of her side of the decision, I’m glad it’s included. One valid criticism of BoJack Horseman is that it might be a little too easy on BoJack Horseman, especially in the era of #MeToo and so many real-world rich-and-famous men getting let off the hook with so few consequences. It’s good that someone, and someone important, declines to let BoJack off the hook. Hollyhock’s “no” hurts BoJack and it hurts us, viewers, who loved her and saw the positive change she made in his life. But I think it can only be called a good thing that the show takes a moment before it ends to argue that it’s no one’s responsibility to keep a toxic person in their life, even a try-hard family member.
Next is Princess Carolyn, who, as always, has more grace for BoJack than he deserves. Can BoJack be forgiven? For Princess Carolyn — even when she knows it shouldn’t be; even when she wants it not to be — the answer is yes. It would be a real surprise if it wasn’t, and the ending note of the show would be much darker. But Princess Carolyn loves BoJack and he loves her, a constant in their relationship throughout the show even as it poses another interesting question about whether you can be good for someone you love if the love you have to give them isn’t what they need. That question stays unresolved: It’s implied that, when BoJack’s prison sentence is up, PC might continue to enable BoJack’s ongoing quest to stay in Hollywoo(b) and to more or less look good while doing so, even as she grimaces and tries to walk it back.
In fact, there’s a lot left unresolved between these two, notably things that Carolyn never confronts BoJack about: times he’s hurt her and how we’ve waited along with her for a much-deserved apology that never comes. Despite or maybe because of those unresolved issues and her seemingly endless ability to forgive her friend, she’s set some boundaries that would never have occurred to early-seasons Princess Carolyn. She’s pulled strings to get BoJack out of jail for her wedding, but only for her “industry wedding,” not the more intimate and “real” one she had several weeks ago. As BoJack narrates a dramatic scene that we viewers might have expected right along with him in which he saves Carolyn’s wedding day in some way, she laughs along and isn’t offended. But during that conversation, they finally put words to what has probably always been true of their relationship: She doesn’t need him. And, when BoJack broaches the subject of possibly needing an agent, “someone to look out for me” when his sentence is up, she gently makes clear that he can’t need her anymore either, not in that way.
If that all hurts, it should. Maybe “Nice While It Lasted” is more a farewell tour than an epilogue; before this long scene with Princess Carolyn, we get shorter scenes with Mr. Peanutbutter and with Todd. BoJack’s resolution with Princess Carolyn lacks the easy sweetness and warmth of those shorter goodbyes. But that’s OK. They’ll be OK, and that’s nice, even if it’s undeserved.
And then there’s Diane. BoJack and Diane’s relationship was the emotional center of much of the show, and the last almost-10 full minutes we get are dedicated to one last rooftop conversation between them. It feels almost like a meditation, a slow, intimate moment to cap off a show full of movement and fantasy sequences and blink-and-you-miss-it background jokes. Whereas BoJack’s conversation with Princess Carolyn leaves a lot unsaid, this conversation lays the biggest issue out on the table: BoJack called Diane to save him knowing she couldn’t. BoJack has, in some ways, always been calling on Diane to save him and knowing she can’t. She’s tried, in various ways at various times; she wants to be able to help him as much as he wants not to keep asking for her help.
The tragedy of this relationship is that BoJack and Diane really could be good for each other, and they have been at times. But it’s undeniably hard work to maintain the positive in their relationship instead of slipping into toxic patterns of codependency and enablement. Tough questions get thrown around during this conversation: “Knew,” huh? Wouldn’t it be funny if we never saw each other again? And Diane isn’t sure. Somewhere between Hollyhock and Princess Carolyn, Diane is ready to walk away from BoJack forever, and starts to. But she comes back to let him tell her one last story. The beautiful final scene leaves the two friends sitting side by side, looking at the stars overhead and contemplating their past and their future — as individuals and as a unit. Can BoJack be forgiven? Maybe. It’s where we leave not only Diane, but the show as a whole; as BoJack and Diane contemplate the question, we are left to do the same. About our favorite animated half-horse-half-man and maybe too about the BoJacks in our real lives.
BoJack Horseman always worked because of its careful tightrope walk between reality and fantasy. Over the course of its six seasons, the show had moments of brilliance and beauty, not despite but because of the not-quite-real world, it belonged to. It was able to ask some truly dark and difficult questions about the human experience precisely because it was a step removed from that experience.
Much of the last season was dedicated to following different threads of potential Big Consequences for BoJack, but in the end, it moved past all that to say one last thing about human connection: Forgiveness is ultimately deeply personal, and there is no right answer to the question of whether you should forgive someone who has hurt you but is trying to get better. Or rather, there are three. No. Yes. Maybe.
