‘Bojack Horseman’ Season 4: A Proustian collision of past and present hopelessness
I’m always terribly affected by Bojack Horseman — it makes me laugh and cry like few other TV shows, but sometimes it strikes a little too close to home, as was the case with its fourth season, released the day after my 20th birthday and watched over a week-long period when I moved away from home and should probably have invested my time in something a little jollier and less melancholy. In the end, this relatively gloomy season put me in quite a bad mood, affecting my objective stance on what was unarguably a sensational run of the animated comedy — now overwhelming feeling like an animated drama.
With that disclaimer out of the way, let me just say how blown away I was once again by the work done by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and his team of writers and animators. Bojack has taken the centuries-old practice of anthropomorphism to a whole new level; leading to the moment where a cat called Princess Carolyn crying in her car is just as heart-wrenching as the breakdowns of Nora Durst on The Leftovers or Diane on Twin Peaks. After 51 episodes, there are few among Bojack’s audience who see the animal and human characters as different species.
There’s a behavioural element to this, but it’s also testament to the incredible performances of the voice cast: this is truly the keystone in Will Arnett’s career, while Amy Sedaris, Paul F. Tompkins, Aaron Paul, Alison Brie and newcomer Aparna Nancherla lend unprecedented emotional nuance to their roles (beastly and otherwise). Sedaris impresses in particular this season, as Princess Carolyn is put through the wringer of suffering usually reserved for our eponymous stallion. She faces a miscarriage, failure at work and in her relationship, and the decimation of comforting family lore.
Things aren’t much easier for Bojack; in the phenomenal “Old Sugarman Place” episode, he visits his grandparents’ home and triggers a season-long plot involving dark family secrets and his mother Beatrice’s dementia. Beatrice is one of the most compelling figures the show has introduced: failing to recognise her own son, she spikes Hollyhock (supposedly Bojack’s daughter, actually his half-sister) with amphetamines while battling her own deteriorating mind. “Old Sugarman Place” shows us the circumstances of her childhood, and in the season’s 11th episode “Time’s Arrow” we learn the rest of her story. There is a melding and blurring of past and present, visually and thematically, that’s stunningly intelligent and much more literate than a cartoon about a horse has any right to be.
While the storytelling on Bojack can often be quite simplistic, as seen in “Time’s Arrow” where the structural genius is let down somewhat by imperfect dialogue, it constantly compensates with a clarity of feeling and unexpected poignancy that’s really rare in contemporary American cinema. These Beatrice-focused episodes have elements of Moonlight and other stories with atypical examinations of time; they’re absolutely marvellous. In the episode “Stupid Piece of Shit”, we get a full-on insight into the mental state Bojack has (arguably) inherited from his family ascendants: this episode’s opening montage is Bojack’s answer to Fight Club, the episode in whole could be a Dostoevsky story.
Meanwhile, the show tries to retain some levity by throwing goofy sidekick Todd into a slapstick-heavy situation involving clown dentists. It’s often hilarious, but it sometimes has the air of a distraction from the season’s real substance. Season 4 is, at 12 episodes, Bojack’s shortest, but — like many Netflix comedies recently — it could potentially have been even stronger at a tight 10. Todd has been given a vaguely ‘serious’ new characteristic: he’s asexual, and he’s about to learn the nature of an asexual relationship. Also, Mr. Peanutbutter ran for governor this season — it was a fine, small bit of satire; unremarkable; and not what these episodes will be remembered for. The weakest beat comes with “Thoughts and Prayers”, a serviceable send-up of the gun debate which doesn’t have the urgency or originality of earlier abortion or sexual assault episodes. A half-hour dedicated to Fracking is significantly funnier.
My personal reservations aside, I genuinely don’t think this was Bojack’s strongest season, but “The Old Sugarman Place”, “Stupid Piece of Shit” and “Time’s Arrow” undoubtedly rank amongst its superior episodes. Overcoming the challenge of making talking animals so profoundly empathetic remains an achievement in itself; that a show like Bojack is capable of telling fresh, sincere narratives unrelentingly without compromise is one of the clearest testaments to the wonders of the ‘peak TV’ era.
