Finished it this weekend. Hilarious as always, and I'm still realing from episodes 9 and 12. This has some of the most human, gut-wrenching writing I've ever seen.
@Wagomu:
Nah, was a little bit dicky of me to just come charging with the negative and little explanation, haha.
I'm really not sure what messages you could be talking about tho.
! Episode 6 has some thoughts on depression and anxiety? That was a good ep, but it sorta stands by itself as maybe the strongest element in the season. Even then, I think it was a little unfocused of an ep and just has a good throughline and end that don't mesh all that well with the rest. I guess there was stuff about family, but did it really say anything about family? They kinda just gave us some set pieces like Bojack being a little uncharacteristically nice, which they were trying to connect to the mother plot, but that never really resonated with me. I don't think there was enough focus on Bojack's relationship with his mom, anyways, to justify that. You can say there were messages about marriage? Except the Caroline and Diane/Peanut Butter plots aren't connected or compared in any real way, and something only really happens with the latter at the very end of the season, left to be explored in the next one.
! I think anything that could be said on any of those topics also gets undermined by the return to status quo. The depression and anxiety stuff is kinda standard Bojack, the family relationships all sorta reset by the end, and the romantic ones leave Caroline single again and Diane and Peanut Butter in marital strife, both of which are things we've seen before.
! I guess I'm really just annoyed by the status quo and the continued ultimate safeness of the show. As much as it lampoons old school sitcoms, at its core it isn't much better.
It was definetely noticeable that there was less of a unifying narrative thrust, with everyone being relatively seperated plot-wise, but I thought the season was thematically strong.
! For Bojack himself, I saw the season as being about familial trauma; how tragedies fester and build up, and how trauma gets passed on through the generations. About how people who are hurt hurt others in return, and how Bojacks greatest fear is that he'll Bojack things up with his "daughter". Bojack faces down the trauma of his past, while trying to avoid passing it to the future. While the whole situation might've been shitty, Beatrices' decision to have Hollyhock severed for the family ultimately proved to be benign- she got to grow up detached from the infectious toxicity of the Horseman/Sugarman family. The season also teases a "Natural" component to the voices in Bojack and Hollyhocks minds, but the fact that Hollyhock was subjected to a "Nurturing" enviroment puts her miles ahead.
! I also saw it as being about time, as referenced in the Bojack family motto and across several episode titles. More specifically, about how time marches on, and may pass you by while you‘re stuck in your own misery, unwilling to change. Bojack starts the season entombed in a shrine to his own familys past, and moves on by acknowledging this, and tearing it down. Beatrice is trapped in the past in her mind, as time has robbed her of her senses before either she or Bojack could get any closure with each other. They waited too long, just like Bojack did with his dad. But when gets his one chance to tear into his mother…he lets go. Theres no point anymore.
! Beatrice also let time pass her by in her marriage, refusing to end it seemingly out of spite, to the detriment of everyone. Likewise, Mr Peanutbutter and Dianes marriage has been on autopilot for a while, but to an extra high degree within this season. Diane constantly tells herself that it’ll be better once the campaign is over, and things go back to normal, that its okay as long as she remembers the positive “core” of the marriage. “Pretend to be happy,a nd eventually forget you’re pretending”, Bojack advises. After the campaign ends, the couple jumps straight into another distraction to postpone “normal life”, but once that resumes, Diane acknowledges that she can’t keep living like this. Unlike Beatrice.
Time has also passed Princess Carolyn by in a very real, biological sense, and she too struggles to acknowledge it. She’s Princess Carolyn, she can do anything by herself! Her mother had 12 children, her body was made to have babies! She’s too hung up on her definition of “familial perfection”, and her unwillingness to compromise wrecks her relationship.
! I also disagree about the status quo being unchanged; Bojack may be inching himself back into his friends lives, but he's also taking steps towards becoming a fundamentally more healthy person, with the toxic specter of his mother partially disarmed, and an honest to god positive familial relation- one with her own support network, to stop Bojack from fucking her up, like he did Sarah Lynn. Bojack in fact grows so much that he instantly agrees to help Princess Carolyn, the same person he threw under the bus in her time of need last season. He’s becoming less hung up on the past, more willing to move forward, less of a force for destruction in their lives, more of a supportive confidant in times of grief.
! Bojack grows so much that he changes his ringtone.
Todd is mostly comic relief, but is also growing more independent- in one episode he literally rejects being a "one note character" by going to the Aces meeting. And after four seasons of escalating tension, Diane finally pulls the plug on her marriage with Mr Peanutbutter - that wasn't just strife, that was "Divorce". After a conversation about how mister Peanutbutter doesn’t want her to end up like his (in this season, prominently featured) ex-wives, Diane ends the conversation by breaking down that she’s literally tired of trying to look for the good in her marriage. And princess Carolyn may revert to being single, but she does it by self destructing so bad that her dream of doing everything by herself and doing it perfectly (i.e. not being willing to adopt a child) starts to crack at the end.