BoJack's back — and still great.
Watching BoJack Horseman can be painful. Not because it’s a bad show — far from it, the Netflix animated series continues to be one of TV’s best series — but because of how achingly familiar its most powerful moments can be in their emotional honesty.
BoJack Horseman: Season 4 reaffirms the show’s sense for shining light on the darkest parts of life in a season that is not quite as formally ambitious with its meta-jokes and storytelling as season 3. But the 13-episode return breaks new ground in making BoJack and his world one of the most relatable on TV, even if a whale still hosts the news and a dog is running for mayor.
Light spoilers for BoJack Horseman: Season 4 follow.
Season 3’s finale left the world of Hollywoo in a dark place — BoJack, lost in his depression after the death of Sarah Lynn, has disappeared from the worlds of Todd, Diane, Mr. Peanutbutter, and Princess Carolyn.
As a result, the series is oddly split in a way that both benefits and hurts the season. For BoJack, it means an increased spotlight on the title character that only benefits his arc, leading to series-best scenes for the Will Arnett-voiced character. It’s a season of rebuilding for BoJack, who sits out the first, Hollywoo-centric episode as he grapples with his attempted suicide.
Without his familiar surroundings, BoJack is forced to find himself in a place the show hasn’t fully explored yet — BoJack’s family history. This introspection kicks off in episode 2, an amazing dance of modern day and past events paralleled with one another in a haunting take on how family generations so often repeat the mistakes of the past when left unconfronted.
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Episode 2 is easily one of my favorite episodes of the series."
Episode 2 is easily one of my favorite episodes of the series — a unique examination of parent-child relationships that takes advantage of BoJack’s animated form and closes with a sequence that left me gutted.
BoJack eventually returns to Hollywoo with a brand-new life challenge that forces him to reckon with this idea of family and the cycles that so often play out in them. So much of the show has dealt with BoJack’s professional ambitions, and how those negatively impact his personal life. Yet here, stripped of any projects to work on BoJack only has time to work on himself and the legacy of his family.
As a result, the show delivers a transitional but absolutely necessary year of growth. BoJack’s mother, now in a nursing home, becomes a major player in the season, and the series finds emotional resonance in every interaction the mother and son have.
Wendie Malick continues to play Beatrice with the nagging disappointment that so clearly fashioned the downtrodden BoJack we’ve watched these last few seasons. But, beginning with episode 2, we also get to learn more of how her personality was shaped by tragedy. BoJack’s relationship with her this season results in one of the series’ most crushing arcs. He can’t make up for the mistakes of his mother’s past, and the mistakes of her parents’ as well, but perhaps he can do better for the future to come.
There’s a surprising amount of hope in BoJack’s arc, one that is oppositional to last year’s finale but feels true to where the series finds the character throughout the season. Season 4 doesn’t work toward a perfect world for BoJack — it’s still full of heartache, but with enough room for some light amidst the darkness.
BoJack’s journey works so well because of the singular attention it receives — unencumbered by the supporting cast most of the time, BoJack grows and develops in surprising, satisfying ways. The rest of the cast sets off on their own journeys, though they’re not always quite as rewarding, or interesting, as his.
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BoJack grows and develops in surprising, satisfying ways."
Princess Carolyn is finally coming to terms with the idea that she has to be more than her work — she needs a life, she needs to be someone and not just a job. Mr. Peanutbutter ends up running for governor while Diane tries to find her success as a journalist and in her marriage to Mr. Peanutbutter, and Todd engages in another wacky business venture while also better learning to understand himself.
The stories themselves are all interesting at times, but they often become the main focus of episodes and can’t quite always bear the same emotional weight as BoJack’s narrative. They’re at times hilarious, and at times cathartic — particularly Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane's combined plot — but the journey to some of those satisfying conclusions is rarely as satisfying as BoJack's.
That comes in part because whenever these individual stories pulled me away from BoJack, I yearned to return to that story. But they also each feel slight in their plotting, keeping characters in flux until enough time has passed for them to move to the next important beat of their stories. BoJack Horseman has shown such an adeptness for interweaving and building layers into its story and joke-telling. But with every story forced to stand on its own scaly or furry leg, it lacks a cohesion that has made the supporting cast click so well in seasons past.
The Verdict
Bojack’s fourth season splits a lot of its attention, leading to some of the series’ best moments and others that can’t quite stand on their own. Almost everything having to do with BoJack’s family is stellar, while the rest of the cast’s plots can be fun but can feel like distractions from the moving emotional core of the show. Thankfully that core is so affecting and so heartbreaking, proving yet again that BoJack remains one of the most powerfully human shows around.
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