It’s a cliche for a reason: The best spiritual successor to Mad Men’s Don Draper is a talking horse.
Don Draper hit the airwaves at a very specific time — arriving only a few months after The Sopranos sang its swan song, he lead a parade of antiheroes across our TV screens. No matter what channel you were on, you could count on finding a show where the man was tearing through the emotions of himself and everyone around him, mucking things up because he just couldn’t stop himself. While the conventional wisdom had once held that these were characters who viewers would never let into their living rooms, let alone follow week after week, the late 1990s and 2000s brought one after another. Soon, fans couldn’t even stand anyone who stood in the way — even when these men’s “way” typically meant murder and mayhem. Antiheroes were complicated, compelling, and callous. Just the way people wanted them.
It was into this world that BoJack Horseman was born. Launched in 2014, the show centered on an anthropomorphized horse (in a world populated partially by humans and partially by other anthropomorphized creatures) who was a washed up ‘90s-sitcom star, drunk on booze and his own nostalgia. Nevermind the bright colors or the zany background gags — to be in BoJack’s orbit was to be hurt by him, even when he’s trying to improve himself.
So perhaps it’s surprising that BoJack is one of the most considerate shows on TV. Always just as fast with the punchline as it is with the gut-punch, BoJack Horseman was never afraid to bring the tone down to truly marvel at the dreadfulness of its lead. That emotional awareness would radiate out, creating space for more small and tender moments throughout the show. And so, ultimately, it has managed to push past farcical puns and wordplay, and past filtering its antihero through so many genres (not least of which is cutting Hollywood satire). The show became something quietly radical, both of and ahead of its time: it is a show that is intensely interested in the difference between absolution and redemption.
Narratively speaking the former is more expected. The work to be actually redeemed is hard, and it can be almost as fun to watch as it is to do — which is to say, often very trying and with several missteps. As “difficult” characters have continued to populate our screens, audiences have become more accustomed to giving characters a pass to speed through the heartfelt atonement and get to the warm and fuzzies at the end.
“A Horse Walks into a Rehab,” BoJack’s season six opener, is all about this kind of deflection — BoJack wants to take responsibility but without any of the work; it’s easier to be seen as inherently rotten and corrupt than to admit that his addiction made him act in vile ways and make nasty choices that hurts those around him. In an odd paradox, if you’re truly irredeemable your conscience can be cleared.
BoJack has shown BoJack’s growth in fits and starts, gaining momentum just as fast as he was getting in the way of his own growth. For every self-help book advising him on the first step — ”you have to believe that change is possible” — he has a moment of self-doubt. BoJack as a character was always inclined to listen to the darkness of both his past and his present. And he is happy to talk with darkness wherever he can. “You come by it honestly, the ugliness inside you,” his mother says later in the same episode, preying on his worst fear. “You were born broken, that’s your birthright. And now you can fill your life with projects, your books, and your movies and your little girlfriends, but it won’t make you whole. You’re BoJack Horseman. There’s no cure for that.”
But importantly, BoJack doesn’t forget its responsibility to hold the titular horse-man accountable for his actions. Even with all the tonal swings into genuine wacky humor, it never lets the distress in his wake quit rocking the boat. Throughout “A Horse Walks into a Rehab,” his deflections get a little closer to all the things that have brought him there — not least of which is Sarah-Lynn, the child star from his old TV show who died from an overdose while on a bender with BoJack in season three. When he sees a teen ditching rehab, he quietly tries to corral her back in with a deflection that is its own truth: “If you OD tonight, then I’m the one who will have to lie to everyone about what happened.”
In these moments we are reminded that BoJack is a show where the fun keeps rolling all the way until the knife is at its hilt, and then it twists. But they also lay the groundwork for the larger momentum of the show. Every season he hits yet another “rock bottom,” and every season he inches closer to taking the steps towards genuine connection he needs. BoJack may not always be moving forward, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t moved; like a phone vibrating on a bed stand, each little jolt moves it a little closer to the edge. It just takes a long time to realize that you’re miserable, longer to realize that you can change, and even longer to earn the forgiveness of those around you.
Over the course of the first half of season six (the last half will be released on January 31), BoJack Horseman circles around what it means to make these reparations in a life where you’ve caused so much emotional devastation. Smartly, the show doesn’t force anything; as BoJack sank deeper, our ensemble spread out, with just a thread stringing them together. For some, like Todd (the slacker who fails upwards and once lived on BoJack’s couch), BoJack’s return from rehab is just a quiet lunch where it’s clear they’re not as close as they used to be. For the women in BoJack’s life — his beleaguered former agent and ex, Princess Carolyn, or his ghostwriter and closest confidant, Diane — it’s softly supporting the new phases of their life. Slowly, we recognize a new side of BoJack. Where his unhappiness once splintered out from him, we now see signs of life growing through the cracks.
It’s an awfully hopeful message, especially for a story based around an often cruel and selfish man in Hollywood. While BoJack was borne of a world that built shrines around hurtful fictional men, it is leaving us in a time where the real-life harassment by men has been upended in some way. To call BoJack prescient in this sense would be foolhardy; it doesn’t take a crystal ball to read the offensive writing on the wall. But by making room for its main character to work to redeem himself, it’s managed to build a story that’s far more compelling than one which made their characters better quickly.
As the final episode of the fall season, “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” reminds us, there are true ruins left in BoJack’s past. BoJack hasn’t shied away from peering into how Hollywood creates a culture that enables the reckless cruelty BoJack peddles in. He has truly harmed people he doesn’t even think about, perhaps irreparably in the way that his actions have wormed their way through the lives of women in his path. We see how an actress recovering from trauma might be labeled “difficult” (the kiss of death to her career), or a director who took the blame for him and then had to crawl out from doing glorified ads (or “immersive product placement journeys”). The biggest gutpunch is set up to come from how BoJack will redeem himself to his much younger half-sister Hollyhock, recently informed of (one of) the worst things he ever did.
It’s a much different palette cleanser at this stage than his other antihero brethren. When Mad Men got a split final season, the first half ended with Don facing some hard truths but ultimately finagling his way back into his company. Breaking Bad’s mid-final season cliffhanger was also a major character reveal, but Walter White always confused understanding for absolution. Both those men wouldn’t, couldn’t, admit something close to their truth until they got much closer to the ending.
“I’m very interested in the idea of forgiveness,” BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg told Vulture in 2018. “I think it is important for us as people to forgive the people in our lives, and find ways to allow them to redeem themselves, and for us to be able to forgive ourselves and find ways to be better. I don’t think that necessarily scales to forgiveness on a public level.”
To say redemption comes easy would be an undermining of all the work that BoJack has put in over the years to showing how growth is a conscious effort. The show’s refusal to give simple, easy answers is perhaps its greatest strength, allowing it to use comedy as either a vehicle for the deeper truths or catharsis, depending on the moment. The constant introspection is hard won, and even as a changed man BoJack still manages to be thoughtless. Ultimately, the show is more interested in how we make the choices in our lives, actually allowing for a narrative where redemption is possible as more than a cheap trick or easy map for where we are.
BoJack has now made some serious steps towards redeeming himself. The question going into the final run: what can he do with it?