BoJack Horseman Finds Creative Ways to Self-Harm in Third Season Debut

Ana spends the entire episode emphasizing to BoJack what, exactly, he’s going to have to do in order to win an Oscar, the new object he has decided will fill his sadness hole. Every season he ends up getting what he wants, in some fashion or another, and then moves the goalposts around once he realizes that that’s not actually how happiness works. My therapist reminded me recently that happiness is fleeting—contentment is a more reasonable goal. BoJack will never learn this, not as long as he’s in Hollywood.

The episode is funny—the jokes are good. There’s a bit where Todd gets lost literally the moment he exits a hotel room in New York and then laments that this city will eat you alive. Diane Nguyen, a character that is such an accurate reflection of the particular insecurities that drive one to be a writer that she makes me want to lay down in traffic, is now a social media manager, which is just so sad and so perfect. It’s still a comedy, just one that makes me want to lay down on the ground and stare at the ceiling for hours.

But in the larger scope of the season, this is where we begin to see BoJack self-destruct, again. One of the things Ana needs him to do to win an Oscar is stop defending Horsin’ Around, his old sitcom, because it was a shitty ‘90s sitcom. But the memories of that show do make him happy. He liked his old shitty show, but he’ll get on stage and say he hated it anyway, because, like me, he finds incredibly creative ways to self-harm.