10 Years Later, We Live in BoJack Horseman‘s World

Which TV show do you think we’re living in? For Succession fans, every time a media conglomerate buys a smaller, beloved company and lays off half the staff, it’s another day for a shitshow at the fuck factory. Or maybe you see the mainstreaming of Christian evangelism and it’s The Righteous Gemstones that’s called to mind. I know every time a streaming service debuts a reality show with an absurd premise, my X (f.k.a. Twitter) timeline is dotted with references to 30 Rock. For my money, though, the world we live in today belongs to that of the half-man, half-horse hybrid, BoJack Horseman.

When the show first premiered in August 2014, it was to much critical acclaim. In the first season alone, BoJack tackled depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, generational trauma, and the steep price of regret, as well as skewered fame and celebrity in a way that would become a cornerstone of the show. Although BoJack (the show, not the character) handled all of these issues with impressive sensitivity, I don’t think anyone was prepared for BoJack to cover increasingly dark ground over its six seasons, as BoJack (this time, the character) consistently took a one step forward and two steps back approach to his recovery, alienating those who love him, the creature of his celebrity wielding a long tail that enabled him to mess up again and again and again. When it comes to demonstrating the damage done by BoJack’s actions, the show doesn’t flinch; it’s a clear-eyed look at the way trauma stays with its victims, even if the perpetrators have long since moved on. The rest of the show’s main characters (Diane, Todd, Princess Carolyn, and Mr. Peanutbutter), too, must grapple with BoJack’s role in their lives and the way he’s affected them for the better and for the worse.

Yet, believe it or not, the show did all of this while managing to remain actually funny, with endless ongoing bits like Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities, What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let’s Find Out, the most ruthless iteration of Character Actress Margo Martindale (who is as good at crime sprees as she is at acting), the wildly described but never seen Erica, and approximately one million other completely silly and irreverent bits that I would wholeheartedly recommend.

In the sixth episode of BoJack’s first season, BoJack steals the “D” from the Hollywood sign, cementing his as a more heightened, separate world from our own (which, ok, yes, the talking animals also helps with that). It’s the kind of place where producers take full body scans of actors, allowing them to use their likeness in perpetuity; where all of Hollywoo’s assistants collectively rise up in one day to demand fair treatment; where a celebrity’s decision to get an abortion is litigated on cable news; where it turns out that J.D. Salinger has been in hiding as the owner of a tandem bicycle shop. Given how the last ten years have gone, it’s clear that our world today more closely resembles Hollywoo rather than the two being distinct universes. (If, at this point, you told me that J.D. Salinger was still alive and the owner of a tandem bicycle shop, I’d shrug my shoulders and say, Sure, why not?) In the last season of BoJack Horseman, Congress legalizes the murder of poor people by the wealthy; just this week, Disney attempted to toss out a wrongful death suit because the fine print bound the plaintiff to arbitration when he signed up for a free one-month trial of Disney+.

Whatever show you believe best reflects our time is an extension of your worldview: there’s a reason why you rarely hear anyone positing that we live in the universe of Parks and Recreation or The Good Place. That sort of saccharine sweetness belongs firmly in the pre-2020 world in which it was created. We live in BoJack’s world because our capitalist hellscape has gone so completely off the rails that anything less than biting satire would feel completely toothless.

But perhaps just as important as the fact that we live in BoJack’s world is the road map the show gives us for living in it. The world is insane, BoJack tells us, but we still have no choice but to keep going. In the show’s concluding—and perhaps most defining lines—BoJack tells Diane “Life’s a bitch and then you die,” to which Diane counters, “Sometimes. Sometimes life’s a bitch and then you keep living.” Life isn’t only about what’s happened to you; it’s about surviving, it’s about what it is you’re going to do next. And if there’s one thing we’ve all had to spend the last few years doing, it’s surviving, trying to wring any joy possible out of a world that feels increasingly fraught and dismal. As long as you’re here, that means there’s still time. Time to make the world better, time to heal, time to forgive.

For as long as I’ve watched BoJack Horseman, I’ve always felt that the show wasn’t particularly sad, per se, but honest, rather. Awful things happen, yet despite it, we must do the work of picking ourselves back up, of healing instead of hurting each other simply because we can. Maybe we can’t distinguish our world from BoJack Horseman’s Hollywoo in 2024, but the message of BoJack is that, at the very least, we can help each other through it.