Poor BoJack. With a best-selling memoir, he finally gets just what he always wanted: a triumphant return to Hollywood relevance. Unfortunately, he is also left with the baggage that comes with renewed fame: an endless parade of star-struck women who truly feel they know him. They badger him about that one time he peed in Drew Barrymore’s car and other antics he’d rather forget as he tries to reinvent himself as a serious movie star. But worse than dredging up embarrassing anecdotes, his fangirls’ deep knowledge of and love for his antics risk making him feel loved for who he is, good and bad.
BoJack is far too fond of brooding to sit back and enjoy any potentially positive attention, so instead he gravitates toward the one person in town who knows literally nothing about him: Wanda Pierce (Lisa Kudrow), newly named head of programming at Major Broadcasting Network. She doesn’t know much about anyone or anything, for that matter, because she’s been in a coma for the last 30 years. In her mind, Kirk Cameron and David Copperfield are the big stars her network should be gunning for.
From the moment she meets him at a roller rink, Wanda takes to calling BoJack out on his negativity. Don’t be fooled: At least for now, Wanda nudging him to appreciate the rogue curly fries that pop up in the “appetizer crossover episodes” of life doesn’t feel any less forced than the syrupy sounds of his George Takei-voiced inspirational audiobook. But BoJack falls so hard for Wanda that he actually wants to “gasp!” keep hanging out after they have sex.
When they meet at Todd’s awesomely bad, self-made Disneyland, Wanda and Diane immediately butt heads. Wanda’s sharp distaste for negativity sits in stark contrast to Diane’s sizable dark side. After all, she and BoJack first connected as outsiders who can’t fully shake their self-doubt and own their accomplishments. Diane gets him, to the point where she listens to his problems even at times when she doesn’t like the horse he has become. So far, there’s no chemistry on that level tying BoJack to Wanda.
That said, his new love interest feels like a step in the right direction, even if they soon prove incompatible. At first, Season 1 seemed to be setting up a worrisome dichotomy between Diane and Princess Carolyn, which risked diminishing both women to their value as lovers for BoJack. Refreshingly, it became abundantly clear neither would take him for the long haul. He didn’t deserve a steady girlfriend at the time, and I’d have hated to see the show stuck in clichéd will-they-won’t-they patterns with complex women who deserve better plot lines.
You’d think Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter could lend BoJack some reckless optimism with which to impress Wanda. Whenever they come together, they’re an amazing dog-manchild duo with no straight man and plenty of terrible dreams to spare. Todd is briefly cold to his frequent business partner after he almost accidentally gets Disneyland shut down, but an appropriately boneheaded reunion wasn’t far off. Mr. Peanutbutter singlehandedly saves Todd as a literal garbage fire five years in the making goes down in flames.
A goofy schtick that doesn’t play as well focuses on Wanda’s new friend and fellow coma survivor, Alex. Neither has any clue who Kanye West is, but only one is a Soviet agent secretly plotting to destroy the U.S. Alex’s charm easily eclipses his shadiness, and no one heeds BoJack’s warnings. The fact that only he sees Alex’s true motive echoes his lone voice of reason about Vincent Adultman, who is actually three kids stacked in a trench coat but without the same silliness to carry it. We get it, BoJack is a hard guy to take seriously. He complains so often he’s become the horse who cried wolf.
Despite their differences, Wanda and BoJack somehow conclude it’s a good time to shack up. If she thinks BoJack’s jealousy is an off-putting trait, wait until she sees that’s easily the least of his problems. At least he warns her he’s not always good at being not-terrible, something it’s hard to imagine him copping to pre-memoir debacle. Jury’s still out on whether BoJack can change, but this episode shows him clearly trying.
Julie Kliegman is the weekend editor for TheWeek.com and a freelance journalist based in New York. She’s written publications including BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, PolitiFact and the Tampa Bay Times. Tweet her your favorite SpongeBob GIF.