BoJack Horseman: Fish Out of Water

July 25, 2016 2:31 PM - Season 3, Episode 4

As Bojack is forced to attend a underwater movie festival to promote his new movie, a series of events and the inability to communicate with underwater life makes sure that not everything goes to plan.

That ending just sums up Bojack's whole problem in live, his inability to communicate.

posted by Pendragon (19 comments total)

I really like this episode. Lots of nice visuals, and a bit of a break from the relentless dialogue and jumping around of the first few episodes.
posted by lkc at 3:54 PM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

This BoJack Horseman Episode Is a Must-Watch, Even If You’ve Never Seen the Show
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:13 PM on July 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

That was really am amazing episode, but the end....oh I was dying.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:53 PM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Man, what a great episode. If it doesn't win an Emmy, something is wrong.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:01 PM on July 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I wasn't really thrilled with this season until I got to this episode and what and episode it is.
posted by pseudodionysus at 5:12 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah this episode was amazing. They took a risk and I think it really paid off. Apparently Netflix pushed back a bit on this one but the producers got Netflix to allow it and now everyone loves it hah. I hope it wins some kind of award.
posted by FireFountain at 8:49 AM on July 26, 2016

I love it whenever this nonsense show about animal people with goofy puns for names explores questions like "so where does meat come from?" or "how do fish people live?" and ends up doing some brilliantly weird worldbuilding.
posted by theodolite at 9:58 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

This was a stand-out for the season. Apart from the end bit about the mic being a good gag, I thought it had a lot of relation to one of BoJack's big problems as a person - he tends to assume that there is no way to communicate, and instead just continuously acts without communicating. Nothing that happened to him under da' sea would've happened if he had made an effort to learn how to communicate. Instead he just sort of wallowed in the "fact" that he couldn't.

Anyway, I've watched through the season, and don't want to talk too much about later stuff, but this is really just the beginning of the show's visual and cinematic inventiveness. I was really blown away at the way that they tell the story as it goes forward, and I think that this is the first season where the show has really stepped into its animated format as a narrative device.
posted by codacorolla at 11:04 AM on July 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

One neat thing I liked about this was that the episode was mostly an art-film set in an art-film festival.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:57 AM on July 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

So, OITNB (autocorrects to PORNO in case anyone was interested) convinced me Netlix originals were worth while. This episode convinced me Bojack (corrects to hijack) was the best comedy since community.
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:59 AM on July 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

I finally found out the significance of the thumbs-up sign's offensiveness to fish-persons/water-breathers. In scuba diving, it's the "up or end dive" signal. Signalling this to a fish is essentially saying DIAF.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:41 PM on July 28, 2016 [11 favorites]

Oh my god, I am never going to be able to replicate the experience of maniacally laughing my ass off at the end gag again, am I?
posted by invitapriore at 6:28 PM on July 28, 2016

And the great thing about it is that it's pretty easy to predict, but that doesn't matter, because part of why it's hilarious is all of the emotional fallout that we endured as a result of the conceit that he couldn't talk through the globe.
posted by invitapriore at 6:31 PM on July 28, 2016

"All we have in this terrifying world are the connections we make."

Just fucking punch me in the goddamn heart, eh.
posted by kmz at 2:45 PM on July 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

This was the best episode in memory.

I also want to say that the intro song and sequence still is killer to me. Love that sax.
(And I want to add I hate that there isn't enough depth to his deck to have a pool deeper than 1 foot. Yet the pool is clearly deeper than that. Worth the sax though.)
posted by about_time at 5:46 PM on July 31, 2016

Loved this. So, so much.
posted by oulipian at 6:47 PM on August 1, 2016

My favorite part of this was the nod to how American movie stars often do ads in Japan that are completely out of character with their "brand" at home. There was definitely a thoroughgoing Lost in Translation riff here.

I also want to say that the intro song and sequence still is killer to me. Love that sax.

Good news!
posted by psoas at 1:45 PM on August 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Loved this episode too. Nice to have a bottle episode out of the main story, and something done so beautifully. My favorite grace note was that Under the Sea they drive on the left, further cementing the comparison to Japan. All that was missing was a Lost in Translation reference.

I also want to say that the intro song and sequence still is killer to me. Love that sax.

You might like the Song Exploder podcast about the Bojack Horseman theme, interviewing the musicians. Long story short it was a sort of demo reel they came up with themselves long before the show was made, then got a call to do music for the show and used it. There's a longer version in the podcast too.
posted by Nelson at 9:47 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I really like the exit music as well.
posted by bq at 9:45 PM on October 23, 2018