BoJack Horseman: Bojack Horseman Season 3

July 25, 2016 4:18 AM - Season 3 (Full Season)

Discussion post for the entire season

Decided to make a post for the entire season, because a lot of people, including me, have bingewatched the show.

posted by Pendragon (22 comments total)

The first two episodes didn't exactly convince me but now, at my seventh episode, I'm starting to realize that they seem to have hit the balance between humor and melodrama quite perfectly. If the second season veered too much into unironic melodrama, this time they manage to extract the fun darkness from this drama. I mean, y'know, seeing people as they truly are, will ruin them ...

[Spoilers start] Two standout episodes so far: the underwater fishy one that was a nice surreal trip into the failures of everyday communication, and the abortion one that was, well, ridiculously over the top but also of surprising depth ("Is Twitter really the appropriate platform to discuss these issues? Perhaps we could find a more appropriate one, like nowhere?" Oh shit and that song by Sextina Aquafina; and always in the background the non-simulacrum abortion process of Diane goes on almost unnoticed until one of the sweetest things said in BJH: "You don't have to explain anything," by Princess Carolyn to Diane. Anyway, thought the episode was a great juxtaposition of the spectacle of simulacra and the invisibility of everyday emotions and choices).

Ok, there's so much more. But I'll watch the season till the end first and then probably watch it again. Great stuff so far.

PS. You Are Secretariat!
posted by sapagan at 5:57 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sapagan, I almost put a spoiler for episode 11 in my extended text. So glad I didn't ...
posted by Pendragon at 7:43 AM on July 25, 2016

An interview with Raphael Bob-Waksberg at Vox.
posted by sapagan at 8:20 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pendragon, let's see then ... Quite sure that I'm guessing in the right direction ...
posted by sapagan at 10:00 AM on July 25, 2016

Ok, you asked for it and this is the season 3 discussion thread: Sarah Lynn dies.
posted by Pendragon at 10:42 AM on July 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love this show so much. Enough so, that it confuses me. I love all the jokes, the layers, the meta, that every scene is stuffed with things you may not notice until a rewatch. And then every season, by the end of the season, I'm gutted by the show and I feel like I ought to throw myself from a bridge in despair.

I'm as upset at Sarah Lynn's death as I ever am at a television death.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:43 PM on July 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is the best dramedy on TV right now.
posted by Pendragon at 2:36 AM on July 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

So, watched the season to the end yesterday. Watching BJH kind of feels like being one of the characters on the show. I don't mean it in a way that I'd identify with a specific character but with the general feel of it, basically trying to fill the void of existence only to find that the void is the very thing grounding our lives. A fundamental, inescapable sadness underlying every laughter. But, to be more optimistic, this also means that sadness is capable of turning into laughter.
posted by sapagan at 2:58 AM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

OK so I just finished my season watch.

I'm not entirely sure what to say, but I also really want to talk to about it. I mean that ending with the Nina Simone song...just a few eps ago it was fun underwater shenanigans with a baby seahorse. And Sara Lynn-that whole episode-not just her death, but missing the Oscars. And so many characters ending on a very precarious note-Princess Caroline risking her present happiness to be a manager, Diane willing to sacrifice her marriage to Mr. Peanut Butter for her writing job, and Mr. Peanut Butter considering a job in politics with his ex-wife. It's just....amazing how much I actually care about them and want them to really be happy and stop pursuing these self destructive paths.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:11 PM on July 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

Don't forget Todd's asexuality. I wonder what they're going to do with that the next season.
posted by Pendragon at 6:13 AM on July 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Hang on. So do they NEVER reveal what Anna did to "deal with" the writer for Manatee Fair in the first episode? Or did I miss it.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 9:42 AM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

This was a great season, and for me what really came through was the visual inventiveness of the show. I think there have been cool bits in previous seasons, but these episodes really feel like it's coming into its own as animation. The direction, editing, and cinematography was just top-notch this season.
posted by codacorolla at 10:13 AM on July 27, 2016

I am severely traumatised by the whole stalking of Penny. I had to stop the episode and hide behind a cushion.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:27 PM on July 27, 2016

Pendragon, thank you for making this thread.

I started re-playing the first season catching up on other threads tonight.
I got to "Zelda or Zoe" where he sabotages Todds rock opera, and wow.
So, like everything he does in plotting and enabling Todds addiction and downfall is to keep him dependent.
He does the same thing with Sara Lynn at the end of this season, but with drugs.

Seeing this now, it just makes it all seem more ... shitty.

Bojack feeding people their demons so that he won't be bored.
posted by lkc at 12:47 AM on July 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Another episode 11 that absolutely wrecked me. I expect no less from this show.
posted by Gordafarin at 2:08 AM on July 28, 2016

> I love this show so much. Enough so, that it confuses me.

It enrages me. Fucking weaponized grief. I knew the darkness was coming, but thought it would be contained in the show & not affect me the way people here have described that happening to them with previous seasons. Guess I'm in the club, now. Gah.
posted by morganw at 1:05 PM on July 28, 2016

I'm not sure if it's possible to put my finger on what I love about this show, I love it from a couple angles.

But to avoid repeating what's been said, I'll add that the whole thing feels like a joke told backwards. Where many good comedies seem to start with observation and emotional truth and extrapolate into absurdity, this show starts with the familiar absurdities and renders them down to the emotional truths behind them. The result feels like a much rawer look at pain and alienation than most stories of any genre are able to make palatable. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be for everybody and I'm really glad it's found a following.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:46 PM on July 29, 2016 [13 favorites]

Obviously, Sarah Lynn's death shocked me more than anything else -- not just the way she died, at a moment of incredible regret for the life she might have had, but quite frankly that the show would kill off a character so funny and endearing. I'm sure that we'll see Sarah Lynn next season -- in flashbacks, guilt-induced hallucinations, you know how this show does -- but we'll never see her as a purely comic figure again. It's a bold move for a weird and fairly young show to make, killing off a fan favorite.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:03 PM on July 31, 2016

...But I want to say too that the last scene made me tear up for reasons I can't quite articulate. The "You Are Secretariat" tagline seemed realized in the running crowd of horses; and of course there are echoes of the ancient jogger BoJack met at the end of last season. But it all seems too pat to reduce that last scene to symbolism. To me, it felt as though BoJack were looking at people who really were like what he had pretended to be in a film -- people who were, without pretense, Secretariat. And maybe it inspired him, and maybe it made him feel ashamed, and maybe it just overwhelmed him to be in the presence of real achievement for its own sake -- just horses running like their lives depended on it there in the desert, where no one would ever see.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:14 PM on July 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

No reaction to the reveal of BoJack's daughter?
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:29 AM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like he has a series of expressions there where he goes through many of those feelings, but I fear, being Bojack, what he'll do is just join them impulsively and then become disillusioned and return to previous life.

But I also think the running horses goes back to what the director of the Bojack Horseman show said earlier in the season, that it's only be abandoning everything that one can find actual happiness. It's possible he will find happiness with the horses and then be forcibly dragged back to his old life when everyone else's implodes. It would be a nice reversal of fortune for him to not be the center of everything going to crap, but instead be put in the Princess Caroline position of trying to put out fires that people have set in his absence.
posted by miss-lapin at 4:08 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

If a donkey and a horse have a baby, what are the possible outcomes in this universe?
posted by bq at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2018