Bojack Horseman, my latest comedy binge-watch, was a real surprise. I’d heard nothing about it before it showed up on Netflix, but I gave it a try. I’m glad it I did, it was super fun time that left me wanting more. Thankfully, Netflix has already renewed it for a second season.
Everyone’s favorite magician, Will Arnett, stars as Bojack, a formerly famous 90s sitcom star, conceited womanizer, and literal man-horse struggling through a strange version of Hollywood that keeps our pop cultural touchstone and ads anthropomorphic animals. Cats chase dangling strings on the treadmill, birds at the window are paparazzi, and two dogs converse like stereotypical annoying TV women about how much they love chocolate even though it could kill them.
Arnett is joined by a great cast, a veritable who’s who of beloved comedic actors, among them Alison Brie, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, and Amy Sedaris. Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul takes a comedic term and gives an unexpected, often scene-stealing performance as Bojack’s slacker roommate who’s obsessed with composing a rock opera.
Most surprising of all was the content. Bojack Horseman is a late night style comedy that doesn’t shut anyone out. Though the series abounds with the typical crude humor, it’s threaded through with a surprising amount of feminism, nothing I’d expect at first glance.
There’s no shortage of fascinating female characters, both major and minor. First off, Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris, who should really be in more things) is, in addition to being a giant pink Persian cat, Bojack’s agent and on-again/off-again girlfriend. She’s is driven and goal-obsessed, and in her dynamic with Bojack maintains the unique skill of compartmentalizing, speaking to him either as agent or lover. With her Machiavellian schemes and air-tight manipulations, she might even be the closest thing the series has to a villain, besides Bojack’s colossal ego. Sadly, her role begins to peter out towards the end of the season, though her remaining plot line, about unknowingly dating Vincent Adultman, three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, is worthy off-the-wall material.
As a show set in a Hollywood, Bojack Horseman also makes several stirring points satirizing celebrity culture. Naomi Watts shows up for a episode to play a role in a movie based on Bojack’s life, ironically because she is tired of getting complicated, three-dimensional roles. When the role becomes much meatier, she gets frustrated and loses interest in the movie. Much seen but little remembered character actress Margo Martindale appears multiple times as a sort of actress for hire. Fed up with the limited roles normally offered to her as an older woman, she accepts roles offered to her by Bojack, which include posing as a bank robber and pulling off a real bank heist. Ultimately she turns to a life of crime and relishes her time in jail because she considers it the role of a lifetime.
Most fascinating are Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal) and Diane Nygen (Alison Brie), the most important women in Bojack’s life. Sarah Lynn was his TV daughter on the sitcom Horsin’ Around and today is a washed-up former pop princess, crucified by the media who have no use for her now that she’s turned 30. In flashbacks to her teenage years, we see her as a self-obsessed young woman attempting to rebel against the cutesy little girl image with songs that twist her TV nickname, prickly pear into a vaginal euphemism. All her music is about sex and she announces on a talk show that she plans to be sexy forever. But when she hits 30, she’s replaced by new it-girl Sextina Aquafina. Sextina says she grew up with Sarah Lynn’s music, but she is now irrelevant and has no reason to be famous anymore.
Today, Sarah Lynn is like many of our former child stars. She’s dramatic and out of control, and spends her time popping pills, partying, and trying to kill herself when her boyfriend breaks up with her. Her relationship with Bojack is incredibly complicated, though she’s always looked at him as a father figure and he sees her as a surrogate daughter, they end up sleeping together when Bojack decides to try to “fix her.” Sarah Lynn rightfully calls him out on this, yelling at him for claiming to know how she feels and trying to be her savior. She tells him she has been exploited her whole life, first by her mother, a stage-mom, then by the scores of men who write her every day to tell her she is the first person they ever masturbated to. Bojack, she feels, has no right to try to be her father or her lover.
Diane is a writer who meets Bojack when he hires her to ghostwrite his memoirs. Though she is meant to be desirable and is described as attractive, Diane is drawn with an average woman’s body and wears a boxy jacket and thick glasses. In fact, she looks a lot like Daria, a show she’d probably love. The main character and others, fall in love with her and most of the first season is a love triangle revolving around her. Although love triangles are a bit of a tired plot device, it was refreshing to see one involving such a realistic idea of a woman. Diane is no two dimensional dream girl. She’s a writer with a thriving career and intense interests and opinions. She’s sarcastic and well-informed, but she can also be self-centered and brutally ambitious, such as in plot line towards the end of the season where she attempts to publish an unflattering portrayal of Bojack without his permission. It’s crucial that Diane is never made to look like an evil seductress who manipulates Bojack. She’s just a person and even though she is eventually vindicated, it’s acknowledged that it was a terrible thing to do.
Diane identifies as a third wave feminist, but is unsure what that means for her. In one scene, she enters into a long monologue about pop singer Sarah Lynn who she claims not to think much about. She’s conflicted, on one hand she appreciates how Sarah Lynn has reclaimed her sexuality but on the other, she questions whether it is truly possible to do so in a patriarchal society.
Diane is also an interesting conversation point for discussions of race in animation. The character is Vietnamese, yet she is voiced by a white actress. Though I loved Alison Brie in the role, this casting made me question whether there is a distinction between racebent casting in live action and animated programs. Unlike stereotypical animated characters, like Apu on The Simpsons, Diane does not have either a subtle or exaggerated Vietnamese accent, so there’d be no specific distinction between her and a Vietnamese actress in the role. But does it matter whether white actors lend their voices to animated POCs?
We must not forget that any media project, especially these days, has a meta-textual component, such as interviews, photo shoots, recommendations, and career opportunities for its stars and creators. Though Brie is excellent, this could have been a great opportunity for a Vietnamese actress to make a name for herself. I’m not sure what to think on the issue or whether it is indeed an issue, it just occurred to me as an interesting idea to consider. Kudos to the team behind Bojack for creating an Asian-American woman character to play such an integral part of the story regardless.
Though on multiple occasions the show mentions an in-world personality test, “Zoe or Zelda,” that reduces each person to one of two types, the women on the show are not so easily reduced to virgins or whores. Sensible Diane has a vibrant sex life with her dog-boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter, while sex-pot Sarah Lynn has given a great deal of thought to her image and desires to control it. It’s great touches like these, and its intricate animal-person analogies that make Bojack Horseman worthy of a watch. Other than its covert feminism, the most unique thing about the program is its sequential story. Unlike most adult animated comedies, that tell one-off self-contained stories, the first season unfolds as a complete a well-paced story arc.
Of course, if you’re not into late night comedies, Bojack may not be the show for you. But I recommend giving it a chance. It starts slow, but only gets better.
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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.