How a near-silent under­wa­ter episode con­veys the bril­liance of BoJack Horseman

The lat­est sea­son of BoJack Horse­man has been anoth­er rous­ing suc­cess, main­tain­ing all the com­plex­i­ty and nuance of the ever-chang­ing title char­ac­ter that have made the show so pop­u­lar. BoJack Horse­man is por­trayed as a tor­tured soul and a com­plete bas­tard in equal mea­sure, keep­ing us guess­ing at every turn. For our mon­ey the stand out episode of the third sea­son is ​‘Fish Out of Water’, in which BoJack trav­els to a pre­vi­ous­ly unex­plored area of the ani­mat­ed show, Pacif­ic Ocean City, in order to pro­mote his film Sec­re­tari­at at the POFF (Pacif­ic Ocean Film Fes­ti­val). What is so beau­ti­ful­ly unique about this episode is that over 90 per cent of it is com­plete­ly dia­logue-free – rely­ing on music, ani­ma­tion and type to bring the heart-wrench­ing nar­ra­tive to life.

Reg­u­lar watch­ers of the show will already know that crip­pling lone­li­ness is at the cen­tre of almost every errat­ic deci­sion BoJack makes, and is a recur­rent theme through­out the series. Being in this for­eign, under­wa­ter land is a crush­ing metaphor for BoJack’s iso­la­tion; his lit­er­al inabil­i­ty to speak being the most overt rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this. How­ev­er, the cur­ren­cy is also dif­fer­ent, as is the type­face, the crea­tures and pret­ty much every­thing else. Bub­bles con­stant­ly fill the screen to rein­force the sense of how out of place BoJack is as a horse roam­ing through this unusu­al set­ting. Then there’s the dual nar­ra­tive, with one thread focussing on BoJack’s desire to rec­on­cile with Kelsey, while the oth­er sees him attempt to locate the father of a baby sea horse he is paired with under unusu­al circumstances.

With­out hav­ing dia­logue to fall back on, the impe­tus of the nar­ra­tive is dri­ven by a com­pelling score, which is by turns enchant­i­ng and melan­cholic. This cou­pled with the show’s dis­tinct ani­ma­tion style tells the same sto­ry the series always does: BoJack is on his own and every time he gets close to con­nec­tion, it is snatched away from him in an instant. When he even­tu­al­ly hands the infant over to its father there is no cer­e­mo­ni­ous reunion – only BoJack wait­ing at the door, giv­ing away one of the few things he has been able to forge a gen­uine con­nec­tion with. Sim­i­lar­ly, the poignant note he writes to Kelsey, apol­o­gis­ing for how he has treat­ed her, has washed away in the salt water by the time he man­ages to deliv­er it to her.

‘Fish Out of Water’ is by far the most com­pelling episode of the cur­rent sea­son. BoJack’s silence is humor­ous­ly bro­ken in the final scene when an angry pedes­tri­an shouts at him by acti­vat­ing a micro­phone on the out­side of the under­wa­ter suit he’s been wear­ing the entire time. Before he has time to reply the screen fades to black and the cred­its roll. In true BoJack fash­ion, the end­ing is a hol­low one – his out-of-char­ac­ter com­pas­sion leav­ing him exact­ly where he started.