BoJack Horse­man Sea­son 6 offers a painful­ly real per­spec­tive on time

Both BoJack Horseman’s sixth sea­son flips the script on the tra­di­tion­al ani­mat­ed series for­mat by focus­ing on its char­ac­ters’ social and psy­cho­log­i­cal make-up rather than their pure­ly comedic attrib­ut­es. We’ve all mourned or pitied at least one ani­mat­ed Dis­ney char­ac­ter dur­ing our child­hood, but noth­ing quite com­pares to the nuanced rela­tion­ship we’ve devel­oped to this equine drunk.

The show’s final sea­son opens with ​‘A Horse Walks Into Rehab’ and, while it sounds like the set up to a good punch­line, in truth the title of the episode sets the tone for the protagonist’s jour­ney towards what we hope might be recov­ery or, at the very least, a les­son in accountability.

Over the past five years, our feel­ings towards BoJack have been as mud­dled as his brain on a ben­der. With­in the times­pan of a sin­gle episode, we’ve gone from des­per­ate­ly hold­ing on to those small reminders of his dwin­dling lov­abil­i­ty, to hat­ing him with a fright­en­ing pas­sion, to reach­ing an over­whelm­ing lev­el of com­pas­sion, regard­less of our own knowl­edge of or expe­ri­ence with depres­sion and addic­tion. That is one of the show’s great­est pow­ers: cre­ator, writer and pro­duc­er Raphael Bob-Waks­berg has paint­ed one of mod­ern TV’s most gen­uine and com­pelling por­traits of men­tal health and packed it into the eccen­tric world of Hol­ly­woo and its inhab­i­tants (illus­trat­ed by the amaz­ing Lisa Hanawalt).

Over the course of the whole series, BoJack threat­ens to clean up his act on sev­er­al occa­sions, only to jump straight back into pools of whiskey, pills and what­ev­er else was avail­able to him as soon as his semi-sober mind wan­dered to his bro­ken past, his masochis­tic present or his loom­ing, uncer­tain future. Even in his dark­est moments, the show’s cre­ators have always been sen­si­tive enough to high­light the strange con­coc­tion of instincts that led him down var­i­ous paths of self-sab­o­tage and despair. In doing so, they have ini­ti­at­ed an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion around addic­tion – par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in the con­fines of a twin­kle-town soci­ety that refus­es to acknowl­edge what lies beneath the sur­face of sub­stance abuse.

This was poignant­ly illus­trat­ed in one of the show’s most cel­e­brat­ed episodes, ​‘Fish Out of Water’. The premise – BoJack’s fleet­ing but strong con­nec­tion to a lost baby sea­horse – and near-silent approach spoke loud­er than any of his pre­vi­ous actions or angry rants. It was as though we were div­ing into the depths of his lone­ly heart, eager to poke our snorkels through the sur­face for the rush of oxy­gen need­ed to get the (self)love pump­ing through his veins once more – or, per­haps, for the first time ever. Con­cep­tu­al episodes such as this and sea­son five’s ​‘Free Chur­ro’, BoJack’s 20-minute mono­logue in the form of his mother’s eulo­gy, dared to veer so far from what is expect­ed from a show like this, they tru­ly make for inim­itable view­ing experiences.

The series is like a beau­ti­ful­ly chore­o­graphed dance that sees BoJack (Will Arnett), Diane (Ali­son Brie), Princess Car­olyn (Amy Sedaris) and the rest twirl through the highs and two-step towards bet­ter choic­es, only to moon­walk back into a com­fort­able abyss with­out the courage to escape. With break­beat-style pac­ing and real­is­tic dia­logue set against an eccen­tric, slight­ly absurd back­drop, the cre­ators and ani­ma­tors have nev­er ceased to sur­prise us with their clever takes on themes of arrest­ed devel­op­ment and the pass­ing of time. This was most notable in the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed episodes ​‘That’s Too Much, Man!’ and ​‘Time’s Arrow’.

While ​‘That’s Too Much, Man!’ per­fect­ly cap­tured the inco­her­ence and fatal time­less­ness of a drug-induced blind­er through a fire-round of short scenes and mem­o­ry-snip­pets sharply illu­mi­nat­ing a black­out, ​‘Time’s Arrow’ dart­ed through the demen­tia-afflict­ed mind of BoJack’s moth­er with the same breath­less veloc­i­ty. This style of sto­ry­telling con­tex­tu­alis­es the inex­plic­a­bil­i­ty of mere­ly (mal)functioning in a world that nev­er stops rotat­ing, and the very real long­ing for it to pause just long enough for us to catch up and read­just our posi­tion and our own emo­tion­al household.

As we near the end of this tale of ani­mat­ed heartache and head­fuck­ery, the series shows no signs of rein­ing in this painful­ly real per­spec­tive on time. Indeed, when BoJack Horse­man walks into rehab in the final season’s pre­mière episode, it is hard­ly a coin­ci­dence he is wel­comed by a ground­hog. In a sense, every char­ac­ter is going through the same pat­terns, con­fronting recur­rences and set­backs with min­i­mal tri­umph, one day blend­ing into the next.

When Car­olyn is faced with the chal­lenge of man­ag­ing her ​‘New Client’ – her new­ly adopt­ed por­cu­pine baby – the full-time respon­si­bil­i­ty and exhaus­tion is illus­trat­ed through sev­er­al shad­owed clones in con­stant and repet­i­tive motion behind and to either side of her. They encap­su­late a void that still hasn’t been filled, one that is threat­en­ing to grow in the throes of her work­ing sin­gle-mom expe­ri­ence. Told with true com­pas­sion for the com­plex­i­ties of moth­er­hood, this episode is a tes­ta­ment to the show’s abil­i­ty to express feel­ings peo­ple often strug­gle to explain.

‘A Horse Walks Into Rehab’ is much more than just a mon­tage of BoJack ini­tial­ly half-ass­ing and ulti­mate­ly embrac­ing the steps, the yoga and var­i­ous forms of ther­a­pies. He is still up to his usu­al antics, deflect­ing his therapist’s attempts to poke at the flesh of bad­ly-healed scars – but at least he is final­ly con­fronting his for­mer rela­tion­ships with Sarah Lynn (Kris­ten Schaal) and Pen­ny (Ilana Glaz­er). The grief over Sarah Lynn catch­es up with him and allows him to sin­cere­ly accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions. And while he’s far from being or becom­ing a changed man, there is hope BoJack Horse­man will enter the new year a bet­ter man.

Divid­ing BoJack Horseman’s six sea­son into two parts has allowed us time to rewatch and digest this bril­liant, emo­tion­al ram­page of a show instead of gal­lop­ing towards the end with­out ful­ly appre­ci­at­ing all the won­der­ful details that make it so spe­cial. As part one of sea­son six has already proven, BoJack Horse­man is set to wrap up in a way that stays true to one of TV’s most beloved ani­mat­ed characters.