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i am the bird posted:It's such an Arrested Development style joke. It reminds me of George Michael's Star Wars tape. I feel this way about "Hollywoo," as well. Some absurd previous plot point becoming the new normal with no explanation or comment.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:46
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Duckbag posted:..but he was really in love with Diane, the person who's paid to listen to him, rather than Diane, the person who has her own poo poo going on. Definitely, BoJack is a narcissist who has trouble engaging with other people's lives on their own terms. But I don't think Diane, the author, is somehow a less real or authentic version of her. It's not a totally one-sided relationship; I'd say BoJack also "gets" Diane on some visceral level, particularly in terms of the self-destructive behaviors they share. They both understand self-loathing and depressive nihilism, and accept those things as part of each other. Which is maybe a twisted sort of intimacy, but was probably cathartic for her for a time. Of course, Diane could never reciprocate BoJack's romantic feelings. He'd drag her down to his level...which is pretty much her plot in season 2. But they understand each other in ways Mr. Peanutbutter totally doesn't. The difference is that Mr. Peanutbutter is fundamentally a supportive influence, and pushes Diane to be more functional, not less. Basically, I reject the premise that "love" in this show is about romance or altruism or anything transcendent or "real." It's about personal acceptance and about fulfilling needs. "Does this person make you better?"
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Aug 23, 2016 20:41
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Brofessor Slayton posted:The Halloween In January gag gets its final payoff with Bojack visiting the store and plummetting to his death halfway through the season. ...on purpose. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Bojack Horseman won't end with the title character killing himself. "Washed up actor struggles with depression and alcoholism, then kills himself" seems like a non-ending, given how the show talks about all those things. My anticipation is that it ends like Mad Men, where Don isn't "fixed" or necessarily better or happier at the end, just granted some degree of perspective. He very well might relapse into being a drunk piece of poo poo, but here's this one moment where he's at peace with himself and it means something. My head-canon ending is that Bojack reconnects with his lost daughter, and there's an arc where she wants to be an actor or singer or something show-biz-ish, and at first he jumps on helping her do that as some sort of self-aggrandizing distraction like he always does. But when the actual bullshit reality of the industry turns its head and he sees what it will do to her, he goes the other way and tells her to get out. "Be a marine biologist," or something. Basically, the best I can hope for Bojack isn't that he stops being depressed, but that empathy and wisdom make him treat more vulnerable people better.
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Jan 31, 2017 20:10
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Data Graham posted:Suicide in the 11th episode followed by a finale from dead bojack's POV, Christmas Carol style. Only he can't come back. Bojack kills himself in episode 11, then it's exactly like Enter the Void for the remainder of the series.
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Feb 1, 2017 21:04
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Hedrigall posted:I love Mr Peanutbutter so much and by the end of this show I don't care if Bojack offs himself, I just want Mr PB to have a happy ending His life already is a happy ending. He's a rich and well-liked celebrity whose career is in an upswing, and he's emotionally healthy and capable of love, contentment, and open communication with his spouse. The worst thing I can picture happening to him is Diane divorcing him, mostly because she's only functional compared to Bojack. He's the perfect foil to Bojack, because he's a version of him without crippling depression and wildly self-destructive impulses. He'll be fine.
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Mar 27, 2017 21:19
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Bojack has had a negative, and sometimes positive effect on all those characters, but tbh I think we've seen that they're all extremely able to gently caress their own lives up with or without him. Yeah, nobody here is healthy. They're at best high-functioning, and only appear "normal" relative to Bojack who is depressed to the point of disability.
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Aug 24, 2017 19:55
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sweetmercifulcrap posted:I kind of don't understand why it matters that a white person is playing an Asian American that wouldn't have any Asian accent anyway. If she wasn't born and raised in Boston then maybe it would be worth complaining about. I understand why it matters, but what a pedantic fight to pick. Ideally she'd be voiced by a Vietnamese actress, but Alison Brie brings a lot to the role, where her plots are way more centered around the challenges of being a woman in Hollywood than on her race. Diane could easily have been white instead; she's fairly incidentally a POC, which is actually kind of cool to me. Not that I don't often get upset over poo poo representation in media. But that's anger better directed at Scarlett Johansson. Or Tina Fey, who *did* cast an Asian-American actor to play a Vietnamese character and then made him weirdly racist as hell.
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Aug 29, 2017 11:43
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SEX BURRITO posted:I'm pretty sure Todd's surname is a throwaway joke. In the prison episode he says he's physically more like the aryan guys. There definitely exist people with historically Latin American names who are ethnically white. It's a thing.
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Aug 29, 2017 17:41
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Calaveron posted:Isn't that house in a physically impossible location based on the position of the Hollywoo sign He'd be pretty close to the Observatory, I'd think. Just east of the Hollywood sign, not far from the 101. There exist houses in the Hills in that area, so sure. But yeah, many millions for that house, now.
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Sep 6, 2017 01:22
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Captain Lavender posted:I always think about Battlestar Galactica for this one. In the middle episodes the plot loses itself, and you can tell, because as it starts to get to the ending, the plot starts yanking characters back into places they were several seasons prior. Most glaring example I can think of is how they killed the Chief's little engineer wife for hardly any reason, so that, a couple episodes later, they could have the Chief have an emotional episode with the woman he was involved with at the beginning of the show, from whom he had become estranged. You see it in a lot of shows, and it's really obvious, and it bums me out. They let the plot go crazy, but aren't willing to sacrifice their initial ideas for where the plot would go, so they yank it all back into place in unsatisfying ways. Although this plot did this, I love that decision because the later scene where Tyrol gets drunk and goes off on Adama was amazing. He married someone he never loved, and his "boiled cabbage stench of her" rant was really brutal and raw and acted really well. I realize this is not the BSG thread, sorry. It didn't particularly make sense that Princess Carolyn would leave Ralph the way she did at first, but in retrospect it does. Every central character on this show is broken and dysfunctional in some way, and the form is takes with PC is that her self-sufficiency borders on pathology. She needs to control things, to be in control of things, and her miscarriage is a profound betrayal of that impulse on every level. She acts totally unfazed and doesn't stop to grieve because introspection is painful and she needs to be proactive. Meanwhile, Ralph *wants* her to be introspective, to feel the pain and to commiserate with him over a shared loss. And that's something she refuses to do.
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Sep 13, 2017 21:13
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withak posted:It's not exactly for adults either. Totally. This show about alcoholism, mental illness, miscarriage, and abuse is aiming at a non-adult audience.
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Sep 19, 2017 10:04
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Princess Diana also isn't as much of a household name as she was 20 years ago. And that's my point. Lobotomies as this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad thing has stuck with us, but lobotomies as the worst health fad ever hasn't. I don't see how it's the show's burden to explain this for viewers who are ignorant of history, though. In the period being depicted, lobotomies were a probable "treatment." If someone thinks it's unrealistic, they're mistaken. Splitting hairs about NM: Bojack is a developmentally-arrested child. I don't think his intention with Penny was to be predatory but only because he's delusional...he believed this 17-year-old was a peer. But clearly he *was* being that, because intention aside he's 50 and was exerting power and influence (and alcohol) over someone a third his age. Which is probably true of a lot of statutory cases...way older men who convince themselves this is fine. They're not drooling psychopaths, but also it's still unacceptable.
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Sep 20, 2017 10:02
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Brother Entropy posted:ehh, mr pb's the kind of guy who can't stand being alone with his own thoughts so i dunno if he'd bounce back that quick I think he'd *appear* to bounce back quick. His whole deal is projecting this unflappable manic energy, but having almost no capacity for emotional honesty or introspection. He'd probably dive into work, continue to be his cheerful public self, and grow more hollow and lonely than he even realizes. Bojack wallows in misery, but MPB runs from it. Which is why I'm more concerned about MPB killing himself. Bojack still has some hope for redemption or validation to keep him going. When MPB stops running, he'll see a void so dark and vast he won't see anything else.
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Sep 23, 2017 06:44
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LeJackal posted:So I have to wonder if he's another character actor typecast into 'Latino macho dude/thug' like we have with some of our actors like Raymond Cruz or Danny Trejo or Michael Mando. Even though the movie got shelved does he still get paid at least his daily scale? It makes you think about the logistics of Holywoo..... Assuming Hollywoo still has SAG, yeah, he probably got paid.
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Oct 13, 2017 00:22
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twistedmentat posted:... showing how out of touch and self centered her husband is. I think he’s genuinely well-meaning, but yes, absolutely out of touch. I think the core of it is MPB totally lacks emotional intelligence. He wanted to make a big loud gesture to make her happy, but fundamentally didn’t understand *why* she wanted that library or why she told him about it. I don’t see MPB as some secret rear end in a top hat or manipulator. He’s a nice guy but he lives in a very superficial place. So it’s not that he’s too selfish to be what Diane wants...he‘s trying his best, but honestly doesn’t see her. Hence her speech: she’s tired of squinting.
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Feb 19, 2018 11:05
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“Just because a community of people that doesn’t include me has the audacity to self-define in harmless ways that don’t affect me doesn’t mean I won’t volunteer my entitled, meaningless opinion about their lives.” You don’t really get to have an opinion about the legitimacy of stranger’s sex lives.
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Feb 22, 2018 08:05
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Pick posted:I literally don't care about the legitimacy of the topic, I just didn't like how it was written. No, I get that. I thought the actual coming out scene was pretty well done, but definitely some of the meetup group stuff feels pretty expository.
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Feb 22, 2018 08:18
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I’m confounded by why you suggest asexuality as a queer identity is a false equivalency, when every point you’re making about it is verbatim a past criticism of queer identities. “They’re delusional idiots in dangerous cults, and actually have mental illnesses” is a stock argument that’s been thrown at gay and trans identities for decades. And every new revision to the DSM dismantles more of those claims. I’m not sure what Scientology-esque Cult of Asexuality you’re talking about, but it sounds like your preference is that people who aren’t interested in having sex force themselves to do so to be normal. Which...I hope I’m misunderstanding.
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Feb 22, 2018 09:03
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Pick posted:Mad Men is complete soap opera tripe for white people who think they're liberal but actually aren't and will be voting conservative in at most 15-20 years. This take is bad. Mad Men is excellent, and the characters being barely-political centrists with no convictions is not celebrated at all. The only reason people think it's conservative is because it also portrays white hippies of the period unflatteringly (the ones who actually *did* vote conservative 15 years later.) It doesn't mean "Don Draper is right." He's pretty much never right...none of them are. Brother Entropy is, though; both Mad Men and BoJack are about psychologically broken characters whose bad behavior is enabled by the toxic and superficial wealth culture surrounding them. You really just want them to stop repeating the same self-destructive cycles that are ruining their lives.
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Sep 7, 2018 21:47
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skooma512 posted:Coming to Diane's womb Fall 2019 That thought definitely occurred to me, as a point of conflict for Diane and MPB next season. I guess they did the abortion plotline already, but this time there's infidelity!
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Sep 21, 2018 02:02
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i am the bird posted:There’s a vast difference between BoJack and Walter White/Don Draper/Rick/etc. The latter are power/revenge fantasies for white men who feel spurned by the world. This isn't the Mad Men thread, but people are really doing Don Draper dirty in here. He's really much more like Bojack than Walter White or Rick Sanchez, in that he's not actively lashing out at the world to assert some frustrated masculine dominance, or having a violent "what about me" midlife crisis. He's a self-loathing child of abuse who doesn't think he deserves love, whose superficial successes are merely a salve on a festering wound of loneliness that is not enviable or glamorous at all. Bojack is way more explicit about how pathetic and sad the lead is, for sure. It's easier for "bad fans" to think Don Draper is a cool alpha male, but the show is pretty explicit about how "Don Draper" is a (literally) false persona that is toxic and destructive, and that Don's professional victories merely enable his worst impulses and accelerate the deterioration of every positive relationship he has. Both shows have pretty similar arguments in a lot of respects.
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Sep 21, 2018 20:12
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Seems like the arc of the show has been both Tuca and Bertie trying to assert themselves and take control of their lives as best they can; while Bertie is more obviously passive and struggles getting out of her comfort zone, in a way so does Tuca- she's as much a slave to her whims as Bertie is to her neuroses, and also to her own neuroses- basically, they've got a lot more in common than they think. They're also similar in how incredibly avoidant they are of their interpersonal conflicts. Bertie will fall down a rabbit hole of anxiety about Speckle or her boss or coworkers and never address it, and Tuca distracts herself with dumb bullshit to procrastinate talking to her relatives. It made a lot of sense that their fight with each other ended by sitting silently in a car for hours until they burst into tears. They let things get worse and worse until it's impossible to avoid.
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Jun 6, 2019 01:37
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Bust Rodd posted:I think the ultimate growth would be if at some point Bojack had to do something nice for someone at great personal cost (emotionally and maybe physically but not financially) and not depicted as making a big deal about it. Like the writers are clever enough to show us Bojack doing something for someone else and not immediately turning around and going “Now give me a cookie for being a good boy!”. The last episode of S4 speaks to this. After Bojack learns Hollyhock is his sister, he does a ton of footwork to find Henrietta. If his speech to Hollyhock's adoptive fathers is to be believed, he didn't have an ulterior motive...he just really wanted her to know and didn't seem to care how the information made it to her. It didn't stop him from getting addicted to pills and nearly murdering his costar during a psychotic break later on, but he has on occasion shown growth. PCjr sidecar posted:Shout out to the Community S6 board-game ending. That is the most Dan Harmon possible thing, that ending. A self-loathing and bleakly absurdist meta joke that crawls inside its own rear end as a form of therapy. (I think it's perfect, if that is unclear.)
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Jun 28, 2019 23:07
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Big Taint posted:I see Bojack finding redemption in helping others, in a genuine way. He sort of did it when he did the show for PC without complaining. But I think he will learn to actually listen and empathize with MPB and Diane and the rest and help them to work through their problems. This is exactly where I imagine it going. Bojack dying or killing himself seems so antithetical to the show's philosophy. That's how "Horsin' Around" ends, with this maudlin little cap on things that's definitive in a way life almost never is. Bojack Horseman is about how un-cinematic and messy and unsatisfying actual life is for these people who spend their lives imagining fiction. I don't see Bojack ever "getting over his issues," but I don't see him dying either. If he was going to get anything resembling a "happy ending," I picture it being what you describe: for once, he forms a genuine connection that is selfless and loving. He's still a depressed alcoholic narcissist, he still struggles with the same poo poo, but maybe his suffering is less important than what he can do for someone else.
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Sep 20, 2019 21:21
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:Here's the thing: Bojack IS Vance Waggoner. They are the same kind of person. We the audience don't want to believe that, and Bojack doesn't want to believe that, but it's true. That leaves Bojack with two options: Either embrace it, or change. We don't get to see what he chooses long term. This is going back a few pages, but I genuinely don't think Bojack is "the same" as Vance Waggoner. They're both incredibly toxic and unstable, but Vance seems to have a level of intentional sadism and malice that Bojack doesn't. Bojack hurts people, but Vance WANTS to hurt people, if that makes sense. In that regard, I think Bojack actually is oblivious to the power dynamic behind the damage he's done. He has power but doesn't feel powerful, because his self-perception is so tied to victimhood and a lack of self-worth. Regardless of how much wealth or fame he has, Bojack still sees himself as the piece-of-poo poo child his mother treated like a mistake. So, he doesn't see how inappropriate it is to hang out with teenagers or gently caress Sarah Lynn because that's kind of where his emotional maturity level is at, a man-child who looks 50 but has the insecurity of a teenager. Which isn't an excuse, clearly. Regardless of their motivations, Bojack and Vance keep hurting people, so really it doesn't matter. But they seem very different to me.
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Feb 4, 2020 00:52
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Because he’s a golden retriever. Have you ever met a golden retriever? He's a yellow Lab.  But also, I think MPB's affinity for Bojack is just an enduring relic of their initial fame. They were both Hollywoob outsiders who fell into astronomical fame out of nowhere, and I think MPB has always felt connected to him on this point.
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Feb 6, 2020 21:19
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ninjewtsu posted:i want to understand what the point of the final episode is if bojack is dead So do I. I want to know what “dead the whole time” theories elevate about any text, in any circumstance they’re proposed. Especially this one, for a show about how easy, melodramatic endings like the Horse dying are dishonest bullshit. The other one that annoyed me was the people who argued the Breaking Bad finale never happened and Walt died in exile. Like, sure, could be. But at what point did that show ever play with its reality in that kind of way, prior to apparently the last episode?
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Feb 9, 2020 06:34
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Bust Rodd posted:Todd doesn’t get a lot of hate because his criticisms are “Todd’s storylines are zany nonsense that’s kind of boring” and “this character adds very little to a very dense show”. Absolutely. It's hard to take much issue with Todd as a character, because what's glaring about him is his entire presence, the tone of his plots in general. It's more of a structural criticism of the show. Todd feels like a character they conceived of in early development who probably would've been cut as the show's focus evolved, but Aaron Paul was a big enough name and an attached EP, so they were kind of beholden to the character as a result. 6 seasons in, they barely had anything for him to do.
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Feb 18, 2020 20:55
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Bust Rodd posted:It’s important to point out that there are SO MANU GODDAM DRUGS on the market and when you combine that with different people’s body chemistry and hormones you can run a truly insane gamut of side effects. My college girlfriend said her Anti-Depressants made her super horny (good!) and but she had to sleep like 14 hours a day or she just couldn’t function (bad). Yeah, I know a ton of people with differing forms/severities of depression, and I also have depression myself. All of us have a different relationship to anti-depressants, and have used different kinds to extremely different results. It's essentially impossible to "accurately" depict the experience in any objective sense because there are kind of no wrong answers. For instance, I know someone whose life was immensely improved by a low-dosage of the SSRI Lexapro, and they've taken it for years. I was prescribed a similar dosage of Lexapro, and it was awful: hazy, disconnected, fatigued, and the withdrawal when I stopped was a straight-up nightmare. Google "brain shivers" and be horrified.
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Feb 27, 2020 21:51
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Dias posted:Diane couldn't write not because she had brain fog but because she literally couldn't write the book she wanted to write. Yup. She blamed it on anti-depressants, but really it’s because she didn’t know how to translate her bad experiences into a story she wanted to tell. I’m quite sure RBW’s purpose was to counter the “creatives need to be miserable” message behind every lovely tortured artist trope. Although my experience with meds loving sucked and I no longer take them, I definitely wouldn’t dissuade someone else from trying them because experiences vary.
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Mar 1, 2020 03:14
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I didn't really have a problem with the Battlestar Galactica finale because that worldview was set up pretty early on in the series I didn’t hate it the way most people seem to, as well. It leaned a little too hard on God did it as an explanation, and some of the character endings were frustrating. But some like Roslin’s death and Adama’s reaction to it were gutting and excellent. And yeah: Bear McCreary loving killed it, the whole way through. The same could be said of GoT and Ramin Djawadi, as that goes. The later seasons sucked, but the music is loving incredible. “The Light of the Seven” and “The Night King” in particular are next level...he does some incredible things with a piano. Edit: To make this about Bojack, I think it landed the ending pretty well. “The View from Halfway Down” is such a good culmination of past motifs and plot points, I kind of don’t mind if the actual finale felt anticlimactic by comparison. It being anticlimactic feels like kind of the point, too: real life doesn’t have endings. You kind of keep going, and seldom get the catharsis you want. Xealot fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Mar 21, 2020 |
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Mar 21, 2020 00:09
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Iron Crowned posted:We have no clue what was in the letter TBH True, but what makes the most sense is that Bojack’s fear was correct and she was cutting him out of her life forever in no uncertain terms. “Ghosting” implies she’s keeping Bojack on some back burner in case she decides to reconnect with him later, which doesn’t seem like something Hollyhock would ever do. That feels like something Hollywoo people do: never burning a bridge in case it’s useful to cross it later. Which is a recurring thought in the show, that people keep giving him chances and enabling him because of his fame and wealth. They never know when a Secretariat or Philbert or Horny Unicorn will come around and render him useful again. Hollyhock’s rejection of him carries the most weight because she’s a purely personal connection. She has no interest in the material benefits of his friendship, so when he’s out, he’s OUT.
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May 29, 2020 23:44
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In It For The Tank posted:Is it realistic for a troubled person to relapse back to old behaviours and have to relearn their epiphanies? Sure. Does that make for an engaging storyline in a serial television series? Eh... People have similar complaints for later seasons of Mad Men, which arguably does something similar. I'm ultimately glad they did it in both shows, because you're right: "relapse" feels so...un-cinematic? Antithetical to good storytelling? The sense that it's tedious and frustrating seeps into the portrayal, because it would also be tedious and frustrating for people in these character's lives. Part of the shame and self-loathing people feel IRL when they relapse comes from the sense of weakness or failure they feel, disappointing those in their orbit and eroding their support networks. It's profoundly unglamorous, which I'd argue is something new that happens in the second portrayal, making the entire thing feel a little different.
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Oct 17, 2020 02:09
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Beefeater1980 posted:Mr PB is the antithesis of all of this: he is utterly at peace with himself and although he likes being around other people, he is ultimately not dependent on them. I never really viewed him this way. He's way more functional that Bojack, but I also see him as a bottomless pit of need in his own way. He strikes me as a love addict, the kind of person who needs constant affirmation in the form of huge romantic gestures and intense declarations of love to feel valued. His relationships have a pattern of intense love-bombing followed by burnout followed by existential despair. It's unsustainable, and there's a reason he's been married 4 (?) times by the end of the series. Diane calls this out a few times, where the hugeness of MPB's overtures seem more about his need to feel Big Emotions than giving her something she wants or needs.
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Oct 23, 2020 20:38
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He's also getting therapy in the end. "Is my problem with women any movie directed by Christopher Nolan? Because yes, women are involved, but it's never really about the women."
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Oct 24, 2020 02:37
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They're 25 minute episodes. It's not like anyone's asking you to watch 22 hours of a bad season "before it gets good," it's a sitcom that starts as inconsequential and mediocre, then pretty quickly becomes good, then excellent. Watch the first couple episodes, learn who the characters are and get some exposition. Understand that they are merely fine and it gets better. People in here are acting like they never watched a bad pilot for a show or stuck with something rocky for even a minute before it became incredible.
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Sep 21, 2021 19:34
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the holy poopacy posted:Also, it's not like starting strong dooms a show. The Good Place started with a great hook and definitely ran out of steam towards the end and it's still some of the best TV of the last decade. I thought the end of The Good Place was fantastic. I remember feeling like a handful of episodes were spinning their wheels on odd, nonsensical lore for no particular reason, but the finale is one of the best finales for anything IMO. The scene where Chidi describes the ephemeral nature of consciousness as a wave is far better and more emotional than an NBC sitcom had any right being.
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Sep 21, 2021 20:54
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