BoJack Breakdowns: Season 2, Episodes 1-2
Examining how BoJack doesn't get affirmation from the right people
When I last wrote, we were finishing up season 1, and now we’re back with a shiny new season. So new, in fact, that BoJack is here with a Brand New Attitude. Hashtag “brand new attitude” hashtag “BoJack thoughts” hashtag “every day is a miracle.”
The cold open of “Brand New Couch” is a stark reminder that this show is a tough one. We start with young BoJack watching TV, and it’s the episode that we saw in season 1 where BoJack’s letter to Secretariat was being answered by the celebrity horse himself. But just as Secretariat is answering the letter, BoJack’s parents Beatrice (voiced stunningly by Wendie Malick) and Butterscotch (also voiced by Will Arnett) enter the scene in what seems like a regular screaming match. When Butterscotch storms out, Beatrice comes in and tells her young son, “I was beautiful before I was pregnant. You ruined me, BoJack.” She then tells him, “You’d better grow up to be something great to make up for all the damage you’ve done.”
When we cut back to the current day, we see that BoJack is trying to turn his life around after Diane’s book won him a Golden Globe. He is listening to a self-help book, he is taking up jogging (sort of), and he is ready to tackle the role of Secretariat with a positive outlook. Unfortunately, his positive outlook is interfering with the gravity of the situation that is happening with his character.
Through a series of flashbacks, BoJack realizes that he never learned how to act. He was thrown into a sitcom that didn’t require any kind of serious acting chops, and he coasted on his fame, never studying the craft.
Just as he thinks he thinks he will never be able to perform this role, he gets a call from his mother, telling him that she read his book. When she tells him that she read the parts about her and the way that she spoke to him, we think that perhaps we’re going to get an apology. Instead she says, “I know you want to be happy, but you won’t be and I’m sorry…You come by it honestly, the ugliness inside you. You were born broken. That’s your birthright.”
Episode 2, “Yesterdayland” begins with BoJack on a series of dates. The women are all infatuated with his memoir and they want to see him behave the way he’s described in the book. He feels trapped in a cycle of meaningless sex with women who know about him because of the stories and who don’t really care about him beyond that.
When BoJack is swarmed at a bar by people who want to take his picture and talk about his book, he escapes to a roller rink in the Valley. While there, he meets his old editor, Pinky Penguin who is now working in broadcast TV. He is there with his new boss, Wanda Pierce (voiced by Lisa Kudrow), the new head of programming who recently woke up from a 30 year coma.
BoJack realizes that Wanda doesn’t know anything about him and begins talking to her. He is enamored with her happy-go-lucky attitude, and they spend the whole night talking. They do eventually have sex, but BoJack finds for the first time that he wants to continue to spend time with Wanda.
Wanda joins BoJack on the set for Secretariat and Diane comments that it makes sense that when BoJack finally dates a woman his own age, she’s basically just a stunted 20 year old. The director Kelsey Jannings (voiced by Maria Bamford) notes that BoJack is also stunted, because many celebrities simply stop growing because they don’t have to. Diane mentions that she’s glad she never got famous, and Kelsey goes on to say that everyone can stagnate if they cease being challenged. She glances at a punch card from a sandwich shop that she and Mr. Peanutbutter have frequented over 40 times because she likes it and he wants to make her happy.
BoJack and Wanda are getting along great until they meet another man who also just woke up from a 30 year coma. BoJack becomes increasingly jealous and spies on him, only to discover that he is a Russian spy. When Wanda realizes that BoJack had to spy to find out that information, she explains that she isn’t interested in Alex, but she also doesn’t want to be with someone who is so insecure.
When they visit Todd’s Disneyland (the B plot for this episode is about Todd building his own Disneyland because BoJack told him that it wasn’t real), BoJack tells Wanda that he is the great guy she was getting to know, but he was also the guy who is “not always the best at being not terrible,” but that he’s trying to be better. The episode ends with him inviting her to move in with him.
In season 2, we’re going to see the first real cycle of constructive changes for BoJack that he will then sabotage. His relationship with his mom is incredibly formative, and explains so much about why he is who he is. There is no one who is able to affect his moods as intensely as his mom.
The hard thing about the relationship between Beatrice and BoJack is that she created a life for him where she expected him to be great, and then tears him down at every opportunity. The best she can ever offer him is that she was broken too, so what else could he expect? She is abusive toward him. We will see how the cycle of abuse existed in Beatrice’s life in future seasons, particularly season 4, but what we know right now is that Beatrice was cruel to her son when he was just a child and she continues to be cruel to him as an adult.
BoJack is always trying to please his mom. In the very first scene of the show, BoJack tells Charlie Rose that Horsin’ Around isn’t Ibsen, but that people like it. And in the first episode of season 2, we hear Beatrice tell BoJack the same thing. Henrik Ibsen shows up repeatedly in the course of the show as the standard to which Beatrice holds BoJack.
BoJack has a constant internal battle, finding success, but never feeling content because he can never live up to the expectations that his mother had.
This then spills over into BoJack’s relationships with women. Kelsey rightly identifies that BoJack is stunted because of his fame. Having the unwavering love of hordes of strangers means that you have little incentive to change. But he is also stunted because of his relationship with his mother. If you spend your entire life trying to win the approval of someone who should offer that freely, that will also leave you stuck.
BoJack is in the unique position of being someone who gets approval from all of the wrong places, and as such, he doesn’t know how to act with women. There are moments when it seems like he may be able to build something with Wanda, but even this early in their relationship, we can see unhealthy behaviors cropping up. He struggles to trust her because growing up, he didn’t have parents he could trust. He learned that any statement is an opportunity for pain, leaving him unable to trust even someone who can easily see the best in people, like Wanda. She is one of the rare people who should be able to give him the affirmation that he desires, but he is so damaged, he is unable to hear it from her.
I think one of the hardest parts of watching BoJack is that while he largely understands his faults, he is unwilling or unable (or more likely, a combination of the two) to change them. We will see him try to modify his behavior multiple times over the course of the series, but it always comes to ruin. BoJack Horseman is a tragedy. There is a lot of comedy in the series, but this isn’t a show of happy endings.