Jacequeline Kulaka '22
Bojack Horseman is an adult animated sitcom on Netflix, created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, a show about an anthropomorphic horse who was on a 90s sitcom, one parodying Full House. By that description alone you would wonder why exactly a psychological analysis would be a fitting article for this show. The reason for this is because this is probably one of the most in-depth, dark, shows you can watch about the human condition. It’s a great representation of mental struggle, a total gray area, and here it’s done exceedingly exceptionally well. Despite it being labeled a comedy, the show isn’t really for the faint of heart. The show uses satirical events of pop culture to show the dark side of not only the Hollywood industry but the people involved as well. As mentioned before, the main character of the show, Bojack Horseman, was an actor on a late 90s sitcom called Horsin’ Around. The show followed a young cheerful horse, who adopted and had a family of 3 orphan children. It's lighthearted, carefree, and problems are solved in 30 minutes with a hug, the pinnacle of sitcoms. Thirty years later, the main star of the show, Bojack Horseman is not living his previous sitcom life. He is very depressed, isolated, irrelevant, and is obscure in the public eye. It’s a complete one-eighty from the happy-go-lucky facade he put on around the peak of his acting in the 90s, this fake character even extending outside of that. You can even go as far to say that this character mocks his current self. Now, Bojack suffers from substance abuse and shows signs of depression, extremely low self-esteem, narcissism, self-destructive tendencies, and an extreme and desperate need for approval from others. Deciding after years of irrelevance and self-loathing, Bojack decides to try and make a comeback into the industry with an autobiography, with the help of a ghostwriter, Diane Nguyen. From here you can see Bojack’s journey of extreme ups and downs, but mostly downs, due to his self-destructive nature. It's the type of show that makes you think, “Well, this can’t get any worse, could it?”, until it does. Bojack describes this best, “I've had a lot of what I thought were rock bottoms, only to discover another, rockier bottom underneath.” From that statement alone, it would lead you to some conclusions about Bojack’s mental state, that being, not very good. It's obvious from this quote alone that his mental state is bluntly, atrocious. The show portrays Bojack suffering from multiple mental disorders, that being, depression, anxiety, and implied borderline personality disorder. It scarily, and realistically represents the voices and thoughts that constantly scream in his head over basic decision making, and you can feel the animosity and fear felt towards himself and his environment. Based on his well-being, the show hammers in the absolute dangers of not getting help, how your actions can affect other people, the generational trauma, and eventually cutting off toxic people when necessary, even if you feel sympathy towards them. Without any spoilers, you follow as Bojack destroys not only himself but other people as well. The show purposefully makes you ask questions about Bojack, like “Why is he the way he is?”, or “Why would he do such an atrocious thing? Especially to the people he cares about?”, and later answers those burning questions with events or feelings that explain the behavior. The show also takes a different stance that while his behavior is explained by certain reasons, it doesn’t excuse it, forgiveness is not being handed out for the sole reason of feeling guilty. Your actions have consequences, whether others decide to forgive you or not is up to them, regardless of the circumstances and reasons behind it. Bojack does have his reasons, he is shown to have an abusive childhood, had awful experiences while acting, falls into substance abuse, and even grew extremely narcissistic because of his fame, which leads to extremely self-destructive behavior. As you get closer to the later seasons you see Bojack face the consequences of his past, and present decisions, like his poisoning and destruction of other people, ruining careers, abandoning friends even when they faced discrimination, or borderline illegal actions coming to light. You can see the guilt Bojack is ridden with, self hatred purely projecting out of him. His self-awareness is the first step that he has to learn by dismantling his unstable state. His relationships need his actual input, that he needs to fix himself first, not just feel sorry for himself. He’s going to repeat the behavior but learns to get better due to fear of eventually losing everything. The show teaches us the nuances and complications of dealing with dangerous people like Bojack, explained by his words again, “Everybody loves you, but nobody likes you.” The people around him want him to get better because they care about him despite his horrible actions, but it's hard to like being around someone like that because people are hurt in the process. People love him fundamentally regardless of his struggles with recovery and yet they find it hard to actually be around him. The audience is hit hard by these messages because of just how relatable it is, that you probably know a BoJack you probably know a person like that. Or maybe, you find yourself relating to the pattern of behavior exhibited by Bojack. You don’t have to agree with the actions taken by Bojack, but you may still be able to relate to the emotions associated with the character. The “Bojack” you know is probably not the best person, but you care about them and wish for them to become the best they can be. But sometimes you don’t have a clear answer on what you should personally do about these people, but the show suggests evaluating that yourself, even if that means completely ending the relationship. But sometimes and many times even you struggle to accept such a paradox of a person, and must accept that for your own sake that maybe you should cut them off, or confront them on their behavior. While there are countless other ideas to pick apart in this show, the core lesson is an important one to teach. There is an ambiguity to the human condition, especially considering the incidents surrounding a person, their behavior, and your current amount of love you have for them as a person. The other harsh lesson, self-improve or watch those around you drift away.
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