@andrewbloom i gotta disagree. Bojack Horseman isn't just about Bojack. It's about everyone who relates to him, and for the writers to say,, lmao you'll just kys. Ok bye:wave_tone1: " would be incredibly irresponsibile. Instead the show says something more poignant and real. People can change but they won't magically become someone else. Also this ending is more depressing Bojack doesn't get to make peace even if for a second. He'll continue on his path of self destruction and ultimately he may haven't changed at all. He's still acting and Hollyhock's left him for good and Diane is gone forever. Also he's the horny unicorn. He's working with Vance and instead of having any regret over it, when talking to Diane he was more interested in defending himself and rationalising why its OK for him to work with Vance. Plus everyone he knows has outgrown him. He'll be forever alone. That to me is more depressing considering then Bojack will inevitably die anyways.
@prithvirajmank I'm sympathetic to the idea of art being a little more aspirational and telling people who see themselves in characters that it's not too late for recovery. It's why I was in favor of Kylo Ren being redeem in Episode 9. But I also think that BoJack Horseman is a show mature and complex enough to be able to show BoJack getting better and even helping set his friends on the right path, but succumbing and spiraling out of control when the ghosts of past misdeeds finally catch up with him. I also think that would have been bolder and more poignant than what we got.
@andrewbloom i think thinking that killing a character off is "more" bold is wrong. Characters die or not, i care about how the story unfolds, and imo the idea that rather than being dead, after all that happened, Bojack Horseman is still the same person he was during the first episode. If he just died, everyone would feel sad over it but this way, he still continues to struggle and wither away never changing but constantly believing that he will.
@prithvirajmank Killing of a character is not bold in and of itself. Having a character fight their demons, seem to conquer them, only to succumb to them is. Or at least it's more bold than letting the character largely sidestep the consequences of their actions.
@andrewbloom after credits rolled, my first reaction was "the previous episode was more powerful". But the more I think and compare two last episodes, the more I agree with the writer's choice. Death would be forgiveness in this case.
And the "real situation" is way more complicated than that. Bojack as character could only kill himself and don't get "easy way out" treatment if we would never see reaction of his friends and colleges to his death. But you would need some sort of conformation or else it would be "Inception" ending allover again. So what you gonna do? End on headline? Gravestone? I feel like suicide plot doesn't live a room for anything but the next shoe to drop - derailing Diane's life for no good reason (in the finale part of the season). Plus death itself isn't new or shocking concept for the show. It was important part of the series, it was properly explored before even the suicide.
I agree with @prithvirajmank what they got instead is more tragic when you stop and think about it. He is alive, and even somewhat well. But for the most important people in his life he is already a ghost. And he will has to live with that, and really faced it after "vacation" in prison. And will pretty much guaranteed and up being another Hollywood's Mel Gibson (I can't remember character name) rince and repeat.
But I think what particularly brilliant about his storyline is that I believe that he changed, just not enough or too late.
Also: but succumbing and spiraling out of control when the ghosts of past misdeeds finally catch up with him
Ghosts of past misdeeds didn't catch up to him through) Poetic justice indeed. The way his spiralling out of control was framed was truly perfect - it was on him alone. Even Prince Caroline didn't wanted to do it.
And that's such a Bojack move - to simultaneously sincerely apologies, getting away with it and ruined it himself.
TL;DR The ending showed us something new - deadman, upclose. The person that simultaneously changed alot and didn't changed enough. He didn't suffered severe repercussions for his actions: social status, wealth, career, health, all intact. And yet lost everyone. Yes, everyone. Because Mr. Peanutbutter, who literally saved Bojack life at one point, evolved but not really. His friendship as superficial as it was before. cue the "Erica!" gag
@gloom8 I don't think death would be forgiveness in this case. I think if anything, it would be the opposite -- a confirmation that his efforts at recovery were ultimately too little or too late. He's not at peace in "The View From Halfway Down" -- he sees horrifying images of people he's cared about and hurt taken away from him, he's called a "stupid piece of shit" again, and he runs from the black goo that slowly envelops him. It's not a pleasant thing or any easy way out; it's a poetic but brutal way to end his journey toward becoming a better person.
And in my head, the final episode would have been about the remaining four, Diane, PC, Todd, and Mr. PB, processing his death, tallying the good and bad from their relationships with BoJack, and moving on. I think that could have worked very well without much alteration to the finale we got.
@andrewbloom by "easy way out" I didn't mean that it would be pleasant and literally easy) More like confronting your problems vs running away from them or lying vs telling the truth. Lying maybe even harder mentally, but people still would often choose to opt out of telling the truth and face the music. In Bojack case it's way harder for him to live with his burden, shame, self hatred than simply non-existing.
Personally before second part dropped, I was picturing season differently. I expected that Bojack would be constantly confronted by the ghosts of his past from the episode one. And theme would be about what you do with people that actually trying to change for the better for once. Do we actually want them to change at all? Does society push them to the worst possible people by turning they back. Does it even matter after what they did to their victims? So like episodes 12, 13, 14 and 16, but stretched over the 8 episodes with more angles including non-existing Gina's storyline.
So in my head, I'm having hard time imagining how one does not turned it into some form of forgiveness for Bojack or his actions when he would be the focus of they attention. Like for example, what I like about the finale episode is that Bojack has the last talk with Diane and probably Todd by complete accident. Because PC's wedding doesn't revolves around Bojack. And, hey, writers could have totally have them meeting at Bojack's "getting out of jail" party. But they didn't.
Next issue, we would get two heavy episodes in a row cause they would probably take place on the next day, at his funeral, on his death anniversary or all at once. It would be hard to invent situations where our 4 characters randomly remember something about Bojack in regular live and also both good and bad.
Diane. Diane is the biggest issue. You would have to focus episode on her, to go through all those phases... and she came out stronger (somewhat) because he was alive at the end. Where would his death leave her than?
And finally this: "Speak no ill of the dead". Any recollection of shitty thing he did would paint Diane, PC, Todd, Mr. PB in unsympathetic light. At best it would be "Bojack sure have being shitty friend to all of us, but he changed us for the better am I right guys?". Where emphasis would be on "changed us for the better". But with him being alive we got different flavors: Mr. PB offering superficial friendship; PC tolerating new Bojack probably thanks to nostalgia, but still slowly moving past him as real friend and as a client; Todd drifted away long time ago and being as kind to him as he would have being for complete stranger (the scene reminded me of Hollyhock freak out during party, maybe it was intentional); And finally Diane, admitting that he changed her too, but his presence in her life is too toxic with emphasis on shitty friend/person part.
Of course to each they own and all that jazz. It's just funny that I agreed with pretty much all of yours reviews of the season except for the final episode)
Also spoilers for Madmen finale I'm not a fan of the MadMen last episode in regards to Don (he became the least interesting part of the show long before that) and I don't think that Don jumping out of the building could have saved his character, either. Bojack been interesting and sympathetic character the whole time. And I'm not actually hate the guy. I am just looking at the situation from the both sides and even through I understand why I still choose the otherside. that's alot of words.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-01-31T16:01:03Z
[7.3/10] I’m not the kind of guy who tends to subscribe to wild fan theories or behind-the-scenes conspiracies. For the most part, I think artists give us what we need in the text, and that most “here’s what was really happening” explanations tends to be some combination of a stretch and wishful thinking. With that caveat in mind, let me throw out two baseless theories that, in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe and have no strong evidence for, but find interesting nonetheless.
Theory #1 is that in actuality, BoJack really died at the end of the last episode, and “Nice While It Lasted” is just another dying dream where he has the chance to make peace with his closest friends. “The View from Halfway Down” was very impressionistic to let the audience know that this was all a delusion or at least something fanciful that BoJack experienced while he sat in the pool, but maybe the series finale is actually just another form of BoJack’s brain “giving him what he needs” to be at peace. Maybe the prior episode is him grappling with his feelings about the people he’s lost, and the current one is about him grappling with the people who’ll survive him. Maybe he just wants to reassure himself that they’ll all be okay.
Theory #2 is that Raphael Bob-Waksberg and the rest of the creative time at BoJack Horseman wanted to kill BoJack off at the end of “The View from Halfway Down”, but Netflix said no, either because they thought it was too dark or too alienating or just wanted to leave the door open to revive the show in some form someday. So maybe this is a compromise, where Bob-Waksberg and company got to do their thing in the penultimate episode, and then fulfilled the necessity for a studio-mandated dose of take-backsies in the finale where BoJack survives, but “dies” in the sense that he’s not going to be in these people’s lives anymore.
There’s a lot of problems with these theories. As my wife pointed out, a big issue with Theory #1 is the fact that if BoJack’s brain was trying to let him make peace with everyone in his life, it would have included him reconciling with Hollyhock, whose absence is still noteworthy here. What’s more, I have no actual evidence for Theory #2, and it’s just a wild guess based on the sort of abrupt transition between the prior episode in this one. If anything a few creators have boasted about the lack of interference from studio execs.
But I spin these theories not because I truly believe them, but because I want to believe them. Let me be frank. BoJack Horseman chickened out here. It would be a bold move, one not seen with such force since The Sopranos, to show your main character coming so close to getting better, only to sink back into old habits and (at least implicitly) die.
And yet it wouldn’t be as dark as David Chase’s landmark series was, because one of BoJack’s last good acts was to help improve the lives of those closest to him. There’s poignance in the idea that BoJack couldn’t fix himself, but could at least help repair the harm he’d done to so many people who had supported him, and help set them all on brighter paths.
“Nice While It Lasted” feels like a fingers-crossed version of that same idea. It still has some weight to see BoJack effectively excised from the lives of Todd, Princess Carloyn, and Diane (or at least minimized). There’s melancholy beauty in the notion that BoJack’s dearest friends have become new people, people who have changed for the better thanks in part to knowing him, but that those changes mean he doesn't really have a place in their lives anymore.
But it’s weakened by the way that the series finale kind of undoes the consequences that the whole season (or at least half-season) built up to in the span of a two-minute opening montage. BoJack’s past misdeeds didn’t come back to destroy him. His hubris in wanting to do another interview didn’t send him on a downward spiral that leads to being a pariah, relapsing, and eventually recklessly causing an end to his life in his depressed self-loathing.
Instead, he’s physically fine, seemingly having suffered no ill-effects from his face down excursion to the pool. Sure, he has to go to jail for fourteen months, but that’s just given him a chance to get sober. And what’s more, he even has a career to look forward to afterward if he wants it, since “Horny Unicorn” is tracking to be a hit. On BoJack Horseman’s account, Hollywood and people in general have short memories, meaning he can pick up where he left things more or less if he wants to.
That development has a certain cynical charm to it, in the idea that even someone who gets jeered at on the street can, with enough time, just make his comeback once something else has become the cause celebre. And yet, transporting a lack of consequences in real life to a lack of consequences in your story, without making it the focus, makes this ending feel emptier than it should.
Despite that, there’s a good deal to admire about “Nice While It Lasted.” While the show shys away from killing off its title character, it does suggest there’s at least some cost to BoJack’s choices over the past season and longer, in that it’s prompted his enablers and those hurt by him to take a step back from his life. Rather than going for some big, grand guignol final frame, the show laudably goes for something low-key, just a series of conversations among friends. And those exchanges are pleasant, put buttons on some of the show’s running gags, and are all-around well-written.
Mr. Peanutbutter is still his cheerful, friendly self, but one who’s grown from his usual co-dependency and is recognizing some of his own patterns for the better. He seems like the one person who’s still likely to be in BoJack’s life on a regular basis (he jokingly sentences BoJack to a life filled with his friendship), and there’s an irony to the fact that he’s probably the person in BoJack’s circle whom he liked the least.
His mini-escape with Todd is a pleasant one, mixing amusing gags about the existentialist lyricism of the “Hokey Pokey” with the notion that the future is unknown and with that comes possibilities that are unexpected but encouraging. After all his shenanigans and struggles, Todd ended up meeting someone he could settle down with and reconnecting, in some tentative way at least, with his estranged mom. It’s a nice place to leave him.
It’s a nice place to leave Princess Carolyn too. Her and BoJack’s conversation about his imagined “go to him” scene at her wedding is the best in the episode, one that nicely invokes the “difference between real life and television” theme that has been with the show for a long time. It’s heartening to see PC still carrying her bits of apprehension, but also having achieved the life she wants, with a child, a supportive partner, and success on her own terms. Most importantly, she no longer feels bound to clean up BoJack’s messes or prop him up.
There’s a similar tack to the showpiece of the episode, which comes in BoJack’s closing conversation with Diane. It nicely addresses the emotional burden he put on her with his near-death phone call, the way it nearly toppled her life into disarray once more, and nicely reveals her subsequent righting of the ship, move, and marriage. It explicates the way their friendship changed each for the better, while not erasing the people each were before, but also putting their lives in different places now, literally and figuratively. It’s a little too cute and writerly in places, but their conversation works, and does a nice job of vindicating what it is arguably the core relationship of the series.
With that, the finale takes to put a bow on BoJack’s relationship with each of the series’s main characters, in commendably unadorned ways. If this is the direction the show decided (or hey, maybe was forced) to go with where we leave Bojack, the approach isn’t bad. It’s a good, not great ending.
There is something warm and wistful about all of the show’s supporting characters being in a happier, more stable, more fulfilled place than we left them, while leading lives that BoJack will mainly see from the outside in. There’s a Moses-esque bittersweetness to the way he sees his closest friends entering a promised land of joy and satisfaction that he himself cannot enter. It’s just a flinch from the stronger message, the bolder stroke, that the series seemed willing to make in the lead-up to this one.
But BoJack Horseman still ends its run as an adventurous, hilarious, and often harrowing series that constantly took chances and went places that a silly animal show, and plenty of serious dramas, wouldn’t take or go. Its final season touched on so many things that needed to be addressed, tying off the loose ends of so many characters and developments and ideas. It leaves the airwaves gently, with a lot of talk and a sweet but sad goodbye, and an indie song to set the mood.
I can’t help but wish it had gone one step further, but it’s hard to look askance after the boundaries this show pushed over the course of six seasons. As the title portends, the series was nice while it lasted. In the final tally, it gave a real life audience reason to see BoJack and the lives he touched in the complicated but comprehending way he seemed to crave so desperately within the show, and to remember him. Don’t act like you don’t know.