5x09 Ancient History

[7.8/10] There's a moment in so many episodes of BoJack Horseman where you realize something terrible's about to happen, and you feel awful. And then it does, and you feel worse.

That’s kind of what this episode is about. “Ancient History” teases you with a series of reunions -- between BoJack and Hollyhock, Princess Carolyn and Ralph, and Todd and Emily -- with the hopes that each pairing might be able to patch things up and get back to a good relationship. But this is BoJack, where such things are impermissible (or at least rare), so you can just sort of feel yourself being taunted with these things, and the knowledge that the show is just as quickly going to break everyone apart.

That’s part of what makes the show great. As much as it plays around within the sitcom format and riffs on sitcom tropes, it’s just as inclined to subvert them and show how real life tends to be so much less heartwarming than television normally makes it feel. There’s a reason that this trio of duos each went their separate ways, and as much as we might want them to just drop back into one another’s lives and have everything be okay again, that’s not really how the world works, and “Ancient History” reminds us of that in a pretty heartbreaking fashion.

The most heartbreaking of these is BoJack and Hollyhock. Hollyhock’s PTSD at returning to BoJack’s house after the events of last season is well-earned, and I appreciate that the show doesn't shy away from Hollyhock’s discomfort at returning the place she was dosed. But an incident where she pours BoJack’s pain medication down the drain after thinking it’s happening again sends them on an adventure to try to find more pills that deteriorates in advisability and morality with each step.

You feel bad because you can tell that Hollyhock loves BoJack -- she says as much -- for coming to see him and go through all of this. She’s one of the few. BoJack, screwed up guy that he is, loves her back, but doesn't know how to tell it or show it, especially when he’s some combination of in pain and needing his fix. The best he can do is tell her not to take a semester off to look after him, to go take classes and kiss boys instead, because he knows that if she stays he’ll just drag into more nights like this one, and he doesn't want to do that to her. It’s the most sincere way he can show someone his love -- to not get them too wrapped up in his orbit, which he believes (not entirely wrongly) to be a destructive one.

Todd’s trying misaimed ways to show his love as well. His interludes with Emily are the lightest in the episode, but still kind of sad, as he makes a wacky sex robot to try to service her needs in the ways that he can’t. The dildo-adorned robot’s herky jerky movements and ridiculous phrases bring the laughs that come from an ace trying to build a giant sex toy. (File this under “sentences I never imagined I would write.”) But there’s also the melancholy of both Todd and Emily trying to think of ways that they could work as a couple given their emotional connection, but coming up empty. You root for them to be able to bridge their differences, and the show knows it, and so tugs at your heartstrings a bit when they inevitably can’t.

There’s a similar setup with Princess Carolyn and Ralph, as through some contrived but acceptable circumstances, she’s trying to option one of his greeting cards over dinner when she gets the call to come pick up her new baby. It is an absolute treat to see them together again, as their dynamic is as adorable as always. But when PC gets the baby, and Ralph says he wants to be back in her life, since this solves the fight that split them apart, PC turns him down, saying she made plans in her life, and he’s not in them.

It’s the least earned of these three failed reunions. The show’s heart is in the right place, and you can see that it’s trying to show that PC moved on with her life, but it feels undermotivated. She clearly still has feelings for Ralph, and while it makes more sense for them to take it slow and get reacquainted rather than diving headfirst into parenthood together, her outright rejection feels like the episode making an aspirational point more than one that fits the character, and rushing all of this within a single episode (which, granted, is a necessary concession for a lot of T.V. shows).

So each reunion ends in a little more pain. For BoJack that becomes literal, as his misadventures with Hollyhock prove that his pain is not as physical as it is a chemical dependency. The show’s shuffled BoJack’s substance abuse to the background for the most part this season, but here it rears its ugly head again, as alcohol abuse has worsened since last we saw, and he’s mixing it with pain pills and intentionally getting himself into car accidents to get more.

It is, frankly, disturbing, but Hollyhock’s brief return to his life doesn't motivate him to become a better person, it just motivates him to try to get his fix in a way that she’d have no choice to concede was a situation where he genuinely needed them. It’s the kind of self-destructive and self-justifying behavior BoJack Horseman and BoJack Horseman are known for. From the minute Hollyhock told him it was okay to take the pills but only if he needed them because he was hurt, from the moment Ralph and Princess Carolyn are laughing like old times, from the moment that Todd declares he has a brilliant idea to solve things with Emily, you know it’s going to end in ruin. It’s hard to decide what feels worse -- seeing the car crash coming, or watching it hit.

Hello darkness my old friend.... This one is dark. VERY dark. Like it hasn't been in quite a while. And again, that's what we're here for.

First he the past episodes left any doubt, the intro montage definitely show the high pills consumption. Also something that was lurking around since the beginning: Philbert is too close to Bojack, including his house, and the limit between the character, so close to what he used to be like, and him right now are becoming blurry. Diane including his own words into the script probably didn't help.

Even other characters' stories are dark.

The Todd/Emily relationship completely crashes down as Todd is clearly completely incapable of understanding her, the scary grotesque robot is probably the lighter thing to happen in this episode, and it's pretty creepy.

Darker. Princess Carolyn fails to get get a baby. It's not that different from her previous tries in the season, but she was much closer. Nice to see acknowledged the fact that the end of her relationship with Ralph made no sense, emphasis on the fact that she's adopting and kicked him out because he suggested it. This was clearly the worst moment to take this kind of decision, and her blaming him for not staying and not calling when she had said at the time that she didn't want him to and even confirmed it there is quite harsh. At the same time she was the one enquiring if he had a girlfriend... Of course they could not just go "let's adopt together right now" suddenly, but maybe thinking about it ? But not. She definitely trashed this relationship. Poor Ralph.

Darker. Like I thought earlier, Bojack's relationship with Gina seemed the most normal he had ever had, he even know her schedule and stupid details about her book club's friends ! And by a stroke of luck, she even wants to keep seeing him. And he just throws that away for chasing his pills.

Darker. First episode we saw one bottle a week with marks on it for daily dose. That was a pretty clever thing to do. I was wondering why we didn't see that more. Well, now we have it: it's one bottle a day now.
Hollyhock's there to see him. And he can only bring her on a dug chase, in worse and worse places as it goes on. That relationship was what saved him during the last season, and he again, basically trashed it during this day.

Darkest. The ending is harsh. Bojack throws his car into traffic to hurt himself and get pills without breaking his promise to Hollyhock. Probably hurting other people also. And probably blaming her in the future. At least she will blame herself.