6x15 The View from Halfway Down

[9.2/10] Every season, BoJack Horseman does at least one format-bending, stylized, impressionistic episode. And almost every season it blows me away. I don’t know if this tops “Free Churro” or “Fish Out of Water”, but it at least sits comfortably with them, an allegory for the act of death, the process of letting go and reckoning with your life and its end.

There is something very Sopranos about this, not only the implied demise of our main character, but also in the dream space he occupies, one where the ghosts of his past return to haunt him. This isn’t quite “The Test Dream”, but it fits into that same liminal mode that David Chase’s show (and again, also Mad Men) would go to when they wanted to make their points in a roundabout way.

It is a frightening, beautiful, challenging episode of television. It is frightening because it treats the act of death as a horror movie, where a big pile of sentient black tar goes after you, where the bystanders melt into avian husks, where there’s nothing on the other side. It is beautiful because it conveys the act of leaving this mortal coil as one of art, where true to BoJack’s psyche, each of these deceased people in his life goes out putting on a show, plying their trade in one form or another, until the time is right.

And it’s a challenging episode because it asks us what the value of life and the value of death are. It asks whether there is “good damage” that means something or if that’s just a way to treat being happy as something selfish. It asks if valorizing sacrifice makes us less fulfilled in our lives. It asks if the best parts of our lives justify the worst parts. It asks if the choices we make in life add up to something in the finally tally of our days and nights. It asks if it’s worth it to care, if there’s any sort of reward or self-justification for putting so much effort into our projects and plans.

And it asks whether it’s all worth it, what the best way to live and the best way to die are. It doesn't answer these questions. It only presents contrasting views spoken over a dinner table, one where old wounds are reopened and the faces of death BoJack’s scene and heard and internalized play out his own internal dilemma as he waits on death’s door.

It does all of this with words and tones and images that catch the eye and pierce the heart. The way that the episode presents these debates works because each of these characters feel fully-formed and represent different perspectives. Each captures both a contrasting view of what the best life is, while also reflecting the people that BoJack has known and mourned, in one way or another, in his past. That gives their conflicting points weight, sheathed in the personas of the losses that have shaped his life.

It accomplishes its heights in the shows that each puts on. Sarah Lynn sings a haunting rendition of “Just Keep Dancing”. Her song suggests a guilt still dripping from BoJack’s soul, from bringing her into this business and teaching her that continuing to perform is the only way, until it killed her. Corduroy, not one of the more poignant deaths in the series, dies doing an acrobatic rope trick, one that befits his method of death.
BoJack’s father performs a poem, one where we understand in greater depth not only his suicide, but his wish that he could take it back, that his mid-air clarity was doomed by the choice he made seconds before. And yet, before he takes the stage, he tells BoJack that it didn’t matter, that he wished he’d cared less, and that he put up walls because he didn’t want BoJack or his wife to know how much he did care. Maybe that’s just what BoJack wants or needs to hear right now, or maybe it’s the confession of a man more complicated than BoJack quite understood until he became a xerox of a xerox of him.

BoJack’s mother performs the routine we heard about in “Free Churro” accompanied by the uncle whose death helped spin her life out of control. Her ribbon dance has a haunting quality to it, with moves that seem impossible, accompaniment that floats in the air, and a contrast between the hard part and the easy part that leaves her long alabaster prop irrevocably stained with the mark of black death.

And then there’s Kazzaz, the master of ceremonies, there to rundown BoJack’s life: what he did, what he didn’t do, who he was, and who he wasn’t. When it’s all over, the goop takes him too, killing him slowly in contrast to his compatriots, eating away parts of his body like the cancer did, until the drip-drip-drip finally ends. Each has a performance, and each leaves through that door to oblivion in a way that’s befitting.

The show captures the dream logic of all of this wonderfully. Without a wisp of transition, Sarah Lynn goes from being the little girl BoJack met on the set of his show, to the adult performer who succeeded later in life, to the drugged out starlet who died sitting next to him. The man who represents his father has Butterscotch’s voice, but Secretariat's body, nicely representing the way that BoJack conflated his real life dad with the one he imagined filling that space as he sat in front of the television screen. And Beatrice goes from being the younger, vibrant woman BoJack once knew, to the sick old woman he left in a home.

This isn’t a show that’s typically particularly well-designed or animated. There’s creative material in the visual presentation for sure, but normally the actual animation is fairly basic. But here, BoJack Horseman’s production team really challenges themselves. The flooding of the black gloop, the impossible geography of the home where BoJack meets his dead friends and family, the perspective changes as he runs through it and ends up back where he started, all have an immediacy and shifting perspective that the show doesn't always go for.

But the most haunting image is the glimpses we get of BoJack in the pool, an image that connects to the show’s intro, and hints at what’s really going on here. There is a boldness to all of this, not only killing off your main character, but doing so in a way that breaks with the formal limits of your series, that confronts him with the death he’s been a party to, and presents his brain seeing and doing what it needs to in order to make peace with that.

It ends on a note of nihilism, on the possibility that none of this mattered, that there’s nothing he could do to stop it, and that the best and only thing to do now is die. But when he does, he wants to be on the phone with Diane, he wants to know how he’s doing. BoJack is dying, but even in that, he cuts against the nihilism. If none of it matters anyway, even if it all ends anyway, he wants to die caring, caring about someone he loves, someone he wants to be happy and whose joys make him happy, whether he’ll be around to see it or not.

• Uh, what?
• Is that Zach Braff?
• Crackerjack?
• Thank you, Zach Braff
• What is that black goo?
• That dripping though
• Crackerjack likes their bit
• Friendly fire—what?
• Secretariat is his dad?
• Lucid dreaming?
• It didn't go the way he predicted
• I won't stop dancing
• Yeah, why is he his dad?
• Secretariat/BoJack's dad!
• Younger older brother?
• It's BoJack Horseman?!
• Herb just got snapped!
• That's a freaky bird
• WTF?

With BoJack's perceived death in his own TV show, it leaves me shocked. Not because they actually did it, but because I can't imagine how this show will end. How will everyone else react after everything BoJack's done? Will they see it as only a matter of time? Will they feel sad or happy? What if someone ignores it completely?

I took a long break between seasons, so not every episode is fresh in my mind. I binge-watched the last two seasons, too, so I'm on a BoJack high but haven't given the series much thought. At this point, I think it's time to reflect.

BoJack Horseman is an unusual series that pushes animation and TV's boundaries to the brink. Its storytelling prowess is unimaginable, and the feats it pulls off leave me speechless. Even though I know nothing is like something else, I will never see anything like BoJack Horseman, again, ever.

To follow five characters, develop them and explore their backstories to see how they inform each character is rare. Few shows, movies or books can pull off such a feat, but this show makes it look easy.

I'll never see another show like BoJack Horseman, and I can't wait to hold on to it, forever. I can rewatch this series, entire episodes, and I will, but once you finish a show for the first time, it feels like the journey's over. When I refuse to finish it, it's like their lives are still happening without me. But once I reach the end; that final chapter, this delusion shatters and it feels like a goodbye. Whenever I rewatch an episode and know how it ends, it reminds me of my absence, how I'm a viewer taking a peek into a snapshot of their lives.

SCORE: 8/10

We're all going to die.

This fact breaks people. Humans will worry about death for their entire lives. And why shouldn't they? It's the end, after which comes the unknown. No one knows what happens when you die, but leaving this earth scares us. So we believe something actually happens when you die - you go to heaven, a paradise similar to earth, or you become reborn.

What probably happens when you die is similar to our personal experiences of the year 1856. Nothing. Everything ends.

But for Bojack Horseman, and for many others, he doesn't want his life to end, especially not at this point in it. So, he imagines closure. His brain has a lucid dream where he meets all his dead friends, and they tell him they forgive him. They all leave him, and prepare him for his turn. It's a pretty good way to go out, given the event itself.

But this closure isn't real. Bojack is drowning in a pool, and there is an overwhelmingly large chance that he is going to die. The View From Halfway Down, as expected from Bojack-level writing, expertly hints at the real outcome of this episode. He can't remember what's happening, a black-as-death liquid keeps dripping on his head, his food and water taste like chlorine, he is with those who have already died, a bird dying before leaving a house is an omen of death, and so on and so forth. Even more clever details are dropped as special little Easter eggs: the paintings are all from different places, and behind more warped as time passed; Bojack takes Sarah Lynn to the house, much like he took her to her death; and, for an extra kicker, it is revealed he is drowning 17 minutes in - exactly how long he waited while Sarah Lynn was dying before calling an ambulance.

At the same time, the content itself is brilliant - a final, grandiose goodbye to those who died, and phenomenal conversations on death, legacy and true selflessness between wonderfully charismatic and engaging personalities (all made up in Bojack's head), as well as the haunting portrayal of Bojack's impending and terrifying doom. Herb is awesome, Sarah Lynn is tragic, Zach Braff is hilarious, and Secretariat/Butterscotch Horseman is endlessly interesting. And that poem, man, that is absolutely impeccable.

Bojack still lives, though. Watching through to the end credits shows this - his heart is still beating. Whether that's what he deserved or not is obviously left up to discussion, but I still like how we're given reasons that he should live - he is remorseful, he holds himself accountable for mistakes, and as the final phone call makes clear, he just wants to know that his loved ones are ok. I'm absolutely fine with Bojack living on, and giving my one of my favourite final episodes of all time.

Bojack Horseman will still die. But he has time to make his life good again. And maybe, just maybe, it'll finally work.