I find the series pretty boring actually...
8.8/10. I may have to rethink my "graded against itself" scale for BoJack because it seems to have found a bit of a groove. Again, the show balanced the heavy stuff and the comedic stuff pretty well. BoJack and Wanda's scene felt particularly real ("You didn't know me. You fell in love with me. Then you did know me." was a devastating line.) Dianne turning into a shiftless slob who "wasn't the person she thought she was" was hilarious and heartbreaking in turn. And while Todd's story was more straightforwardly comedic, the meld between Scientology and Improv was an amusing take on both that had a lot of juice to it. I like where they've placed all the characters at the end of the episode, and I'm interested to see where these stories, especially BoJack trying to get back to the (metaphorical) place where he was last happy as a throughline.
9.5/10. What a way to start the season! I liked the general themes that this episode dabbled in. BoJack's struggle between doing something "challenging" but be unappreciated and quickly forgotten or something that would help him be remembered, but which feels like a lie since it's not really him, provides the episode with a strong thematic backbone. That gives color to BoJack strains to get through all these mindless interviews, to talk the talk that will get him an award that will validate him, but at the same time, he wants to defend his crappy TGIF sitcom that feels like more of a reflection of his soul (if for no other reason than because his soul is kind of crass, and because it was something he did with his best friend who saw the best in him), and it's also why he can't enjoy the ride because he's still questioning himself after what happened in New Mexico. That is, frankly, what I felt was missing from this show at times in prior seasons, something that powerfully explored BoJack's psyche while giving into the complexity of it and not just going for one-to-one, "bad experience A caused poor life result B" storytelling
And despite all that heavy, complicated thematic and psychological stuff, it was a damn hilarious episode! The conference call in particular was a great way of bouncing everyone off of one another and showing off the show's comic sensibilities. Todd getting lost, Midnight Cowboy-style in a hotel was slight but so so funny. And the other comic elements of the episode from Mr. Peanutbutter hijacking his accountant away from his son to come up with terrible, Todd-like ideas for shows, to Princess Carolyn managing the agency while multitasking, to the sendups of award season banter, were all superb. Overall, this episode hit the right mix of introducing the conflicts and emotional stakes of the new season, checking in with all of the characters, and making some hilarious jokes in the process. This episode definitely bodes well for season 3.
Fuck yeah, loved this since I dearly missed the shit-show that "The Soup" was. :D
This is pretty much a continuation of the old show with a "Netflix vibe" and some International stuff thrown in which I highly appreciate. Also that outro song was brilliant and ooooh so true.
8.6/10. I really enjoyed all the moving parts in this one, and it ended up moving like clockwork. I especially appreciated the bookends of the episode, which ever so briefly turned the foils (Rabbitowitz and Vanessa Gecko) into the protagonists. I'm a sucker for those kind of perspective-flipping gags, and having the bad guys fix marriages, reveal that one of our heroes were lying, and land their client a big role to save their agency, and have them treat it like a victory for justice and right (which...maybe it is?) was a nice twist.
But I particularly enjoyed the back and forth as BoJack juggled projects, from the blockbuster Pegasus project that would up his profile as a movie star, to the Jellybean Girl project with Kelsey that would allow him to do challenging work, to "Eathan Around* (a nice riff on Fuller House) which would allow him to help out something approaching a friend. It's a nice way to dramatize the different paths in front of BoJack, not to mention his inability to handle these things on his own or with any grace or dignity, and that makes it all the more interesting and devastating when it all goes up in flames.
I also enjoyed the B-Story of Mr. PB and Dianne visiting Mr. PB's brother on Labrador Island. Weird Al is always a get, and the "twisted spleen" as terminal illness conceit was really interesting, especially with Dianne picking up the hints and Mr. PB not wanting to have to face something difficult. They've also been setting up a lot in terms of Dianne with respect to children this season, and I wonder if it leads to her and Mr. PB having to adopt his nephews and Dianne not being okay with that.
Overall, a tightly-written, tightly-paced episode that had laughs and creativity out the wazoo.
[7.4/10] So here’s the big problem. BoJack is a show that revels in building things up just to tear them down. Sure, it has people making slow but steady progress, Todd in particular, but it’s also a show that relishes in gut punches. That makes you (or at least me) brace for them, and gives them less impact. Things were going too well for Princess Carolyn -- that means things had to predictably fall apart, and the parade of horribles that happen to her just starts to feel inevitable and almost indulgent in how things pile up.
It also doesn’t help that the shocking twist of the conceit is basically a repeat of something How I Met Your Mother pulled not that long ago. I still really enjoy the frame story, which has plenty of great riffs on “the future” and storytelling machinery that brings the comedy in an otherwise harrowing plot. And Amy Sedaris delivers her last lines about “what I do when I’m feeling down” so well. But again, the way this all felt telegraphed weakens the force of what could otherwise be a knife-twisting moment.
Still, Princess Carolyn losing her biggest client, her baby, her boyfriend, and even the sense of place and history that came from the necklace her mother gave her is genuinely harrowing. Her reasons for pushing Ralph away feel simultaneously a bit unfair but also understandable. It’s a scene that feels very real, even if it starts with a wild array of dentist clowns.
Overall, it’s a creative episode, but one whose misery seems too preordained to land as well as it needs to.
[8.7/10] I loved the structure of this one. The way it fit the BoJack/Hollyhock story, the Governor’s race, the Princess Carolyn plot, and Todd’s dentist clowns into one intersecting timescape was absolutely wonderful, giving everything a sense of flow while also allowing the show to develop some momentum from jumping between stories.
For one thing, I really enjoyed the way the show used the “one week later/one week earlier” bit to drive home how fickle the electorate is. The hoopla over Woodchuck’s new hands, the origin of those hands, and Biel’s anti-avocado position driving the fortunes of the election and the media’s coverage of it is great satire of the 2016 election that nevertheless works well as broader satire of political races and news coverage generally. It also drops more nice hints at bumps in the road between Diane and Mr. PB, with Biel’s “magic eye” story providing a metaphor for why Diane might want to stick it out while waiting for something magical to click between the two of them.
Todd’s story was mainly just for laughs, but they were great laughs. His interactions with the representative of the Better Business Bureau had the dependable comedy from a square interacting with a goofball, and his group’s escapades to put on a show and get Princess Carolyn in position were zany fun.
Princess Carolyn’s story was good stuff too. I like the idea that she’s despondent and slipping after all that’s happened to her, but that the serendipity of receiving a script titled “Philbert” strikes a chord and gives her a reason to get out of bed and try to produce it. Her interactions with Turtletaub are a hoot as always, and I’m interested by the moral ambiguity of her forging BoJack’s signature to make it happen.
But the peak of the episode comes in its bookends, which center on BoJack’s relationship with Hollyhock. I’d naturally assumed that Hollyhock had passed out from starving herself due to BoJack’s blob comment, but it’s a good fake out. The show earns it’s angst from BoJack who reveals how much he knows and cares about his daughter in his efforts to see her in the hospital. His interactions with her eight dads strike the right balance of comedy and tragedy, and you really feel for BoJack in how he’s losing something that enriched his life and which he was on the road to being deserving of for once.
And man, the reveal that his mom was secretly dosing Hollyhock’s coffee with amphetamines is a doozy. It wraps up BoJack’s parental issues in both directions nicely, and makes for an absolute dagger when he bundles her up and gets ready to drop her off at the worst nursing home he can find. It’s the cherry on top of all his past resentments, and that’s what makes her recognizing him at the very end such a splash of cold water. Right when he’s at his emotional low point, she finally figures out who he is and he has to confront his anger and his desire to be seen by her at the same time. It’s a hell of a note to go out on.
Overall, it’s an episode with a creative interlacing of stories, each of which hit, and in the case of the last one, packs a wallop. Superb stuff.
Ugh, This ruined me forever.
OMG, That was a twist! Best episode EVER.
[9.8/10] It seems like every season, there’s one episode of BoJack Horseman that just floors me, and this may be the best of them all. More than BoJack’s dream sequence in S1, more than his unforgivable act at the end of S2, more than the even the harrowing end for Sarah Lynn in S3, “Time’s Arrow” is a creative, tightly-written, absolutely devastating episode of television that is the crown jewel of Season 4 and possibly the series.
The inventiveness of the structure alone sets the episode apart. It feels of a piece with the likes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for finding outside the box ways to communicate the idea of dementia and the brain purging and combining and reconstructing dreams and memories into one barely-comprehensible stew. The way that the episode jumps back and forth through time is a superb way to convey the way this story is jumbled up and hard to keep a foothold on for Beatrice.
And that doesn’t even take into account the other amazing visual ways the show communicates the difficulty and incoherence or what Beatrice is experiencing. The way random people lack features or have scratched out faces, the way her mother is depicted only in silhouette with the outline of that scar, the way the images stop and start or blur together at emotional moments all serve to enhance and deepen the experience.
What’s even more impressive is how “Time’s Arrow” tells a story that begins in Beatrice’s youth and ends in the present day, without ever feeling rushed or full of shortcuts. Every event matters, each is a piece of the whole, from a childhood run-in with scarlet fever to her coming out party to an argument about the maid, that convincingly accounts for how the joyful, smart young girl we meet in the Sugarman home turns into the bitter husk of a woman BoJack is putting in a home. It’s an origin story for Beatrice, and a convincing one, but also one of the parental trauma that has filtered its way down from BoJack’s grandparents all the way down to poor Hollyhock.
And my god, the psychological depth of this one! I rag on the show a decent amount for writing its pop psychology on the screen, but holy cow, the layers and layers of dysfunction and reaction and cause and effect here are just staggering. The impact of Beatrice’s father’s cajoling and her mother’s lobotomy on her development as a woman in a society that tried to force her into a role she didn’t want or necessarily fit is striking in where its tendrils reach throughout her development. The idea of rebelling against that, and the way BoJack’s dad fits into that part of her life is incredible. And the story of growing resentment over the years from a couple who once loved each other, or at least imagined they did and then found the reality different than the fantasy is striking and sad.
But that all pales in comparison in how it all of these events come together to explain Beatrice’s fraught, to say the least, relationship to motherhood and children. The climax of the episode, which intersperses scenes of the purging that happens when Beatrice contracts scarlet fever as a child, her giving birth to BoJack, and her helping her husband’s mistress give birth all add up to this complex, harrowing view of what being a mom, what having a child, amounts to in Beatrice’s eyes.
The baby doll that burns in the fire in her childhood room is an end of innocence, a gripping image that ties into Beatrice’s mother’s grief over Crackerjack’s demise and whether and how it’s acceptable to react to such a trauma. The birth of BoJack, for Beatrice, stands as the event that ruined her life. BoJack is forced to absorb the resentments that stem from Beatrice’s pregnancy being the thing that effectively (and societally) forced her to marry BoJack’s father, sending her into a loveless marriage and a life she doesn’t want all because of one night of rebellion she now bitterly regrets. For her, BoJack is an emblem of the life she never got to lead, and he unfairly suffers her abuses because of it, just like Beatrice suffered her own parents’ abuses.
Then there’s the jaw-dropping revelation that Hollyhock is not BoJack’s daughter, but rather, his sister. As telegraphed as Princess Carolyn’s life falling apart felt, this one caught me completely off-guard and it’s a startling, but powerful revelation that fits everything we know so well and yet completely changes the game. It provides the third prong of this pitchfork, the one where Beatrice is forced to help Henrietta, the woman who slept with her husband, avoid the mistake that she herself made, and in the process, tear a baby away from a mother who desperately wants to hold it. It is the culmination of so many inherited and passed down traumas and abuses, the kindness and cruelty unleashed on so many the same way it was unleashed on her, painted in a harrowing phantasmagoria of events through Beatrice’s life.
And yet, in the end, even though BoJack doesn’t know or understand these things, he cannot simply condemn his mother to suffer even if he’s understandably incapable of making peace with her. Such a horrifying series of images and events ends with an act of kindness. BoJack doesn’t understand the cycle of abuse that his mom is as much a part of as he is, but he has enough decency, enough kindness in him to leave Beatrice wrapped in a happy memory.
Like she asked his father to do, like she asked her six-year-old son to do, BoJack tells her a story. It’s a story of a warm, familiar place, of a loving family, of the simple pleasures of home and youth that began to evaporate the moment her brother didn’t return from the war. It’s BoJack’s strongest, possibly final, gift to his mother, to save her from the hellscape of her own mind and return her to that place of peace and tranquility.
More than ever, we understand the forces that conspired to make BoJack the damaged person he is today. It’s just the latest psychological casualty in a war that’s been unwittingly waged by different people across decades. But for such a difficult episode to watch and confront, it ends on a note of hope, that even with all that’s happened, BoJack has the spark of that young, happy girl who sat in her room and read stories, and gives his mother a small piece of kindness to carry with her. There stands BoJack, an individual often failing but at least trying to be better, and out there is Hollyhock, a sweet young woman, who represent the idea that maybe, just as this cycle was built up bit-by-bit, so too may it be dismantled, until that underlying sweetness is all that’s left.
Not only one of the best horrors I've seen this year, but one of the best films I think I've seen in a very, very long time.
I went into this thinking that it was a horror movie. That's what I expected, a horror movie, what I got was a lot of tears and some alcohol in my system. There is horror but it's shown more in human nature, how selfish we become in face of danger.
This film surpasses it's zombie subgenre - it's a heartbreaking and gruelling tale of a father's fight for his daughter's survival. All other characters along the way are equally compelling. And the movie is a fresh take on an overused subject - don't expect guns, machetes, chainsaws and tanks - this is a raw and emotional fight you're in for.
the cart/hallway scene almost kills me every time!
This show isn't perfect but they sure as hell know how to make an ending!
When Michael thanked Tahani for being so helpful and the light cube turns red I laughed my ass off! And Hawaiian pizza is the worst pizza!
This show is goofy light-hearted fun and I'm loving it more each week! Great to see Adam Scott joining the (bad place) gang, I'm sure he'll bring even more fun to the show! Oh, and again, awesome cliffhanger, I'm already itching for the next episode!
[7.7/10] I’ll say this for The Good Place. I like that they’re basically running through all the love triangle permutations now rather than dragging them out unnecessarily. I’ll admit, I don’t exactly buy the possibility of Fake Eleanor and Chidi together, or Fake Eleanor being in love with Chidi, but I do buy it as a spur of the moment feeling that, with some reflection, she realizes isn’t real. (I’m less sold on the idea that Tahani and Chidi aren’t soulmates, because that seems like a better possibility.)
Still, I’ll say this for that part of the story -- it leads to the best thing in the episode, namely Fake Eleanor and Tahani hanging out together. The two characters have a fun dynamic, and watching them check out a BBC sitcom or put in hair extensions or snark at Jason and Janet’s wedding is a treat.
Heck, I even liked the Jason and Janet shtick. There’s something about someone who’s a complete dolt “falling in love” with someone who’s barely sentient but nevertheless nice to him that is weird but oddly sweet. The pair’s vows, entrance music, and little dance together are all absolutely charming even if it’s a semi-bizarre bit.
The only part of the episode that didn’t really work for me is Chidi’s indecision. I like the approach, showing Chidi’s paralyzed by choice, but it’s done in such a cartoony, over the top way that it’s hard to be too invested in his growth over the course of the episode. That said, his best friend knowing him well enough to do a “fake wedding day” test, and Chidi literally being killed by his indecision is a decent bit.
Overall, lots of laughs and good energy to this one, particularly the funny and endearing Tahani/Fake Eleanor portions and the strange Jason/Janet stuff.
The Good Place has the potential in it to be a really amazing, fun show. It completely ignores that potential, though, in favour of playing things as safe as possible. It's frustrating, because the show has a fantastic central concept and both Kristen Bell and Ted Danson have the ability to make anything they are involved in better.
It turns out that they are not quite enough, and Danson especially gives a distractingly odd performance throughout (reasons for this can be explained away, but it's so off putting). The humour is extremely hit and miss, although most episodes did manage to get one genuine laugh out of me. It's a show that desperately needs to be more risqué and have more adventurous storytelling. Every character beside the two leads are bland, poorly written and certainly poorly acted (Chidi and Tahani being the biggest culprits).
BUT. The show does something unexpected. It actually pushes the narrative forward instead of sticking to the same conceit every episode, giving us new storytelling avenues. By the end we get that genuinely unexpected twist that re-frames EVERYTHING we've seen so far, and actually makes the show's annoyances suddenly make sense in retrospect.
Even if that hadn't happened, there's something about The Good Place that made me want to keep watching. It's completely mediocre but has enough of a spark that it succeeds in standing out, and given how the first season ended it could go somewhere good.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night
[6.4/10] The Good Place is getting a little too simplistic and didactic for my tastes here. The premise of the A-story is a good one -- Michael is an immortal being and so has never had to really consider morality because he’s never truly had to face the concept of death. So when he is facing the real prospect of “retirement,” at Chidi’s urging, he has a breakdown. That leads to some great comic acting from Ted Danson as his face practically melts with anguish and he curls up into a ball on Eleanor’s lap. It’s a heady thing to play for comic notes, but it works.
Buy then the show gets really broad and obvious about it. Having Michael shift from “existential crisis” to “mid-life crisis” is a clever enough twist, but the episode goes really cheesy with the humor, and it doesn’t land. At the same time, the flashbacks with Eleanor learning about death from her crappy mom have some decent laughs in them, but their message is too blunt. Eleanor considers how damaging ignoring your bad feelings about death is given the source, and then delivers an aesop to Michael about it. It’s too neat and too easy.
The B-story is solid, until the end. I like the idea that Tahani knows she’s intended to be “tortured” by having her great party be upstaged by one the demons are throwing, but that the realization that she still can’t beat them in party planning nevertheless bothers her. It’s an interesting opportunity for Tahani to have some self-reflection, and Jason offering her some comfort and support in his typically dim-witted way is sweet.
But man, having them sleep together feels like such a standard sitcom move. Not every instance of someone being nice to a member of the opposite sex needs to lead to romance. And it comes off like the show needing something for Tahani and Jason to do while bigger plot stuff is going on in the rest of the show. I’m not a fan of that choice, to state the obvious, though maybe I’m just salty because I was oddly compelled by last season’s Jason/Janet pairing.
Overall, one of the more standard-to-cornball episodes of the show thus far.
[8.3/10] The Good Place is definitely playing to those in its audience with philosophy backgrounds. The titular trolley problem isn’t exactly a deep cut in moral philosophy, but seeing it not only dramatized literally, but remixed and rematched with our thought problem twists and series callbacks was wonderful. That alone would make this outing an enjoyable one -- seeing the normally abstract, removed sort of moral quandaries philosophers use to illustrate points made real in Road Runner-style splendor.
But as the show does when it’s firing on all cylinders, it doesn’t just use this idea for the humor and mayhem -- it uses it to make a point about the characters’ relationships and the broader narrative of the series. “The Trolley Problem” is more concerned about the connection between Michael and Chidi, and the wedges between them that may make it hard for them to find common ground.
I absolutely love the reveal that Michael was falling back into old habits and torturing Chidi. The question at play here is a compelling one -- can this moral instruction really change Michael, or is he stuck in his view of humanity and the actions that reflect that view. The episode muddles the conflict between Chidi and Michael a bit, but also takes it seriously, having Chidi reject Michael’s (hilarious) bribes and demand a sincere expression of contrition in order to repair their relationship and be able to move forward. It’s a deft balancing act between the creativity allowed by the world’s expansive sandbox, the silliness that defines the show’s humor, and the sincere character work that anchors it all.
The B-story, with Tahani and Jason getting psychotherapy from Janet, is nice enough, but not quite on the same level. It attempts to wring some emotional heft from Tahani being embarrassed to be seen cavorting romantically with Jason, but it falls into some clichés and Jason’s idiocy-as-profundity routine easily. On the other hand, the development that Janet is exceeding her programming and weird things are happening is an intriguing and amusing one, and her chipper roboticism has stealthily made her a dark horse for my favorite character on the show.
Overall, a great episode that has humor, inventiveness, and good character material in the A-story, and a couple of interesting Janet-related developments in the B-story.
[8.4/10] A real winner. I am a sucker for bottle episodes, particularly ones that use the opportunity to dig into character and really allow for some creative writing and performances. Despite a few flashbacks and some CGI trickery, this is a mostly-contained half hour that lets the strengths of the performers and the writers’ room shine through.
There’s two great arcs here. The first centers on Janet herself, and the realization that her malfunctions are due to her sublimated feelings for Jason emerging every time she claims to be happy about something involving him and Tahani. It’s not much of a revelation given what we saw last week, but it’s still realized nicely.
The process of Michael troubleshooting Janet leads to all sorts of creative sequences showing off the show’s high concept chops. But I also enjoy the idea that (a.) Janet isn’t even aware of why she has these feelings about Jason and has to come to terms with them in her own, A.I. sort of way, and (b.) that she’s willing to die, again in her own detached way, if it means protecting Jason.
It’s a great showcase for D’Arcy Carden, who plays up Janet’s traditional chipper dialtone demeanor, while also finding room for subtle bits of emotion that show the ways she’s becoming a little more human.
It’s also a great showcase for Ted Danson. Michael comes to terms with the fact (mostly through flashback) that despite everything, he views Janet as a friend. She helped him solve his biggest problems and has been there for him, whether from affection or programmed duty, from the beginning, and he can’t bear to let her go. It’s a nice bit of parallelism in Michael becoming just a little more human as well.
“Janet and Michael” is the type of episode that could provide challenging in the wrong hands, but on The Good Place, it gives the audience a heap of creative comedy and character development without being able to rely on traditional TV storytelling beats or changes in scenery. Kudos to all.
(Plus hey, it's Dennis Feinstein as Janet's new manufactured boyfriend!)
The paradigm of material being cut from a book to fit into the run time of a movie doesn't really apply here because next to nothing from it happens in the film. It bares little resemblance to the book at all and is completely shallow for it. Conservatively I'd put it at 10% of the book translated to the screen in a recognisable form.
It should be "Inspired by" rather than "Based on" however I didn't find it that inspired at all. It's unbelievable to me that Cline himself handled the screenplay, at least in part. People that love the film will be thoroughly disappointed by the book, especially the PG-13 crowd the film brought in.
The Oasis itself was done an utter disservice by portraying it as basically just a game, it was so much more than that.
Disappointing.
Despite all the great character development, strong humour, the use of Kristin Bell's real life husband and the emotional bonds that I'm forming with all of these characters... the moment of this episode that made me love it the most was the fact that the film on endless repeat in hell is Pirates of the Caribbean 6: The Haunted Crow's Nest or Something, Who Gives a Crap
I totally lost it when I saw Michael doing Ted Danson's Cheers routine! Such a lovely (and obvious) Easter egg.
I felt this episode dragged things a little bit, it most certainly shifted the tone of the series, putting comedy in the back seat and letting moral consequences of actions lead the way. Like this episode's plot, the episode itself felt a bit experimental. I am not at all happy with the results, but it's still a good episode, nonetheless, despite it being my least favourite of the season. After last week's superb episode, this one seemed like a filler for season 3 to kick in. Or maybe I just miss the whole gang together. Regardless, the ending surely was interesting enough to keep us wanting to know where they're taking us, now. They're all alive, no more "Good Place" or "Bad Place" for a while, so has this now become a regular sitcom with ethical elements thrown into it? Ah! I'm certain that will not be the case, because this show knows how to sweep the rug from under our feet every time we're standing firmly on it. Yeah, I'm probably not good with metaphors. Anyway, I can barely wait to get reunited with these poor afterlife test subjects for season 3!
Pizza Ghost keeps stealing the show.
I wish, when I was that age, I had Luke's courage.. Hell, even now :D
For me, the whole of this episode is contained in Peyton Kennedy's rendition of Elton John's "Rocket Man". It just made the whole episode for me. It was lovely, and sad.