“Let’s Get Rich” This Is BoJack Horseman. Obviously!

A humanoid horse imposingly kisses a female human by a beach on a certain peaceful and calm night. Crickets cheer in the distance as stars gleam on the horizon. The blue of the night sky is planted above the blue of the ocean. . . Welcome to the show, BoJack Horseman!

As Netflix releases the fifth season of BoJack, written originally by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Hanawalt, we once again get to see the ceaseless moving of a bright beautiful menagerie of animals pitted against humans. Sadcom regains a whole new dimension after Rick and Morty, and promises another deplorable journey in Bojack’s God forsaken “Hollywoo.” Our Bojack Horseman himself is a distressed and self-loathing protagonist who is consumed deep into the toxic celebrity culture, and it is just the kind of show that a generation of unresolved psychological complexities needs.

“I guess I’ll just try

And make you understand

That I’m more horse than a man

Or I’m more man than a horse”

Pretty much sums up the absurdities of his “horsin’ around” and tries to establish some sort of meaning within himself. Netflix might technically categorize the show as a comedy, but at the heart of this show is also a universe filled with characters who are delightfully indifferent to personal sufferings and lead a painfully numb life spattered with petty distractions. They parody existence, casually throw animal puns, give two hoots about misery, friendships and personal loss, and, oh, of course, subvert the accepted notion of comedy itself.

Why The Show Has Its Own Tenor

Illustrator Lisa Hanawalt has done a commendable job in crowding the show BoJack Horseman with delightful creatures like Princess Carolyn, Mr Peanutbutter and Pinky Penguin to savor the taste of animal puns. My personal favoruite is the bear holding a placard that woefully asserts, “BoJack’s views are unbearable.”

It has to be one of the saddest shows wrapped in the foil of comedy I have ever watched. A show that is self-referential and pivoted around a culture tremendously hollow and toxic at its core. Bojack would never for once make you snug and happy without thrusting you back from the screen every now and then.

BoJack is perhaps the rightful heir to Ozymandias, the “king of kings” writhing in his arrogant pride and abundance of yesteryear’s glory. So, if you are planning to watch BoJack Horseman and unwind for a while, be prepared for a jarring stream of epiphanies gushing out of this existential dark comedy; even a dog excels where our favorite philosophers stumble “ The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning.”

BoJack Horseman differs from other standard comedy shows. Gracias to this surreal world of American Dream where the manager of sinking Penguin Publishers is actually a penguin. It is Los Angeles and nobody cares about where one hails from, and it is that one opportunity to beat your boats against the current.

BoJack has made it for himself, irrespective of all his self-deprecating jokes and substance abuse into which he has lately fallen. BoJack has built his residence on a abandoned and lofty cliff surrounded by palm trees where he has the privilege to throw random parties and vomit candyfloss.

The same has also made him aloof and self-destructive, unhappy and forever jumping from one …to another. Paparazzi (birds sitting on windowpanes with cameras) won’t leave him alone and his nagging maneuvers make him the prisoner of his own device.

BoJack amassed popularity doing “Horsing’ Around” somewhere in the 90s, and you cannot help but draw a parallel between BoJack and Joey Tribbiani of F.R.I.E.N.D.S as they both prefer to bask a lil’ more in their past glories.

Now, Bojack Horseman can both be the biggest empathiser and critic of the 1990s-2000’s lifestyle disorder, punching viewers rough in the gut with its show-biz jokes and witty remarks. As the characters try to fill in their own lacuna, you know that their hustles would never amount to anything in particular. They are stuck in time and time is a flat circle.

To Creators Bob Waksberg And Hanawalt

A community is trapped within this sitcom and persistently refers to the real world. You are never spared a moment from reflecting on the general miseries of human lives and perhaps ruminating on what Satre had stated in Nausea, “I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.” Thanks to Bob Waksberg and Hanawalt that BoJack Horseman receives a waggish treatment without letting go off its hook the darker elements.

BoJack’s grandfather hurriedly reminds himself that “Modern American man cannot manage a woman’s emotions.”  So, apart from subtly bringing life into the society we live in with gentle strokes of a paintbrush, the show is also an intelligent reminder of its bitter let downs.

BoJack might be hopping from one distraction to the other and carrying on living, but it also means that every such exploit is carving a deep cavity within him. The show reverberates with a Sisyphean meaninglessness of life and populates itself with characters blessed with different degrees of awareness of the universe which is a cruel hamster wheel spinning and trapping one and all irrespective of their varying social leverages and celebrity status.

Not Your Daily Soap!

Season 5 is a fine embellishment of some of the show’s favourite characters like asexual Todd, chronically depressed Diana Nguyen, and frivolous and stupid Mr Peanut Butter, but the season does not spare its hero so easily. Each time BoJack suffers from the repercussion of his actions, as he camouflages under different identities, you know these people are inappropriate to fit in anywhere else. Also, BoJack’s eulogy in Season 5 once again is a stark reminder that this is BoJack– the humanoid horse, who took television by storm in the 90s.

“By the time you realize you’re sinking, it is too late,” Charlotte Carson, sometime during the 1980s.