Hidden In Plain View is a bi-weekly column where I help you find great shows buried in the clutter that is modern television. With more than 400 original scripted series on TV in 2015 alone, it is simply a fact that you’re missing out on something great. Previously on: “Mr. Robot,” “Review” and “Rectify.” This time: “BoJack Horseman.”
A bespectacled woman, a bipedal horse and three young boys standing on top of each other under a trench coat walk into a bar.
If this sounds normal to you, congratulations, you’ve already seen “BoJack Horseman.” If not, welcome to the bizarre and wonderful animated world of Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Bob-Waksberg’s description of the show from his Tumblr page sums things up best: “I created this show for Netflix about a depressed talking horse.”
BoJack Horseman, the aforementioned talking horse, is a former 90’s sitcom star whose career stalled out when his show, “Horsin’ Around,” was cancelled. The series opens with a drunk BoJack on “Charlie Rose” talking about why his sitcom was important to people.
“For a lot of people, life is just one long, hard kick in the urethra,” he says. “Sometimes, when you get home from a long day of getting kicked in the urethra, you just want to watch a show about good, likeable people who love each other where, you know, no matter what happens, at the end of 30 minutes, everything is going to turn out okay.”
“BoJack Horseman” is not that show. At the end of each episode, everything is not okay. On “BoJack,” the characters lead complicated and confusing lives, grasping for some semblance of happiness and fulfillment as life just keeps kicking them in the urethra. Like Comedy Central’s “Review” and other shows from the recent rise of the “sadcom,” “BoJack” is successful not only because it is funny but because it is in touch with the emotions of its characters. Bob-Waksberg and Co. understand that life isn’t either happy or sad. It frequently swings between both, sometimes in an instant. This is why great comedies are often deeply emotional and why great dramas are often deeply funny. It gives television shows more humanity. And “BoJack,” an animated show where humans and animals walk and talk side-by-side, has more humanity than many live-action shows starring living, breathing humans.
But this is also a show where a wolf will approach a sheep at a party literally wearing a shirt that says “SHEEP.” (Get it?) Raccoons will be walking down the street one second and dumpster diving the next. A startled turtle will retreat into his shell. Despite its emphasis on true, honest humanity, “BoJack” still finds time for its characters to return to their base instincts on occasion. “BoJack” is a show that balances highbrow and lowbrow, surrealism and humanity, and sadness and comedy unlike anything on television.
“BoJack” opens at a time in its title character’s life when he spends his days wallowing away in his penthouse, pining for a lost career and a fulfilling life but mostly spending his days watching reruns of “Horsin’ Around.” He is supposed to be writing a personal memoir for Penguin Publishing.* His 20-something stoner roommate named Todd basically does everything around the house, and BoJack treats him like garbage. His agent, a cat named Princess Carolyn, tries to get BoJack to work and capitalize on his former stardom. BoJack’s TV rival, a dog named Mr. Peanutbutter, lives in the neighborhood. Diane Nguyen, an author and Mr. Peanutbutter’s girlfriend, comes in to ghostwrite BoJack’s book.
*Yes, Penguin Publishing is run and staffed by actual penguins.
It takes a bit of adjusting, both on behalf of the show and its audience, for “BoJack” to really find its groove. But at its best, particularly in the second season, there aren’t many things on television (or in this case, Netflix) as powerful and deeply funny as “BoJack.” The show has a smart, scathing episode about Bill Cosby, an episode about some kind of bizarro-world Disneyland and an episode with its own cleverly-titled Hollywood Game Nights show.
At its core, though, “BoJack” is a show about people (and animals) who desperately want to find happiness but don’t know where to look. It’s a show about people getting back up and falling down, over and over again. It’s a show about nothing ever really being enough.
Take BoJack: He desperately wants people to like him, but he likes no one. He is cocky, but he is constantly searching for approval. He is miserable in his life, but he is too lazy to do anything about it. As Princess Carolyn says to him in the series premiere, “I don’t know how you can expect anyone else to love you when you so clearly hate yourself.” The fascinating thing about “BoJack Horseman” is that it is not a show that sets out to show how BoJack can stop hating himself. It is a show that wonders whether that change is even possible.
The first two seasons of “BoJack Horseman” (12 episodes each) are available on Netflix. The show was renewed for a 12-episode third season, expected to air in 2016. Check it out, and let us know what you think.
