BoJack Horseman Review: Wonderfully weird (Season 5 Episodes 5-8)
Depending on the show, a consistent structure is key. It knows what things it’s good at and sticks to those things. It might shake things up every now and then but is still, more or less, working within a particular self-imposed guideline throughout.
Then there’s BoJack Horseman Season 5 Episodes 4-8, which decides to mess around with its structure as much as it can — to marvelous effect.
BoJack Horseman has always been a show that attempts to push itself creatively, in one way or another. In the past, there have been episodes like the silent, underwater BoJack Horseman Season 3 Episode 4, “Fish Out of Water,” or BoJack Horseman Season 4 Episode 6, “Stupid Piece of Sh*t,” essentially a deep dive into BoJack’s internal depression.
The show wants to do episodes that are not only there to push the story forward but also provides something different and weird. It might be something you’ve seen elements of before, but not in the way that BoJack Horseman is showing it to you.
This middle chunk of Season 5 is most interested in that: Being weird and even experimental.
The biggest example of this is Season 5 Episode 7, “INT. SUB,” where Diane’s therapist, Dr. Indira (Issa Rae), and her wife Mary-Beth, a mediator, try to discuss their confidential day with each other. They’re only able to do that by drastically changing the identities of the cast.
What emerges is a lot of silly reimaginings of the characters, such as turning BoJack into BoBo the Angsty Zebra, Todd into Emperor Fingerface, and Princess Carolyn into Tangled Fog of Pulsating Yearning and Priscilla Crustacean (depending on the storyteller).
True to BoJack Horseman form, this may be an exceedingly goofy episode, but it still doesn’t forget to hit you with these massive, emotional moments that has the weight of an explosion.
Another excellent example is Season 5 Episode 6, “Free Churro,” which is purely a bottle episode of Bojack giving a eulogy at his mother’s funeral. It’s quiet, darkly humorous, and profoundly comfortable as the titular character works through all of his grievances against his mother, along with trying to decipher her last words.
This is probably the kind of episode that you’ve seen other shows do before. It’s hardly a new conceit, but, within the series, it feels practically revolutionary. There’s a level of patience being presented here that we’re just not used to seeing on the show.
So often, this is a show that is chaotic and frantic, in the best possible way, but “Free Churro” is so sublimely paired down to its foundation. It still offers plenty of pop culture references and Hollywoo(d)-isms in its trademark BoJack Horseman way, but there’s a kind of unfiltered rawness that the show isn’t able to get a lot of the time.
The reason for that is this is an episode that is purely BoJack. There’s no Diane or Todd to distract him from his backwardness. Instead, we get to just see him speak honestly on a subject that just feels authentic.
Sometimes you don’t have something nice to say about the late person in your life and that’s not good nor bad; it simply is.
What did you think of this episode of BoJack Horseman? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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BoJack Horseman is now streaming on Netflix.
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Drew Koenig
Drew has an ongoing, borderline unhealthy obsession with pop culture, but with television in particular. When he's not aggressively trying to get out of a perpetual state of catching up, he can be found passionately defending the ending of Lost. More of his online work can be found at The Lost Cause and he also co-hosts The Lost Cause Pod.