After establishing itself as a streaming service, Netflix has gone on to create some of the most popular television shows of the decade, ranging from Emmy winners like House of Cards to recent fan favorites like Stranger Things.
And yet, the original show that is one of, if not, the most human and most powerful is the animated dramedy, Bojack Horseman. The series on the surface seems like any other series that has satirized Hollywood and celebrities, only with some of the characters being anthropomorphized animals. However, after a couple of rough episodes, one finds a show that talks about not just Hollywood, but also about the harsh realities people have to go through, and trying to find happiness in a world where you have everything that you've ever wanted. It's through the eyes of our main characters and the people he's surrounded by that we see how dangerous fame and celebrity culture can be, and how it can affect even the biggest of superstars.
The series follows the life and times of a washed-up sitcom star named Bojack Horseman, who also happens to be a talking horse, who used to be in a corny 90s sitcom entitled Horsin' Around. After a long period of alcoholism and drug abuse after the show's cancellation, Bojack is now attempting to return to the limelight and regain the love and attention that he once had, beginning with a tell-all memoir, as the show looks at how Horsin' Around has impacted him and the characters he's surrounded with. The idea doesn't sound relatable in the slightest, but what the show does is that it puts a mirror in front of society's obsession with celebrities and how harmful it can be to the people that we watch and follow every day. Celebrity culture tells us to be like the people who perform for us on our TV or in our movie theaters; they're rich, are adored by millions around the world, and seemed to have earned the American dream. But this show takes away the glitz and glamor and reveals that these people live far worse lives than we do, yet still are very much like us, brilliantly personifying our fears, issues, and insecurities.
The main character of Bojack tries to hide away his general unhappiness that he's had his entire life through a facade of partying and a carefree life, but it comes crashing down as he becomes bitter, depressed, and jaded over everything and everyone he meets when the series truly begins. He hates the idea that everyone remembers him as "the horse from Horsin' Around" and not as a real human being. The daily trauma he is forced to go through everyday forces him to distract himself with the wealth that he has acquired and continues to abuse it, reinforcing the idea that money can't buy happiness. Well, more specifically, money can't buy eternal happiness, and it doesn't matter how much money he throws to items like drugs, sex, and alcohol because it's just there to keep him away from his inner demons. Bojack oddly represents us as the person we are right now; we hide from the dissatisfaction that we feel in our current life in excess in order to avoid the idea of us being failures or defined by one simple action.
Image courtesy of Huffington Post
This type of relatability is also found in the other main characters. Bojack's on-again, off-again girlfriend and agent Princess Carolyn, a pink Persian cat, is a representation of our need and want to work, and the dangers it can have when one's entire life is dependent and focused upon work. Whenever she has free time away from her job, she doesn't know what to do. She has little experience of the concept of love, and when she does experience it, she falls right back into her work, because she has nothing else that defines her or makes her unique. Bojack's ghostwriter and later somewhat friend Diane is a writer who wants to make a difference to the world, but she learns about how unfair the world of journalism can be, and it's through her story that she represents our expectations fighting against our harsh reality. Her constant attempts to make the world a seemingly better place are all for naught as nothing seems to go right for her, and she more or less takes this news poorly by going into deep depression and ignoring the rest of the world, including her husband, showing how we set our sights too optimistically, only for it to all come crashing down. Diane's wife and Bojack's former sitcom rival Mr. Peanutbutter, a yellow Labrador, is another representation of us as we try to hide our emotional distress. The character is seemingly oblivious of anything and everything that is happening, but it is slowly revealed that he does so in order to not think about the terrible things in his life. By ignoring the world and the people around him, he finds his own form of happiness that distracts him from his world seemingly falling apart.
With all of these characters representing our insecurities, fears, and harsh reality, there's still one character that represents us, but not as who we are, but who we should be: Todd. It's odd to say that he is the character society should look up to, seeing as how he's an unemployed slacker who rooms with Bojack because he has nowhere else to go, but he is the one character who actually has eternal happiness. He does whatever crazy antics he wants, and doesn't care about what others will say about him. Almost every episode is about him taking part in some wild and wacky antic that ends up going off the rails, and yet Todd doesn't care. He's often criticized by Bojack for taking part in his crazy adventures, but it's all because Bojack deep down is jealous of Todd. He may not have any goals in life, but he's found happiness and joy in doing whatever he wants, as that is what makes him happy.
Todd is not just the happy-go-lucky goofball of the series, but he's also the message that Bojack and the audience need to follow. He proves that you can be happy and joyful without having millions of dollars or a rich home. You just need to do whatever you want to do, and go with it all the way. Having society tell you what you should do will leave you in a sense of meaninglessness, so why not do whatever you want to do, so long as it harms no one? Todd is the silver lining in a show with such miserable characters, and he is the one that holds the show together into something truly special. With three great seasons, a fourth one on the way, and no signs of slowing down, I'm certain that creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg will have plenty more to say about society and eternal happiness in the future, and it's a certainty that it will be just as powerful as before.
