Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to re-watch both seasons of the Netflix original show, "Bojack Horseman," a show I watched quite a bit over the summer but never really looked at extensively. On the surface, the show seems like a stereotypical Seth Macfarlane Family Guy-esque comedy series with over the top storylines and raunchy humor, but this is not the case. Much like the character himself, the show is deep, complex, and riddled with important themes for today’s generation.
The show centers on the titular Bojack Horseman, a former sitcom star (and horse) who tries to get his life back together after deciding to write a memoir about his life before, during, and after his '90s sitcom, "Horsin' Around." Bojack’s show is mentioned and shown in certain episodes, but the genius of it is that the sitcom is more of a concept of the character’s want of family and obsession with the past rather than an actual plot point.
Something else to note about the character of Bojack is that he is a manic-depressive alcoholic and often throws his nostalgia goggles on whenever things look bad. Most of his actions in the show’s plot revolve around key elements of his past from his childhood to his life as a sitcom star to his love life: everything revolves around his want of the past.
Bojack Horseman shows the audience why that life shouldn’t be sought after, instead it should be looked at as a nice mantelpiece; sometimes it’s nice to embrace the past, but not all the time. When we look toward the future and embrace it for what it is, warts and all, we learn to make ourselves better as a whole.
This show is a perfect example of what can happen if we let our past define us and make us who we are into the future. Throughout the entirety of the second season, Bojack tries consistently to run up a mountain and as his life gets darker, the run becomes that much harder.
By the end of the season, as he lies on the ground, a stranger comes up to him and tells him to keep with what he’s doing; yes, it will be hard but he has to try to make himself better every day. Whenever I need something to cheer me up, I always think back to that scene because it’s so honest and true towards life without even coming close to being blatant.
Life can be tough, things can pile up; sometimes the world might seem like a weird, overbearing place. But what’s important at the end of the day is what we do with this strange, crazy world around us and how we shape it to make ourselves and the world at large better for it. I highly recommend anyone out there watch this show if you haven’t already; both seasons one and two have 12 episodes each, so you can catch up within one lazy day of Netflix binging. Season three is coming out this summer. If the characters storylines or the world seem strange, just remember that its world is no less crazy than yours.
