Beyond the inside jokes and meta-humor best suited to the writers themselves than a mainstream audience (this is a Netflix series after all), this show reveals the nihilism that has grabbed hold of Hollywood and our vain, materialistic culture. What do you expect, when everything from promiscuity to profanity, from drug addiction to backstabbing, is now the norm?
The show tries to push some kind of moral struggle through the main character, who is toxic to his own relationships but tries to do good nonetheless. And yet, whatever accomplishments he makes in this struggle don't seem to matter much in the context of this mean and indifferent world that the writers have created for him to inhabit.
Forget about the strange phenomenon of humans coexisting with what are basically humans with animal heads. What kind of fictional animated world is this, where career women feel guilty for having natural human emotions, where friends threaten to kill each other (for laughs), and where rappers make music videos about how violence perpetrated against the defenseless unborn is "cool" and "hardcore"? Not to mention where characters often seem lost in nostalgia, as if to imply that the present world has turned into a hellhole of abandonment and despair. (It kind of has.) But if Bojack Horseman is trying to be as profound as so many critics say it is, why keep dwelling on the negatives of modern life instead of making an effort to show how things ought to be? Being realistic and "down to earth" only gets you so far unless you can build a constructive message from it, and Horseman's fatal flaw is its refusal to tackle real human problems seriously. It pretends to, but its quick diversion to flat gags and standard sitcom resolutions can only mean that it has no real answers for us. It's a sad sight, in all honesty.
The show tries to push some kind of moral struggle through the main character, who is toxic to his own relationships but tries to do good nonetheless. And yet, whatever accomplishments he makes in this struggle don't seem to matter much in the context of this mean and indifferent world that the writers have created for him to inhabit.
Forget about the strange phenomenon of humans coexisting with what are basically humans with animal heads. What kind of fictional animated world is this, where career women feel guilty for having natural human emotions, where friends threaten to kill each other (for laughs), and where rappers make music videos about how violence perpetrated against the defenseless unborn is "cool" and "hardcore"? Not to mention where characters often seem lost in nostalgia, as if to imply that the present world has turned into a hellhole of abandonment and despair. (It kind of has.) But if Bojack Horseman is trying to be as profound as so many critics say it is, why keep dwelling on the negatives of modern life instead of making an effort to show how things ought to be? Being realistic and "down to earth" only gets you so far unless you can build a constructive message from it, and Horseman's fatal flaw is its refusal to tackle real human problems seriously. It pretends to, but its quick diversion to flat gags and standard sitcom resolutions can only mean that it has no real answers for us. It's a sad sight, in all honesty.