Bojack Horseman Character Analysis

It is very rare to find a television show that is so radically funny and devastatingly sad at the same time – especially a cartoon. Bojack Horseman, a television series on Netflix that premiered in 2014, takes many viewers by surprise with its subtle balance of silly yet clever jokes and eye-popping animation with something as serious as depression. The main character, Bojack Horseman, is a former sitcom star from a TV series in the late 80’s and early 90’s titled Horsin’ Around. Since the show’s cancellation in 1995, Bojack has not done anything productive or positive with his life in Hollywood despite having had opportunities to do so. Happiness is hard to come by for him, but it is because he is his own worst enemy.

Bojack’s behaviors are self-destructive yet narcissistic at

the same time and have left him with no friends, no career, and no happiness. In the first episode of the first season, Bojack is supposed to be writing his autobiography, but instead passes the time with drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, eating tons of junk food and re-watching episodes of Horsin’ Around. These behaviors reoccur in almost every episode, along with the use of all kinds of drugs and meaningless sex with random women. It is obvious that he uses these things to numb himself to the fact that his life has not amounted to much. He also constantly complains about things that other people do and puts them down (especially his roommate, Todd), plays the “I’m a celebrity” card, and utilizes sarcastic humor as tools to distract himself from his inner feelings. In the first episode, his agent and girlfriend, who is a cat named Princess Carolyn, breaks off their romantic relationship because of Bojack’s inability to connect with anyone on an intimate level. She says to him, “I don’t know how you can expect anyone to love you when you so clearly hate yourself.” This quote sets the theme for the entire show – Bojack is constantly seeking the approval of others, but because he is so miserable, he projects his miserableness onto other people, often hurting them in the process and driving them away.
From these behaviors, it seems Bojack is just a really horrible person. But emotionally and cognitively, he is truly deeply troubled. Throughout the series, Bojack becomes more and more self-aware about his depression. He frequently admits that he is lonely, he is unhappy, there is no good left in him and nothing matters to him. According to the textbook, anhedonia is an emotional symptom of depression, which is the “inability to experience any pleasure at all” (Comer, 2013, p. 224). There are rare moments where we see him genuinely enjoying his life, and if he is, it never lasts long. Oftentimes when Bojack has a negative experience, it causes him to have a flashback to his terrible childhood. His parents were extremely cruel, abusive alcoholics who put him down relentlessly, and it still haunts him to this day. His unpleasant drug trip in episode 11 of season 1 is a manifestation of his regrets, sour relationships, and inner turmoil. Because there is no narration from Bojack in the series, it is not always known what he is thinking about. But there are many moments where Bojack reaches certain clarity about his thoughts and feelings. In the last episode of season 2, he admits, “I don’t understand how people live. It’s amazing to me that people wake up every morning and say, ‘Yeah! Another day! Let’s do it!’ How do people do it? I don’t know how.” It just goes to show that after everything he has gone through, he still doesn’t understand how to be happy.
Generally, psychological abnormality is difficult to define, but all of the different definitions include the four D’s: deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger (Comer, 2013, p. 2). It’s true that everybody can’t be happy all the time, but to hate yourself and not enjoy anything you are doing in life is certainly abnormal. Everyone has something that makes him or her happy, so Bojack’s symptoms are deviant in that regard. In addition, Bojack repeatedly appears to be distressed about his unrelenting sadness, especially in season 1 episode 11. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the show, Bojack goes to a convention where he asks the ghostwriter of his memoir, Diane, “Do you think it’s too late for me? Do you think I’m doomed to be the person that I am? The person in that book? I need you to tell me that I’m a good person. Please, Diane, tell me that I’m good.” Diane has no response, leaving Bojack feeling especially dejected. There are a few other moments where Bojack seems particularly distressed by his condition, including the scene where he claims he cannot cry in public when shooting a scene for the Secretariat movie but then goes outside to smoke a cigarette and starts hysterically crying. The symptoms Bojack experiences lead to a great amount of dysfunction and danger in his life. Bojack does not have a functional relationship with anyone, especially himself. He is unintentionally a danger to himself and those around him. During his alcohol or drug binges, he spirals out of control and usually ends up destroying property, driving drunk, or taking part in other illegal things that could pose a threat to his life or the lives of others. He also constantly hurts people emotionally, although he never truly comes off as being physically dangerous.
The big question is, what causes Bojack to be this way? Biologically speaking, it could have to do with his genetics. In all of the flashbacks he had of his parents, they both seemed to be fighting all the time and unhappy with their lives. On page 230 in the textbook, it is stated that, “family pedigree, twin, adoption, and molecular biology gene studies suggest that some people inherit a predisposition to unipolar depression” (Comer; 2013). In addition, they were both alcoholics, which has a hereditary component as well. Therefore, Bojack could have inherited a predisposition to depression and alcoholism from his parents. However, his parents also deeply affected him psychologically and socially. There are a few scenes of Bojack and his mother interacting which fit into the behavioral and cognitive models of abnormality. In one flashback, young Bojack sees his hero, Secretariat the horse, smoking a cigarette on TV and he takes one out of his mother’s purse to try to imitate him. He ends up coughing and goes to put the cigarette out, but his mother comes in and makes him finish the cigarette, because “she doesn’t want a son who’s a quitter.” After the flashback, we see adult Bojack smoking a cigarette. There is another flashback where the mother forces Bojack to perform a song in front of her dinner party and Bojack says he doesn’t feel like it, so the mother scorns, “nobody gives a damn what you feel,” and forces him to sing. Bojack was constantly punished and never rewarded for good behavior, which could be why he sees no point in trying to be a good person. These moments in his life also instilled illogical thinking processes that lead him to be self-destructive. According to the family social model, Bojack’s parents’ communication style could account for his difficulty in opening up to others. Since his parents were so disengaged, Bojack sees it as appropriate to be disengaged in all his relationships.
Finally, the multicultural model could play a significant role when it comes to the Hollywood culture Bojack is engulfed by. He feels an impending pressure to stay relevant and does not think he will ever be a better person than he was in his glory days of Horsin’ Around. Kelsey Jannings, the director of Secretariat, is talking to Diane about Bojack, and she wisely claims, “After you get famous, you stop growing because you don’t have to.” There were flashbacks that showed Bojack before he got famous, and it showed a sincere, loyal, and sober version of him. Once Bojack got a taste of fame, he became used to certain comforts, thought he was better than everyone else and didn’t feel he had to be responsible for his own actions. Part of his depression stems from the realization that he is not an untouchable celebrity – he can be just as broken and troubled as ordinary people. Depression is not uncommon in real-world celebrities...in our culture, they are glorified as godlike, so they might feel they have to live up to this expectation and feel uneasy when they cannot.
Although Bojack is a horse, he is just as human as all of us.

Coming from a broken home, he went into Hollywood as a vulnerable person. Turning into a celebrity completely changed Bojack and when he realized he wasn’t relevant anymore, he sulked into a deep depression. Despite the efforts of those around him to make him happy or to help him be a better person, Bojack was never inspired enough from within to do so. In the first episode of season 2, Bojack is listening to self-help tapes while attempting to run up the hill outside his house. The voice on the tape says, “The hill is a metaphor.” Throughout the season, there is a monkey who is seen running up the hill whenever there is a shot of Bojack’s house. In the last episode, Bojack tries running again, but struggles with getting up the hill. He falls onto the ground, breathing heavily, and the monkey appears in front of him and says, “It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part. But it does get easier.” The hill is a metaphor for his depression. He is aware of it and has difficulty overcoming it, but if he is intrinsically motivated to improve it every day, it will get

easier.