'Bojack Horseman' Season 4 Review - The Hero we deserve? God I hope not...

When I describe Bojack Horseman to people and I sound unhinged.

“So it’s basically it’s a cartoon about this washed-up sitcom star from the 90’s and he’s so psychologically damaged by his emotionally abusive parents and his reality-distorting career he can’t ever be happy. It’s really funny and incisive and deeply affecting by turns. He’s also a horse, sort of. There’s loads of animal-people. And puns. It’s amazing. I mean it damages me emotionally, but I can’t stop watching it.”

This gives you an overview of my feelings towards the show, but last season – good though it still was – I couldn’t help but feel that Bojack Horseman had fallen into a trap of its own mythos. I felt it was aiming too often and too obviously for the bleaker side of its appeal. Season four might be the most brutal yet, both thematically and visually. I won’t list the ways in which it does this because that is most certainly spoiler territory, but large parts of this season felt like taking a cheese-grater straight to the heart. I stared unblinkingly into the horse's mouth of madness and I loved it.

I can’t quite pin down why I found this season so much better than the last, given my previous hang-ups were to do with an overly self-conscious sense of pessimism. So I’m letting this article act as a form of post-Horseman therapy, so it may ask more questions than it answers. What about the comedy of Bojack Horseman makes the terrifying brutality at its core more bearable? The strings of rhymes that Princess Carolyn rattles off, Todd’s goofy bouts of surreal tomfoolery, the animal puns on Hollywoo(d) celebrities, do they act as a necessary salve against Bojack’s inner corruption? Not a particularity convincing notion, but possible.

Maybe the answer lies less in separating the comic and the tragic in the show's psyche. We laugh at Bojack's self-destruction when he screams abuse at a news anchor about scarfing breakfast muffins in season one, so where does the boundary lie exactly? The masochism that consumes him is perhaps reflected in our own viewing experience. To illustrate my point, this season we hear some of Bojack’s inner monologue repeat over and over ‘you’re a piece of shit.’ He is fundamentally driven by the belief that he deserves unhappiness. Does the watcher reflect this? Keep watching, it’s what you deserve, go on and cry, LICK THE SALTY TEARS OFF YOUR FACE YOU WORTHLESS MAGGOT! Oh look an actual maggot…

Ok I’m back…I’m still here I’m ok…let’s go on with the article. Just a little longer...

This season is beautifully crafted. It interweaves the lives of Bojack, Diane, Mr Peanutbutters and Princess Carolyn while deftly expanding to flesh out more of Bojack’s family history. And all the while, worked into the grain of these dramas are great big belly laughs and political satires on modern American problems such as gun control and lobbying. In short this season does not disappoint. It delivers grade A hysterical, sanity-rupturing Bojack goodness. It is the comic equivalent of an acid bath, but in a good way. I strongly recommend it, I also recommend having a strong drink afterwards. Maybe two. Steady now.

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