Spoiler alert: Do not read until you’ve watched all of season 5 of “BoJack Horseman.” The best show about the entertainment industry is an animated comedy starring an alcoholic horse, an enthusiastic labrador, and a workaholic cat. Since its 2014 debut, Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman” — which follows the bizarro world of “Hollywoo” — has been TV’s sly MVP of calling out Hollywood’s worst impulses. With sharpened wit, wicked punchlines, and a hefty streak of pathos, “BoJack” has tackled everything from depression, to addiction, to all the self-aggrandizing nonsense that keeps entertainment running. Season 5, which dropped September 14, feels especially timely. It not only features Hollywood struggling to acknowledge its rotten, sexist practices, but confronts the fact that the show’s main character — BoJack himself — has very often abused his power in exactly the way that inspired the #MeToo movement in the first place. As per “BoJack” creator Raphael Bob Waksberg, however, this storyline was in motion months before the first Harvey Weinstein allegations broke last October. “We broke the whole season late last summer,” Waksberg tells Variety, insisting that “not much” about the overarching season 5 plot actually changed in light of the new revelations. “This is a conversation that has been ready to happen for a long time,” Waksberg says, “and I’m really glad it’s happening, even if it’s messy.” Variety caught up with Waksberg to talk about grappling with BoJack’s dark history, writing toxic male characters without endorsing their actions, and how “Calvin and Hobbes” affects the way he approaches the show. When did you start writing the season? We started about a year ago. We broke the whole season late last summer, were writing into the fall, and I think we had our last table reads in January. Some interesting things sure happened as we were writing the season…! How much changed as you were writing the season, as the real world started to echo it? Very little, actually. In fact, most of the season was written pre-Harvey Weinstein. If we had started post-Weinstein we might have structured the season a little differently, but I don’t know if it would’ve been better. I think it actually worked out nicely this way, where the season kind of echoes and dovetails with some things that are happening in the real world but isn’t explicitly about them. There was just one line of dialogue we had to change. Diane said, “these guys get away with everything and nobody cares.” And then people started caring! So we had to change it to something like, “these new stories break and people care about them, but nobody cares about the dirtbags we already know about,” which I think is sadly true. And as we move forward in time and the dirtbags that were breaking news turn into the dirtbags we already knew about, that frustration continues. At first I thought it was wild that you had been writing this before the Weinstein allegations broke, but you know what, it’s not like this wasn’t happening before! No! It’s in the air, you know? You can feel it now, especially as this tidal wave of stuff is happening. It felt like we as a society were finally ready for this, that there were people who wanted this to happen but didn’t necessarily have the vocabulary. This is a conversation that has been ready to happen for a long time, and I’m really glad it’s happening, even if it’s messy. Season 5 digs into what it means to be a victim of that abuse with the character of Gina (Stephanie Beatriz), BoJack’s costar. She has to grapple with the fact that she doesn’t want what BoJack did to her to become her entire story. How did you make the choice to make her be the one who convinces him to keep quiet about it? We really wanted to justify that decision for her. We worked to make Gina as fleshed out a character as we could in one season — and you and the reader can decide how successful we were — and not just make her a prop for BoJack’s latest descent. She doesn’t treat herself that way, nor does she want to be seen that way. That was something that we took a lot of consideration into, especially to make sure that decision wasn’t just convenient for plot purposes or just to make BoJack feel guilty about it. We wanted it to make sense for her from a character point of view. And as we’re seeing now, she was right to be worried about how people would see her if they knew. There are a lot of people who spoke up after Weinstein who aren’t necessarily famous, and now their abuse is all anyone wants to ask them about. It’s terrible. I’m completely disgusted by the idea that these women tell stories [about abuse] just so they can get famous, because there are zero examples of that working well. I don’t think that’s why anyone would do that. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. I understand why a woman would want to be silent with her story, which is very sad. The show in general is good with toeing a very specific line with BoJack, but this season also makes Diane deal with her own feelings about writing on a show where BoJack plays a deeply flawed and sometimes abusive main character. She doesn’t want to indulge him or endorse his actions. How do you deal with the same, so far as writing BoJack himself goes? That’s a question that clearly we were grappling with this season. I think that, as a show creator, you have to be very careful about what messages you’re putting out into the world. That is a not always popular thing to suggest, because it feels very Tipper Gore-y, perhaps. Or like, Helen Lovejoy, “won’t someone think of the children? !” But I do think that our words have power, and we tell these stories because we believe they have power. We want to be communicating with people.<doc-sep>In the second episode of Season 4, scenes from the early life of BoJack’s mother, Beatrice (Wendie Malick) — a melancholy tale of loss, guilt and mental illness — unfolded in flashbacks. Her story continued in the season’s emotional penultimate episode, “Time’s Arrow,” which recounted her history with BoJack’s dad, Butterscotch Horseman (also voiced by Arnett), whom she married over her own father’s objections. Young BoJack bore the brunt of the animosity that developed between Beatrice and Butterscotch. Decades later, as the marriage continued to deteriorate, Butterscotch impregnated the family’s maid, Henrietta Platchkey (Majandra Delfino), and Beatrice persuaded her to give up the baby for adoption. Unbeknown to BoJack, that child turned out to be Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack (Aparna Nancherla), who got her extraordinarily long last name from her eight gay, polyamorous, adoptive dads. After a lifetime of being told she looked like BoJack Horseman, Hollyhock comes to Los Angeles from Wichita, Kan., in hopes of finding out whether he is her biological father. A DNA test confirms that they are related, and she moves in with BoJack and begins searching for mother. In his efforts to be a good parent to Hollyhock, he takes her to meet Beatrice, now languishing and suffering from dementia, in a Santa Barbara nursing home. Eventually, they bring Beatrice to live in BoJack’s house — an arrangement that ends in disaster when Beatrice starts spiking poor Hollyhock’s coffee with weight-loss drugs, and the girl ends up in the hospital. When he realizes that his mother was to blame for Hollyhock’s brush with death, BoJack gives up on the old lady for good, delivering her to the worst nursing home he can find. Once Hollyhock recovers, the eight gay dads whisk her back home to Kansas. But in the Season 4 finale, it becomes clear to BoJack that he isn’t her father — he’s her half brother. And in a grand gesture of fraternal love, he flies to Wichita in order to connect Hollyhock with her mother, Henrietta. The last time we see Hollyhock, she is on her way to meet her birth mother in Minneapolis.<doc-sep>BoJack Horseman is not a good person. That seems self-evident. Over the course of his show’s first four seasons, he’s nearly slept with teenagers. He’s been privy to the overdose and death of a young woman who looked up to him. He’s drank and caroused and just generally burned his life down, over and over again. But he’s rich and powerful. He has money. He has fame. He has excuses, like the undiagnosed depression, or the chemical dependencies, or the shitty childhood. Rating: 4.5 out of 5 vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark But he still does bad things. And yet he is not a bad person, necessarily. He does care for people, and he occasionally thinks beyond himself to care about them on a non-superficial level. He’s helped out many friends, and in the show’s fourth season, he was a surprisingly stable rock for the woman eventually revealed to be his half-sister, who found herself trying to track down her roots (she was given up for adoption) and instead found... BoJack. The gap between BoJack as he wants to be seen and BoJack as he actually is has always driven BoJack Horseman. It’s one of the reasons I suggested, back in the show’s second season, that it would be a successor to Mad Men, and I’m astonished at how the series hasn’t really gone wrong since. It just might be the single best TV show in production right now, with great laughs but also rich, thoughtful character depth. And in season five, BoJack Horseman brings all of that character development down around its ears, in a stretch of episodes that represents the most precise dissection of BoJack Horseman yet — and perhaps the first truly sustained artistic response to the #MeToo movement, albeit one that was largely crafted before the fall of Harvey Weinstein (though Mel Gibson was on the show’s writers’ mind). Look out, folks. Major, major spoilers for season five follow. If you haven’t seen it, look away! In its fifth season, BoJack Horseman complicates our ideas about terrible men If you’ve seen the entire fifth season of BoJack, then you’ll perhaps recognize that my attempt to frame him as neither a good nor a bad person is deliberate. That is, after all how Diane — perhaps BoJack’s truest friend in the whole world — explains her friend to himself when, in a fit of self-loathing, he asks her to essentially destroy his career by writing the sort of exposé of his terrible deeds that has taken down so many other Hollywood bigwigs, in our reality and his. But Diane refuses to do that, telling BoJack that he’s not a good person or a bad person — he’s just a person. (Or, rather, a horseman, but you get the point.) Yes, he’s done all of those terrible things, and yes, his career might end because of them. But she’s not going to be the one to set that outcome in motion, because it would, on some level, be doing him a favor. It would be indulging one of his self-destructive impulses, and she’s not going to let him commit career suicide by journalist. As I watched this sequence unfold, I wondered if I would end up feeling like it was a cop-out, if I would grumble to myself at how creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and his writers had tiptoed up to the precipice of holding their main character accountable in a forum larger than his own mind, then tiptoed right back. In the season’s last section, BoJack checks into rehab to work to contain his latest addiction (to painkillers). The show he was on gets canceled. The reset button is hit. But the more I think about this sequence and the many leading up to it in season five, the more I think Bob-Waksberg and company haven’t avoided holding their protagonist accountable. After all, if any showbiz satire on television could plumb the depths of its main character being held accountable for past misdeeds by a #MeToo-esque movement, it’s BoJack Horseman, which is as haunted by the past as any great ghost story. It’s easy enough to imagine BoJack’s ghosts stepping into the light. It’s easy enough to imagine the rest of the series taking place in a world where BoJack keeps fighting to get his career back, only to realize that the meaning of words like “redemption” and “forgiveness” has to be more than skin deep. And it’s easy enough to imagine these writers finding a way to make that battle resonate with our current era. But that is also, on some level, too easy an answer for this show. BoJack wants Diane to write an article taking him down, because he wants to punish himself. He doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love or admiration or anything good, because he’s done monstrous things. He wants someone to slot him into the role of villain, because he knows that he has acted like a villain and might still do so again. And once he’s accomplished that, he can finally drift away, secure in having isolated everyone he cared about. BoJack Horseman has always been about how our worst impulses feed into each other, all of the ways that mental illness can feed addiction, or that addiction can feed doing terrible things to other people. (BoJack physically assaults his female co-star and lover this season, in an on-set stunt that goes horribly wrong partly because he’s so high.) And the show concentrates on this theme not to excuse bad behavior, but, instead, to try to help us understand how it can be better combatted before it happens, how self-loathing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of destruction — I am a shitty person, who does shitty things. Well, what if you’re not? Yes, there are monsters in the world. But there are also so many people like BoJack, who have done monstrous things — perhaps many monstrous things — but who are not beyond redemption, who might yet be forgiven. What does that look like? And how do we find our way there?<doc-sep>Some of the very best jokes on BoJack Horseman happen in the background.The show's dynamite writers, illustrators, and animators squeeze in visual gags that happen faster than you can blink. But don't worry, we went back and meticulously found the best ones in Season 5 so you didn't have to: The very literal people still making Mr. Peanutbutter's party banners Image: netflix This is our favorite recurring visual jokes on the show. And the best part is that no one in the show addresses it whatsoever. In Season 5, a banner reads: "Mr. Peanutbutter's Housewarming Bash And Can You Send Me A Picture Of The Banner Before It Goes Off To The Printers This Time?" Clearly, Mr. Peanutbutter needs to find a new banner place, because this isn't the first time they've screwed him over: My wife got a banner for my birthday party. No one is gonna understand and that’s fine. pic.twitter.com/mGJs2ifhKH — Brock Wilbur (@brockwilbur) September 14, 2018 Wtf even is the plot of Philbert? An Investigation via Flip's Storyboard. Image: netflix By the end of Season 5, we still have absolutely no idea what the ever living hell Bojack's detective show Philbert is even about. But the ever-changing storyboard and notes seen in director Flip's office provide some intriguing hints into the genius mind behind its madness. Some highlights of this early draft above include: "Marjorie Flask" (lol wut), and the evergreen use of a "montage depicting sexiness." You can't see it in this screenshot, but a later image in the episode reveals that this montage in Act II is followed by "nudity?" in Act III. You know. Art. High art. Image: netflix Under Flip's big ideas whiteboard, we spot pretentious, vague film school conceptual bullshit like the "mythos," "entire season is a dream?? or drug trip," as well as "sexy violent sex" AND "sexy twist (violent??)." Don't worry, though — it's "classy violence." By far the best note, though, is how "Nietzsche" is circled in red and quoted in the board behind Flip's desk. Makes us think that maybe BoJack's writers were watching too much Mr. Robot (a TV show that stars Rami Malek, who also happens to be the voice of Flip). Call the Emmys, because Nietzchean TV shows never get enough critical praise. Image: netflix By Episode 4, the plot of Philbert has progressed to include "explosion," "his name is Fritz" (with the important distinction of "cool outfit, not your typical ghost"), along with the Ghost-inspired plot point of "ghost sex?" Image: netflix Ok, now we're getting somewhere because "wife stuff" and "B-story: Sassy takes a bath" both sound like super binge-worthy TV twists. Also, please notice the potential wife names. In our opinion, the crossed out "Sunflower" got robbed. Image: netflix Honestly, the episode where Floppy the Dolphin's notes are all just screeches of EEEE! is by far the most coherent summary of Philbert we ever get. A Halloween party of easter eggs Image: netflix That's definitely someone dressed as Alison Brie's Russian wrestling alter ego, Zoya, from 'GLOW' in the background. It only makes sense, since not only does BoJack Horseman share a network with that show, but also a star, since Brie voices Diane. Image: netflix Another Netflix shoutout, in the form of Steve Harrington's iconic look in Stranger Things Season 2. Image: netflix Those two girls in "What Time Is It Now & Chill" shirts are actually a bold hit against the show's own streaming mogul. Throughout the season, WhatTimeIsItNow.com is referenced as something of a proxy for Netflix, as the website throwing all their money (regardless of quality) at original programming like Philbert. Image: NETFLIX Hulu gets some love at the Halloween party, too. Because why not dress as a sexy Handmaid from Handmaid's Tale, when an actual, IRL lingerie company thought it was a good idea? Image: netflix The nightmarish costume in the front right-hand corner, commenting on the decline of publishing, hits too close to home for us. We've seen that penguin before, as the sad employee of an ever-declining publishing company, which is definitely a play on Penguin Publishing Group. He's wearing a tattered suit and sign here that reads "Will Publish for Food" — which actually might just be his day outfit now. RIP print. Diane's furniture Image: netflix The box in Diane's apartment marked only as "RED ARROWS" is relatable to everyone who's ever moved. Image: netflix Who among us hasn't slept on the IKEA REGRETA SOMN mattress after drunkenly having sex with their ex? We feel you, Diane. The shirts that have no shame Image: netflix This "My Other Bike Is A Tree" tee is peak Santa Monica hipster bullshit. Image: netflix Actually, we'd definitely buy this one. Goddamn you, BOJACK HORSEMAN, for putting in visual gags so quick that I MUST pause to read them, only to have you mock me for doing so! pic.twitter.com/v3HFjGP4Gx — David Chen (@davechensky) September 14, 2018 So the animators and writers know what we're up to. But do we need to be shamed for drinking in every joke no matter how many times we have to pause or rewatch? ! The most motivating posters Image: netflix Diane's therapist is not wrong for having a poster that tells you, "Holding Back Tears is Like Spanking Your Inner Child." Kinky? Ok, or maybe we need some therapy. Image: netflix We wish someone would've put a "Dare to Fail at Inadequacy" poster in our bedroom as teens. Support mediocrity! Image: netflix Getting bought out by Big Pharma has never worked out better than it did for Philbert, which then had an abundance of merchandise with characters saying catch phrases such as: "Yippee ki yay, cancer," or "Oopsie, gotta poopsie!" Every time they put Los Angeles and Hollywood on blast Image: netflix All residents of Los Angeles know that "The City of Dreams" is more accurately described as "The Dream Factory." At best. But only the most unfortunate souls know about San Bernadino, where celebrities go to be boujee and better than the plebs. Yup, it's a total "Nightmare Factory." Image: netflix<doc-sep>
Spoilers for the fifth season of BoJack Horseman — primarily for the season’s sixth episode, but with details about the rest sprinkled throughout — coming up just as soon as I check to see if I have a hand for a penis… When the new BoJack screeners arrived, they were accompanied by this note from Flip McVicker, creator of show-within-a-show Philbert: The lifting of the BoJack embargo means I can tell you I liked it (duh) and also I can share with you this email from the creator of Philbert, the show within a show this season. pic.twitter.com/mNyGng0akj — Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti) September 6, 2018 It is a note-perfect parody of the kinds of pretentious and paranoid messages critics are often sent from showrunners (albeit not from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, whose star Rami Malek plays Flip). Philbert gets to exemplify all of the excesses and most emperor’s-new-clothes aspects of Peak TV, from Diane’s horror at realizing fans are identifying with the show’s antiheroic title character, to Princess Carolyn defending one of Flip’s terrible choices as “confusing, which means the show is daring and smart.” Yet if any show in our reality could get away with such an arrogant letter, it’s BoJack, which remains one of the great and surprising achievements of the Peak TV era. By now, we shouldn’t be surprised that BoJack can do anything, or be anything. It can be the funniest show on TV and the saddest within the span of seconds. The animal/human mix of it all can take the series to utterly surreal places and also painfully honest ones. And while each season charts a larger part of the life stories of BoJack, Diane, Princess Carolyn, Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter, it also delightfully mixes things up from episode to episode, and even scene to scene. Among this season’s many, many treasures: * An inverted sex farce where Todd and his girlfriend have to pretend not to be asexual to please her sexually progressive family, which climaxes with a protracted bit of slapstick involving a leaking barrel of lube that can only be plugged with the reluctant Todd’s penis. * Another topical episode, this one guest-starring Bobby Cannavale as an actor swept up in #MeToo accusations, but able to game a very flawed system. And an even more effective — and hilarious — parody of the problem, courtesy of Todd’s sex robot Henry Fondle, whose horny utterances are mistaken for decisive executive speak. (Honestly, it’s difficult for me not to write a few thousand words just on Henry Fondle, particularly the Of Mice and Men spoof at the end of his sad story.) * Diane reckoning with her Vietnamese heritage — and the show grappling with the decision to cast a white woman in the role (which creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg has admitted he regrets, despite how wonderful Alison Brie’s work is) — during a trip overseas, and another episode flashing back to Princess Carolyn’s teenage years and how close she came to having a baby back then. * An installment where a lesbian couple share work stories about the main characters, who are reframed here so that BoJack is a zebra, Diane the Princess of Wales, Princess Carolyn a “pulsating yearning in the shape of a woman,” and Todd a man with a hand for a face. * An episode where multiple Halloween parties at BoJack’s house — each featuring a different Mr. Peanutbutter love interest, including the welcome return of Jessica Biel as Jessica Biel — essentially blend into the same party, and the same mistake for Peanutbutter each time. And another one where BoJack’s life and a Philbert episode become indistinguishable from one another, in part because he’s dating his co-star Gina (Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Stephanie Beatriz, who does her own singing, too). These stories and more — which culminate in, among other things, BoJack finally going to rehab, Princess Carolyn adopting a baby and Mr. Peanutbutter impulsively proposing to his girlfriend Pickles (Hong Chau) — take advantage of the flexible reality and unlimited special effects budget of animation to make the show whatever and wherever it needs to be. But the season’s greatest triumph is one that follows the exact opposite ethos, and does the thing you would never expect a cartoon to do — not even one this deep. It just lets one person talk for the entire show. It takes a few minutes for the structure of the season’s sixth episode, “Free Churro,” to become fully apparent.