It’s never too early to start looking ahead to next year’s Emmys. That’s why we’re using this column to spotlight the award-worthy shows that premiered after the 2015 Emmy eligibility cut-off (May 31, 2015) and put them on the voters’ radar for 2016. And just to make things extra easy for the Academy, we’ve specified the category for which they should be recognized.

The Show: BoJack Horseman (Netflix)

The Category: Outstanding Animated Program

The Nominee(s): Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Executive Producer); Alison Flierl (Writer); Scott Chernoff (Writer)

Suggested Episode Submission: Episode 8: “Let’s Find Out”



As stated up top, we here at Yahoo TV may believe that it’s never too early to start thinking about the 2016 Emmys, but BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg has a very different opinion. “I think it’s crazy to try and predict next year’s Emmys,” he says, laughing. “I don’t know what our competition is going to be at this point or what’s going to happen in the next 10 months.” While we don’t possess a crystal ball either, it’s hard to imagine a 2016 Outstanding Animated Program category that doesn’t feature BoJack’s stellar sophomore season amongst the five nominees. Coming off an already-strong first year, the Hollywood — uh, make that Hollywoo — satire got sharper, funnier, and more emotional in Season 2. The storytelling grew more intricate as well, to the point where BoJack Horseman almost felt like a six-hour animated feature rather than an episodic series.

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To fully appreciate the show’s comic range and dramatic depth, you’ve really got to binge-watch the whole season. But if you wanted to drop in on a single chapter to see what all the fuss is about — as most Emmy voters are wont to do — the ideal gateway is the eighth episode, “Let’s Find Out.” Designed to act as a midseason break separating the increasingly dark first half from the very dark second half, “Let’s Find Out” is essentially BoJack’s version of a bottle episode — one of those installments of an ongoing series where the action remains almost entirely confined to a single location.

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BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg

In this case, the location is the set of a new game show that’s about to premiere its very first episode on the MBN network: Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let’s Find Out! (The show’s official, though not-so-helpful, shorthanded is HSAC!WDTK?DTKT??LFO!) Although it appears relatively late in the season, this is the only background info you need to understand the episode:

BoJack has reluctantly agreed to be a guest on the series premiere of HSAC!WDTK?DTKT??LFO!

The show is hosted by BoJack’s good-natured canine rival, Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins).

The show was created by J.D. Salinger (Alan Arkin). Yes, that J.D. Salinger, who is alive and well in this universe.

The game show-within-the-show isn’t supposed to make any damn sense.



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Here’s the funny thing about No. 4, though, and it speaks to what’s so great about the episode as a whole: HSAC!WDTK?DTKT??LFO! actually does make sense. Sure, the categories are random, the questions are either impossibly easy or just plain impossible, and the volume in the studio is cranked all the way up to 11. But there’s also a semi-logical escalation to the gameplay that feels like it was designed by someone with lots of experience watching terrible game shows. And that turns out to be the case: “We’re both TV junkies,” admits Scott Chernoff, who wrote the episode with his writing partner — and BoJack script coordinator — Alison Flierl. “So we really took pleasure in the game show aspect of the episode: The way questions are phrased or little touches that make it feel authentic within this world.”