In the fourth episode of BoJack Horseman’s fifth season (released in its entirety to Netflix on September 14), the show’s eponymous character is in the middle of a press campaign masquerading as the ideal male feminist, spouting terms like intersectionality and toxic masculinity on talk shows and challenging Vance Waggoner, an actor recently hired onto BoJack’s new show, Philbert. Waggoner serves as a composite character for the Mel Gibsons and Matt Lauers of the world, the type of guy who is repeatedly in trouble for anti-semitism, racism, and sexism but is still allowed to continue working in Hollywood - a character that of course hits home in light of the many realizations about the entertainment industry that the #MeToo movement has brought into public consciousness. BoJack has naturally found himself the face of a feel-good male feminist movement quite by accident, and he only stays on this track once he discovers that he can earn easy brownie points espousing phrases like, “it’s wrong to choke women.”

However, when Waggoner shoots back with a claim that Philbert’s scripts display gratuitous exploitation of women and the glorification of a hero that actively demonstrates anti-female sentiment, BoJack and his show come under fire. He and the show’s creator, Flip McVicker (voiced by Rami Malek, playing on the now-widely understood “troubled male creative” type) defend their character and the show as a whole as critiquing the male anti-hero trope. Diane Nguyen (voiced by Alison Brie), often the show’s go-to voice of feminism, is quick to point out that just having a shitty, problematic man at the center of a story does not inherently make it subversive. BoJack insists that she come aboard the project to help Flip better understand that nuance, which Flip immediately resents and doesn’t take seriously until a few episodes later when he, sidelined with a bought of writer’s block, uses and takes credit for pages written by Diane that fundamentally change the tone and direction of his show.

In these pages, Diane is splicing the fiction of Philbert with BoJack’s own reality. Finally learning, at least vaguely, that BoJack nearly slept with the 17-year-old daughter of one his oldest friends (shown in season 2’s wonderful, challenging eleventh episode, “Escape from L.A.”), this turn in the narrative is one of many meta moments in season 5 in which the writers are addressing both their audience and their own responsibility for the character of BoJack. In many ways, Philbert broadly represents BoJack’s own characterization. Although seriously flawed, both men are still meant to be characters that can be understood and rallied around as the driving force of their shows. For BoJack, despite the awful things that he’s done to the people closest to him, the audience understands that he was traumatized by his upbringing and that his mental anguish, namely clinical depression and substance abuse, are hereditary problems (shown beautifully in two episodes from season 4, “The Old Sugarman Place” and “Time’s Arrow”).

One of the show’s biggest strengths is its depiction and nuanced understanding of mental health and its effect on the people who suffer from it, as well as the people in their orbit. BoJack is not the only character in the show to demonstrate this, but he is the focal point of the show, especially in its first three seasons. For many, myself included, BoJack became a character with whom they could identify, a man who is keenly aware that he has hurt people and feels horrible about it, but can’t seem to stop. A man who recognizes his addictions, but fails to understand their underlying causes and is hopeless to shake them. Here is a character who is vulnerable and desperate for someone to see that vulnerability, but is simultaneously too fearful of letting anyone in to help.

The trouble with identification like this is that people fall into the same trap as BoJack of conflating recognition of your problems and wanting to be better with actually being better. Jon Hamm has often spoke of a similar problem with young, male fans of Mad Men approaching him and speaking of Don Draper has someone they identify with and look up to - something that Hamm is quick to point out completely misses the point of his character. And this is something that BoJack Horseman directly addresses in its fifth season. In the tenth episode, Philbert’s season has finished shooting and the first “chapter,” as Flip fondly and pretentiously refers to it, airs at the premiere event. Afterward, Diane is in a state of shock having finally seen the show that she helped to transform. She says to Flip, “I made [Philbert] more vulnerable, and that made him more likeable, which makes for a better TV show. But if Philbert is just a way to help dumb assholes rationalize their own awful behavior, well, I’m sorry, but we can’t put this out there.” But Philbert is already streaming, and so is BoJack Horseman. The creators know they can’t take back what is already out in the world.