(Thanks for all the interest in episode 1! I mostly just started writing these for me but if people are reading them I guess I’ll start proofreading).

The cold open is our first real introduction to the idea of the asshole public, the people who make BoJack self-conscious. And I want us to appreciate that moment, because it’s a great opening and is actually just a short version of the episode. BoJack rankles under what he considers social norms – these people taking pictures and laughing at him. He makes an impassioned speech and expresses his values, which chafe against what the public expects of him. Guess what: that’s the whole episode summed up. We can all go home, because it’s over. Except it’s not. The ending to this episode is different, and more hopeful. At the end of the cold open, BoJack reneges on his values to hook up with a girl, and regrets it. At the end of the episode, BoJack commits to his values and opens up about his past. But we’ll get to that later.

The writing gets better in this episode. I don’t know what it is, but the awkwardness of the first episode is falling away. The jokes are a little snappier – the whole “catty” incident with Princess Carolyn was one of those super-laughter moments the first time I watched the show, and it still makes me smile after seeing the episode like forty times or whatever.

I’m really resisting the urge to just type out every funny line from the episode, becasue that would just be a transcript of the episode. But I have to mention the name of Mr. Peanutbutter’s new celebrity reality show: Peanutbutter and Jelly! “It’s wordplay!” barks PB. “You may have too forgiving a definition of the word ‘wordplay,'” BoJack replies. “Well, it’s a working title.” “Well, it could be working harder – and THAT’S wordplay.” Wittiness.

We have to talk about the plot at some point, so we might as well start with the subplot. Okay, that doesn’t make sense. But whatever. This is my blog. Todd’s subplot is weak this episode. I know I said that about the last episode, but it’s still true here. Until we get the rock opera episode, Todd doesn’t really feel fully fleshed out. He’s just someone who they give jokes that don’t fit with any other character. Someone is online-dating a Japanese woman who turns out to be a con artist? Ah, give it to Todd. He has some great lines and great moments in this episode, but the plot itself about the Japanese con woman isn’t really that entertaining, and doesn’t really interact with the BoJack plot enough to feel justified. Again – this is just the series finding its sea legs. It’s not like I have any suggestions for what they could have done with Todd instead, but I just don’t like this plot.

We start to get some BoJack backstory here, which features tiny BoJack in a sailor outfit. The flashback scenes to his childhood are crushingly sad – “Mommy,” he says, as his parents bicker about whether or not they should have aborted him, “can I have an omelet?” “You’re the birthday boy,” his mother says, sarcastically. Jeesh. They hit the whole sad parent backstory pretty hard, so it’s probably good that we only see snippets of it here and there. A whole episode with that flashback tone would be utterly one-note, but getting the little bits keeps it reasonable. For what it’s worth: every line BoJack’s father says is pure gold. The last line of the episode is BoJack recalling an episode with his father: “He made me build my own tree house, and then he tore it down while I was at summer camp because instead of hearty, Christian nails, I used screws, which he called fancy Jew nails.”

Alright fine we’ll talk about the main plot now, the premise of which can be summed up by: “BoJack takes a guy’s muffins, the guys turns out to be a Navy seal.” The whole muffin argument is pretty funny and well-written, but it’s particularly funny on a rewatch because of how petty the conflict is – and how much it spirals out of control. For whatever reason, the story is picked up by MSNBSea, hosted by a whale with the voice of Keith Olbermann. And now it’s time to address the big elephant in the room here: the hyper-political discussion of the troops.

The punchline is of course that BoJack says some not entirely unreasonable things about soldiers, but those words get sound-bited (sound-bitten?) and taken out of context. Har har. It’s a plot we’ve seen before in any show with a celebrity – the sound bite phenomenon is not a new one, and mocking the sound bite culture is not a new joke. And I feel like I should address the political statements, because part of the joke is that what BoJack’s saying is very reasonable, if a little counter-cultural. His rant at the end of the episode about the dangers of a culture that worships violence and soldiers as infallible heroes – it’s not entirely wrong. BUT – and this is a Minaj-sized but – that’s not the point of the episode. The writers aren’t trying to necessarily make a political statement here. They’re making a statement about how celebrity cultures ignores discussion and promotes simple thoughts – and that’s an old plot, to be frank. It’s all well-written and is a strong episode, but it’s like they’re filling in a Mad Libs for a story we’ve seen before.

(BoJack, I’m hard on you because I love you so much).

So enough dumping on the episode – let’s talk about what works. Like I said, the plot structure is a familiar rehash – but the writing turns it into something new. BoJack’s comments become an excuse for us to examine why BoJack feels defensive, where his delusions come from, and why his response to being called out is to escalate conflict until it becomes a horrible, miserable experience for everyone. They take this familiar celebrity plot and use the memoir subplot as a way to put BoJack under a microscope. This episode is like artisinal french fries – salty and familiar junk, but damn well made. There’s a great line that slips under the radar but really sums up the conflict here: “I just want my privacy back, so I can finish writing my tell-all memoir, so everyone will pay attention to me again.” BoJack is caught between wanting to be a person and wanting to be a celebrity, and can’t decide what he fears more: being forgotten, or being seen. That’s a central conflict for the whole season, and it’s really well-established in this episode.

What’s really interesting here is the conflict between Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack. PB is working on a reality show, and at the end of the show he saves us from BoJack’s lengthy rant by getting a bucket stuck on his head. This isn’t just innocent fun, though; the more I watch BH, the more I’m convinced that Mr. Peanutbutter is something of a celebrity savant. He knows how to play the game. He’ll get a bucket stuck on his head because he knows that’s what people want to see. He doesn’t bother trying to have opinions or political views – he plays the sound bite game. If I might use a Game of Thrones analogy here (because I love ASOIAF and GOT and I just can’t help myself), BoJack is something of a Tyrion Lannister – someone with principles, who, though good at playing the game, is too caught up in self-conflict and self-doubt to really be anything other than constantly conflicted. Mr. Peanutbutter is the Littlefinger here, the Petyr Baelish. He’s exactly the right kind of stupid to both fly under the radar and maintain a certain level of comfortable celebrity status, but he manages to manipulate situations so he comes out on top. We’ll keep our eyes on PB, because he just keeps getting more and more interesting.

The episode ends with BoJack finally opening up to Diane. Diane is one of the frankest characters on the show. She doesn’t pussyfoot around the point, or say empty things. Everything she says is loaded, and everything she says carries serious weight. At the end, she tells BoJack, essentially, that he’s a hypocrite for griping about how nobody wants to hear the truth about soldiers when he can’t even tell the truth about his own parents. It’s a heavy observation, but she says it in far fewer words and with a diplomatic style that just presents it as an observation. And it’s that realization, that self-reflection, that finally gets BoJack to open up about his past.

This episode gets another B. I know – I said it was better than episode one, and in many ways it is. But the plot is arguably one of the shallowest of the show. It’s a familiar sitcom structure; the main story hasn’t been fleshed out enough yet to carry an episode on its own. In truth, the first couple episodes are the shallower and weaker ones – we’re getting introduced to BoJack in episode 1, 2 and 3, then Todd gets his day in episode 4, Diane hers in episode 5, Mr. Peanutbutter his in episode 6, and Princess Carolyn hers in episode 7. But by the time we’re hitting episode 7, the show has built up enough to carry its momentum forward without having to rely on the Mad Libs recipe for sucessipe.