It’s hard to think of a show currently on air that could make me want to watch a single character speak in one long, despairing stream for nearly a whole episode. Prolonged expressions of angst can sink live-action drama, which thrives on eventfulness and conflict. But BoJack Horseman—a cartoon sitcom whose title character is a melancholic, middle-aged stallion—inhabits a genre of its own, somewhere between slapstick and theater of the absurd. Midway through the show’s new season, BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) wears a charcoal suit and stands at a pulpit next to a coffin. His mother has died. For over 20 full minutes, with no interruption, he delivers a brilliant, pained, rambling eulogy.

Written by the show’s creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, with brilliant art direction by Lisa Hanawalt, the monologue careens between pathos and black humor, delusion and acceptance—and is totally transfixing. BoJack doesn’t miss his mother so much as he despises her; he is angry that she’s left him without a sense of closure. He begins his story by saying that when he went to a fast-food place and said that his mother had died, the person behind the counter gave him a free churro. Later, he ties this anecdote up in a joke: “My mother died, and all I got was this free churro.” Then he adds, “That small act of kindness showed more compassion than my mother gave me her entire goddamn life.” His voice starts to break, as he finally confronts a lifetime of abuse from his mother. It is an aria of abjection and resentment. I’m still thinking about it, days later.

If this seems like heavy stuff for a cartoon, BoJack has earned it. Over five seasons, Bob-Waksberg and Hanawalt crafted a truly goofy world (there’s a spider who works as a playwright, multitasking with eight limbs, and an ingenue deer who has literal doe-eyes) that allows them to slip in and out of surreal, sometimes dark subject matter. In one episode, a pop star named Sextina Aquafina (a leotard-wearing dolphin) has a cynical hit song about abortion; in another, BoJack is present when one of his young mentees overdoses on heroin in a planetarium. In true Darwinian fashion, BoJack Horseman has evolved from an easy joke about a horse to one of the most complex and empathetic shows on television.

The first three seasons of BoJack established the world of Hollywoo—a fantastical Hollywood equivalent in which humans and animals not only interact, but also marry, divorce, collaborate with, disappoint, and mistreat one another—and focused on the career misadventures of BoJack, an aging, egotistical actor who once starred in a hyper-successful network hit as the surrogate father to three ragamuffin orphans. When the show opens, he has money and a mansion in the hills, but he hasn’t worked in years. He attempts to revive his career by writing a memoir, which he only completes by hiring a sardonic co-writer, a human woman named Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie), married to a galumphing, ever-optimistic Labrador named Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tomkins). An ambitious pink tabby named Princess Caroline (Amy Sedaris) is BoJack’s agent, and Todd (Aaron Paul), a hapless, beanie-wearing human, is his best friend.

Together, these characters form a menagerie of desperate show-business hopefuls, who clatter around Los Angeles trying to wring opportunities and relevance out of an industry that is designed to break people down. These first three seasons present an inspired riff on disillusionment—the way people (and animals) fail each other, the way capitalism creates a system of bogus incentives, the way star-power is mostly cardboard and paste.