Netflix’s Bojack Horseman is its best and most acclaimed show, delivering a heartbreaking new season about family, love and loss that might be its best yet…

Spoiler alert for the entire first four seasons of Bojack Horseman.

There’s a good reason why this review reads more like that of a drama than of a comedy.

There’s something that feels very different about the fourth season of Bojack Horseman. This has always been a series where show business and Hollywood satire consume everything, wrapping up every personal story into public consequence, and that’s still true of most of Season Four. Just not of the show’s main protagonist. The question ‘Where’s Bojack?’ may only be literally applicable to the opening few episodes but it resonates throughout the course of all twelve.

The defining arc of the first three seasons of Bojack was the pre-production, production and resulting awards race for ‘Secretariat’. Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg referred to last year’s finale as the ‘end for a certain chapter’, and this year feels like the beginning of a new more positive one for Bojack, signalled by the arrival of his ‘daughter’ Hollyhock. The show devotes so much of the season to this incorrect assumption of Bojack and Hollyhock’s relationship, and it means that the writers are able to delve back into Bojack’s relationship with his own mother Beatrice, and to finally afford her the narrative time to highlight and colour her motivations.

Beatrice Sugarman has always been an important but absent presence in the series, following most notably in the footsteps of notorious bad mother Livia Soprano. Unlike Livia though, Beatrice is finally given the opportunity to transform from trauma into tragic figure, exploring the reasons that she treated Bojack as badly as she did. She loses her mother to a lobotomy, suffers the cold impassivity of her uncaring father and ultimately elopes to marry a husband who is forced to sell out his dream to provide for their family. To Beatrice her son becomes a substitute for the life she never lived – which is why she believes she is doing Henrietta a favour when she forces her to give up her child. In the past, Bojack and Henrietta become inextricably linked in Beatrice’s mind.

Father, Daughter and Sister

In the present day, Bojack and Hollyhock’s dynamic couldn’t be further away from that of Beatrice and Bojack. Hollyhock arrives at a time when Bojack is trying to do better, beginning with what is seemingly just a throwaway gag about his compulsive lying to her. But by the end of the brilliant ‘Stupid Piece of Sh*t’ there are alarming signs that Hollyhock may have inherited the self-loathing depression that Bojack struggles with, and ‘lovin that cali lifestyle!!’ plays with the idea that it may be manifesting as an eating disorder. But in the first of a series of revelations, Beatrice is revealed to be responsible for Hollyhock’s fainting, and it’s unclear to what extent her dementia may be the cause. This event drags back up all of their old drama.

So though we may sympathise with Bojack when Hollyhock’s eight dads appear to take her home, they have a very valid point about responsibility. Up until her departure Bojack never views Hollyhock as an independent entity, but rather increasingly as an extension and continuation of himself. When Bojack lies to Hollyhock about the voices in her head going away in an attempt to save her emotional pain, it’s because he wishes he could believe that himself. It’s a moment parallel to Beatrice’s attempts to save Henrietta from the pain she perceives the child will inflict upon her, and to Princess Carolyn’s self-deception through the imagined ‘Ruthie’.

All of this serves to set up the moment in which the truth emerges, and Hollyhock can address Bojack not as her father but as her brother. Up until this point the various revelations about Hollyhock have been upsetting and uncomfortable, but Bojack’s extensive work to hunt down the truth of Hollyhock’s parentage has an entirely different effect – when Hollyhock addresses him as brother she absolves him of all of his perceived guilt and re-frames them as equals. Bojack has still done something wrong, but as a result of his attempts to make amends he is forgiven. It’s a wonderful positive note for the show, made all the greater by its rarity.

A Show That’s Become About Its Ensemble

This theme of family, responsibility and deception resonates throughout every main character in the show this season, even if many of their arcs take place in more familiar Hollywoo territory. Princess Carolyn struggles with the possibility of a new life with boyfriend Ralph. Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter’s marriage is challenged by the latter’s campaign for governor. And Todd tries to find the independence from the unreasonable demands placed upon him to begin building a life for himself.

Todd and Diane in particular both take big painful steps towards accepting that they want more from life than what they’ve been given. When the triangle doesn’t ring at the end of ‘Hooray! Todd Episode!’ it’s symbolic of Todd learning to accept the fact that sometimes he has to do something that will make himself happy, even if it costs someone else. And when Diane tells Mr. Peanutbutter that she’s ‘so tired of squinting’, she’s finally admitting that she’s been lying to herself about their relationship all this time.

Mr. Peanutbutter is the epitome of the turning a blind eye mantra – he’s able to be happy and positive of his own accord and doesn’t need to talk about it. But Diane needs someone who is able to understand and sympathise with her, not just accept her in spite of her flaws. Just as Mr. Peanutbutter was unable to talk about the fact that Diane was no longer in Cordovia back in the second season, or about Diane’s pregnancy in the third season, he once again fails to take her feelings into account and listen to her. And it seems as though this time might be the last. There’s a reason that Bojack and Diane work so much better together – it’s because they’ve reached a point where they can be honest with each other.

The Bad Habits of Princess Carolyn

It’s the reason why Princess Carolyn is so drawn to Bojack as well. This season she’s the most hard hit out of any character, losing everything in the wake of her miscarriage and falling into alcoholism. Princess Carolyn is a lot like Mr. Peanutbutter, hurtling through life and remaining busy in an attempt to avoid any kind of personal confrontation, but after last season’s ‘Best Thing That Ever Happened’ and this season’s ‘Ruthie’ it all proves too much for her. She pushes the two most important men in her life away (Ralph and Judah) and returns to the only guy who she sees as as broken as she is – Bojack Horseman himself.

This is some real bad decision making by Princess Carolyn, least of all because it doesn’t address her newfound drinking problem and her ongoing addiction to her work. She’s always had a knack for finding dysfunctional relationships – Vincent Adultman was a projection of her idealised match while Rutabaga and Bojack were mean-spirited extensions of her work – but Ralph’s loss stings because he was her first genuinely loving partner. By the finale Princess Carolyn’s severed all ties to any kind of personal life, one that also used to exist in sweet little interactions with Judah, and it’ll be interesting to see how she interacts with the new more progressive Bojack in the upcoming fifth season.

If this analysis has largely so far been an in-depth psychological reading and re-evaluation of the characters of Bojack Horseman, it’s because that’s what this season set out to accomplish as a whole, more so than ever before. There were an increased number of episodes focusing on a single character (2, 3, 6, 9, 11) and the premiere marked the first ever absence of Bojack for an entire episode. Where the third season doubled down on Bojack himself, the fourth followed the wider ensemble and brought big changes about across the board. ‘Where’s Bojack?’ is appropriate – he has the fewest number of episodes where he is the A-story in any season yet.

The Verdict

But as our main character starts to take steps towards being a better person (horseperson?), and with a half-sister facing not dissimilar issues alongside, he remains a compelling part of a show with a wider scope. I’m always hesitant to group Bojack Horseman in with the emerging scene of the serious drama ‘comedy’ on television (Shameless, Transparent, You’re the Worst etc.) and that’s partly because its characters never allow themselves to become too bogged down for too long. Each of the seasons so far have ended on increasingly positive notes – and each devastating revelation has become as much a step forwards as anything.

For Beatrice Sugarman closure may never come, and Bojack’s lie to her about where she is in the concluding moments of ‘Time’s Arrow’ is a heartbreaking mercy to a woman who lived a miserable life. But there’s a silver lining – we know how meaningful it is to see Bojack perform a kind deed for the woman who gave her life up for him, as miserable as she has made him feel. The wild world of Hollywood has always served as the hilarious touch to make this show so entertaining, but by now we’ve become so invested in these characters that the role can often be filled by meaningful interaction. It’s for this reason that the fourth season is the best and most mature we’ve ever seen this show, without compromising on any of what makes it great.

‘Time’s Arrow Marches Forward’ is used by Joseph Sugarman as a dismissal of addressing any real issue, a pre-iteration of Mr. Peanutbutter and Princess Carolyn’s inability to make real change happen in their lives. This year we saw how damaging looking the other way can be – sometimes a lie is useful, but it can also be a poor painful substitute for the truth. The level of detail results in one hell of a season of Bojack Horseman – this is one hell of a show in general. Someone lie to me and tell me that we don’t have to wait a whole year to see where they go next.

Score: It’s un-Biel-lievable

Written by Tom Besley