This essay contains spoilers for the final season of “BoJack Horseman.”

“I haven’t done anything. Since I got out of rehab, I have been on my best behavior,” proclaims BoJack Horseman (voiced by Will Arnett), the eponymous protagonist of the animated Netflix show. In the second half of the sixth and final season, BoJack, a washed-up 1990s sitcom star and anthropomorphic horse, has found out reporters are planning to publish a damning exposé of his pre-rehab behavior.

“They can’t get me on old [expletive],” he pleads. “I’m a different person now.”

But they do “get him.” After BoJack gives a Prince Andrew-like interview, he’s ostracized and falls off the wagon, almost drunkenly drowning to death in the pool of his former home. He’s convicted and sentenced to 14 months in prison for breaking and entering, although, he admits, “it was kind of for everything” — including seducing and almost sleeping with an ex-girlfriend’s 17-year-old daughter and providing a former co-star with the heroin on which she fatally overdoses.

Male antihero TV characters like BoJack — the Don Drapers and Walter Whites who dominated the late 2000s and early 2010s — are usually designed to be empathetic. We’re supposed to root for them despite their wrongdoings, and cheer when they ride off into the proverbial sunset as some karmic justice restores the brokenness they’ve left behind.

Since it began, “BoJack Horseman” has offered an alternative, forcing viewers to repeatedly see the damage its destructive protagonist inflicts, while complicating any empathy they might feel for him. This unique approach arrived at its logical conclusion with the final installment of episodes released Friday, punishing BoJack while also laying out a path for his redemption.