BoJack Horseman was undoubtedly a great show for a genre that sees little masterfully crafted hybrids of the comedic/dark sort. The show is a great exploration of depression, the way self-doubt corrupts all of us and how riding on your past laurels ultimately leads to, at best, an unambitious, boring life. There are some moments that will make you laugh, and some that will make you cry. Look too deep into it, and that'll make you existentially question what you stand for.

The show didn't have the greatest of beginnings, critically speaking. At the close of the first season, big-time critics were thumbing the show down aggressively for its repetitive, pattern-driven humor, and the shallow plotline it had tried to develop. At that time, stigma was probably the precedent for a lot of the criticism it got: The show just had that look on it, that sitcom-type banter that screamed skin-deep. After the first few episodes, you definitely think of tuning out more often than you do fording on. It wasn't capturing enough, not even in the same way The Simpsons or Family Guy could capture their own audience because, fundamentally speaking, BoJack Horseman was straying from that purely comedic formula whilst keeping the same medium the former two were using. Executing such a medium intermingled with deeply dark subjects in its plotlines takes meticulousness in order to successfully pull off, and for the first half of the season, the outlook was extremely bleak from Netflix's point of view. All of that, though, was necessary building for a strong foundation of what would become the best animated show in history.

This peril is not unique to BoJack Horseman. This medium of animation was simply not meant to depict such depressing topics that the show was meant to depict. This medium emphasized comedy more than anything else, and using it for anything else wouldn't evoke the same response in its audience as compared to its original purpose it was made for. Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the show's creator, understood the limitation this medium presents, and opted to position comedy as a prominent pillar of the show in order to render the show viable under it. What made the show ultimately click with the medium's rigid requirements, I believe, is its ability to recognize itself in times of seriousness, and subsequently laugh at itself.

From thereon, BoJack Horseman had tackled several plotlines of depression, self-destruction and hopelessness, but had also delved into other disturbing topics throughout the series in order to establish new grounds for itself. The overarching theme that had prevailed throughout the show was riding on one's past laurels and what it looks like for someone who has been doing so for the last 15 years. In the end, it wasn't too hard to understand why the show was critically acclaimed so much. The animation medium that Bob-Waksberg had developed for the show was, overall, beautiful in its simplicity. It allowed the show to look almost like a film in a sense of greater flexibility in expression. But, just like in filmmaking, there's a balance of beauty and aesthetics against content, and BoJack Horseman fell into the latter category when the subject matter of the show was taken into account: animation was automated as much as possible to expedite the process, whilst focusing manpower in the writing department.

The show had the greatest amount of character development, though not necessarily in the sense that most people who watched it would think of. The show was full of many complex and deep characters that are all incredibly real and believable. The characters have distinct personalities that you relate to, and the situations they were thrust into are unique and realistic. The characters are so memorable, majorly because of how relevant they are especially in our times, something that very few animated shows can boast of in a very unique way. It was the exceptional, yet underwhelming at the time, character build up throughout the first season that greatly served the show as it was chugging along, and was a very important reason to keep watching, as the show was full of many great moments that came from the characters, and by extension, the foundation that the show was harshly vilified for at the beginnings. Proper establishments of precedents aren't going to be necessarily met with favorable responses.

Final Thoughts

As a whole, BoJack Horseman is a show that doesn't have an easy time with pacing. Every element that goes into making a cohesive whole goes into it, but it still has issues with that. It is a great comedy. It can be very funny. It can be very dark. It can be very silly. But in order to work, it needs to maintain a nice balance of each of those elements throughout the entire run of the series. It does this well to a large degree, but there are times where this balance was broken, but not for a lack of good reason.

Best Animated TV Show?

Tons of critics have praised BoJack Horseman almost unanimously, positing it as the best animated TV show of all-time on grounds of its realistic depiction of the subject matters at hand. Whilst this may sound like jumping to conclusions, I think its extremely deserving of this title for everything aforementioned in this article.

If you aren't convinced, then either words can only tell you so much, or I did a horrible job of relaying what makes this show worth a watch. In that case, there's no substitute for what it feels like to experience something. Go watch it, this is an order.

Sequel? (Spoilers Ahead)

This is where the title of this article was leading into, and my thoughts regarding the ending of the show and what it means to where BoJack could possibly stand in the potential sequel.

For as much as I've praised this show, there is one little nitpick that still bothers me that takes place at the very last episode of the show. Right as BoJack is confronting his mortality, the culmination of what his depression and self-destruction had been leading him to throughout the entirety of the series, he is pulled from death's grasp abruptly. This, plot-wise implies a new beginning for BoJack, a fresh start after experiencing what death felt like. Show-wise, it meant keeping doors open for a potential sequel. Even if the show's creator refuses to develop a proper sequel for whatever reason, Netflix owns the rights to BoJack Horseman. Raphael has no say as to what takes place anymore.

We've seen this exact sort of dynamic happen in the past with Nickelodeon and Spongebob. Stephen Hillenburg promptly refused stretching thin Spongebob for as many seasons as they possibly can. But after his untimely death, Nickelodeon ran rampant as they legally owned the rights to it. His wishes were desecrated. Of course, I don't think Netflix's gonna wait until Raphael dies, because then BoJack would fall out of relevance until then, but they are probably going to coax him into approval, even back into his role within the team. Either way, we'll have to see.

Thanks for reading!