Director:
Writers:
Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), Joanna Calo
Stars:
Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie |
by Mary Cox
“Ruthie”
I can’t be alone in thinking that the handling of Princess Carolyn’s miscarriage was somewhat tasteless. We see her suffer yet another huge, profound disappointment in her life, one which ultimately ends her relationship with Ralph and sends her spiraling into alcoholism and depression, and how do they decide to frame this information? Puns and cheap jokes based on the accents of “foreigners.” Tacky.
Bad taste aside, the plot line about Princess Carolyn’s family heirloom was a decent metaphor for the artificiality of the lies we tell ourselves about the past and the future, which does seem to connect to this season’s greater theme of all things being swept away by the passage of time.
I could live without the somewhat uninspired sub-plot where Bojack and Diane try to track down Hollyhock’s birth certificate at the county courthouse. If DMV-type jokes are the “groundbreaking” territory this series aims to cover, Bojack might as well be doing a stand-up routine about airplane food.
The ending of “Ruthie” does kind of pull back around to a more tonally reasonable place, but this season has generally struggled a little when it comes to balancing comedic and dramatic moments, like how it stumbled over Bojack’s grandmother’s lobotomy. At the very least, “Ruthie” gives us clarification that inter-species relationships end up with babies that are either one animal or another, clearing up some of the mystery surrounding Hollyhock’s parentage.
*****
“Mary Cox is an entertainment writer from the United States. Her hobbies include making good beer and bad decisions, watching drag queens fight on the internet, and overanalyzing everything. Mary one day hopes to be the person shouting “World Star” in the back of a Waffle House brawl video. She is currently tolerating life in Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter at @M_K_Cox”t
TV REVIEW: BOJACK HORSEMAN – SEASON 04 – EPISODE 04
Director:
Writers:
Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator), Joanna Calo
Stars:
Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, Alison Brie
“Commence Fracking”
It seems like Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter’s relationship has been on the rocks pretty much ever since they’ve been together, but they’ve never come so close to splitting up as they are now. It’s always super weird to see sex scenes between the human and animal characters of this show, but there’s something fundamentally uncomfortable about watching shirtless Mr. Peanutbutter furiously laying pipe in his wife.
Hollyhock is still on the quest to find her birth mother, but that’s another issue in the whole people and animals in relationships thing. Can two different species actually reproduce in the Bojack Horseman universe? If Hollyhock is a horse, doesn’t that mean her mother has to also be a horse? If not, then Princess Carolyn’s quest to conceive with her mouse boyfriend isn’t going to end well.
The long-lost daughter angle is very much a cliché, but I’m interested in riding it out to see where this goes. Frankly, I’m not entirely convinced that Hollyhock is genuinely Bojack’s daughter, so there might be more to this situation than meets the eye.
******
“Mary Cox is an entertainment writer from the United States. Her hobbies include making good beer and bad decisions, watching drag queens fight on the internet, and overanalyzing everything. Mary one day hopes to be the person shouting “World Star” in the back of a Waffle House brawl video. She is currently tolerating life in Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter at @M_K_Cox”t
Festival Reviews 