So … what is BoJack Horseman about then? Basically, it’s a TV show about how real life isn’t like a TV show. This may sound kind of obvious because BJH is about a TV actor who played a guy with a perfect life but who was miserable inside due to inherited trauma. However, the show tackles this message more in-depth on two fronts, teaching us that “closure” is a silly lie invented for television and that, in real life, stuff just happens without any discernable “arc” to it.
The message in BoJack about how life is anticlimactic, and you rarely get to have “closure,” if there even is such a thing, was the focus of the famous “Free Churro” episode from season 5 where BoJack’s mother unexpectedly dies, and he spends the entire runtime eulogizing her. (Well, not really, but that’s beside the point.) His speech basically boils down to him being pissed off that they left so many things unsaid and unresolved. Because “closure” is something, you only find in movies and TV shows. But this was signaled WAY earlier in season 1 when BoJack tried to apologize to his old friend Herb for betraying him decades ago.
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It was one of those scenes, you know, where the jerk realizes they’ve been a jerk and, even though they KNOW it’s not enough, they apologize from the bottom of their heart and mean it. Aaaaand then Herb says he doesn’t forgive BoJack. And he does it so calmly, it kind of shocked me the first time I saw it. “Wait… that’s illegal,” I thought to myself because I was so used to TV cliches by that point.