In 2007 Princess Carolyn has just slept with BoJack for the first time. She's still an agent's assistant to Marv Sbarbori, the man that represents BoJack, and she's trying desperately to book him an acting job - although he's adamant he's still trying to recuperate after his time on Horsin' Around. She convinces BoJack to talk to veteran sitcom writer named Cuddlywhiskers about a part on a new show after she reads his script, Mitch's Life, at work. BoJack thinks the show sounds incredible but doesn't want to do it because he's afraid that he is not, to which she replies by telling him that he's an idiot if he doesn't realise how talented he is. BoJack agrees to do it, but of course starts to self-sabotage himself immediately. The network executives love the table read, but BoJack convinces Cuddlywhiskers that if they liked the script that they're playing it too and they they need to re-write it - with ideas like opening with BoJack's character literally taking a massive dump on a VHS tape of Horsin' Around and his character's catch-phrase being 'Wassup bitches!'. He realises too late, thanks to Princess Carolyn (who Marv has finally appointed as an agent), that people liked the horse from Horsin' Around and he doesn't need to be afraid of doing something to step out of its shadow, but shouldn't be too scared to try, either.
The episode also showed what the lives of the other characters were like in 2007. Diane worked at Starbucks under the name 'Blarn' - ironically as a joke - and was getting her open letter to open letters rejected by The New Yorker. Mr. Peanutbutter was as easily distracted as ever going from being a spokesperson for Seaborn's Seahorse Milk to hosting a John Edwards fundraiser, all the while being married to his second wife, Jessica Biel. And Todd was getting intimate with a girl for the first time, and unwittingly ruining the end of The Sopranos. While Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter meeting for the first time was a big moment, these subplots of the episode were mainly used to hilariously highlight the fact that they were in 2007. I could easily see people getting bored of the repetitive joke - but I loved it. According to phone calls Marv was having, 'she kissed a girl and she liked it? This I got to see' and 'There's a panic? At the disco?'. There was flipphones and MySpace mentions. The movie Bearspray and television series Eel or No Eel were big at the time. You could eat at David Hasselhoff's Floor Burgers. It was all glorious, but was ultimately the backdrop in an episode trying to highlight something more.
Start Spreading The News highlighted BoJack's discontent with having finally made his dream come true in The Secretariat and not knowing what to do afterwards, and The BoJack Horseman Show was a timely reminder of just how far his character has come since the beginning of the series. It showed him ruining a perfect chance to revive his career in comparison to were he is in current time -having revived his career by making his dream film. But a lot of that has to do with Princess Carolyn, who told Bojack at the end of the episode that she didn't want to spend the next seven years falling in and out of love with him. As we've seen though, this is exactly what has happened, and while BoJack keeps getting everything he wanted and being unimpressed by it Princess Carolyn is still struggling to make it as an agent. Here's hoping when we return to the return timeline on the series that things will start to progress for this character that has always been behind and helped our antihero.
Rating: 3.5/5
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