BoJack Horseman 3.3 Review: BoJack Kills

Still on his Oscar campaign BoJack is endlessly making appearances at the plays of Oscar voters' children, barmtitzvah's, and old-folks homes all to ensure that he gets good buzz. This is made a little more difficult when his old friend Jill Pill rings and reminds him that she asked him to check on her ex-lover Cuddlywhiskers, which BoJack had forgotten to do. She asked him to go to his house and get a private letter she sent to Cuddlywhiskers some years ago and wants back. BoJack and a begrudging Diane (she's trying to keep her relationship with him purely professional) go to his house only to find a dead whale in the pool before Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface shows up with two other police officers and take them back to the police station. After Diane sneakily looks up their rights on her phone and tells Meow Meow Fuzzyface that he can't hold them at the station without arresting them her and BoJack leave. Diane reveals that she has Nadia's (the dead whale's) phone and that her last text was 'BoJack is going to kill me'. The pair think that BoJack is being framed for Nadia's murder and when another friend of her's leaves a voicemail they trace it back to Whale World, an erotic dancing venue for the whole family. The establishment is run by Goober, who once was a child-actor on BoJack's show Horsin' Around. BoJack and Diane come back later that night after getting a tip from Nadia's whale friend Skinny Gina. When they return they discover that the 'BoJack' to which Nadia was referring to in her text is actually a brand of heroin that Goober in peddling through the club. After he's arrested Bojack and Diane go back to Cuddlywhiskers house to retrieve Jill's letter when he reveals that after the cancellation of The BoJack Horseman Show Cuddlywhiskers retreated to hi Ojai property. They find him there and he reveals he turned his LA property into a halfway house for drug addicts - explaining Nadia's death.

While Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter's relationship troubles (Princess Carolyn spent the entire episode trying to clean out the skunk smell out of their house for Diane's benefit), as well of the brief discussions of happiness and how to achieve it, provide some pathos that we're used to from BoJack Horseman, tonally this was an odd episode. The series is no stranger to being dark, but having an episode revolve around a dead whale and someone assumedly framing Bojack for her murder, even if in the even it turned out to only be a heroin overdose definitely took away from the series usual sense of eccentric Hollywood-centred wackiness.

Rating: 2.5/5

BoJack Horseman 3.2 Review: The BoJack Horseman Show

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

BoJack Horseman 3.1 Review: Start Spreading The News

The season starts off with BoJack doing a press tour for The Secretariat in New York and as with most things in life BoJack tells reporters constantly that 'it's a dream come true', but it's also a nightmare having to repeatedly answer the same questions and be teased about his previous work like Horsin' Around. The press are also constantly asking him, 'what's next for BoJack?'. He wants an Oscar for his role, sure, but after that who knows? BoJack reveals to his publicist Anna at the end of the episode (after having accidentally revealed to a Matinee Fair that his performance in The Secretariat is a digital construct), that he was almost relieved that the farce of having to act at a certain way and say certain things for so long just for one night of happiness to get an Oscar wasn't worth it. She seems to think is it, however, telling him that this has been his dream and that he's worked so hard already that he deserves that one night and that together they'll get it for him. Knowing BoJack Horseman, I very much doubt he'll actually win an Oscar for his role, because that's life.

Back in LA, J.D. Salinger announces that he no longer wants to keep making 'Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities: Do They Know Things? What Do They Know? Let's Find Out' stating, 'I told the story I wanted to tell. To prolong it for commercial reasons would be crass and inorganic'. This puts Mr. Peanutbutter out of a job, and Princess Caroline decides to focus all her agency's attention on the small amount of clients it has rather than trying to attract big name celebrities like J.D. Salinger again. This prompts Mr. Peanutbutter to put P.B. Livin back in business and his accountant unwillingly gives him one of his worst ideas to date while impersonating Todd (who had been accidentally packed into BoJack's luggage and was in New York) - 'A Spaghetti Strainer That's Also A Hat: The TV Show.' Naturally Mr. Peanutbutter tells him that he wants to put all his money into the series. I personally could see it running as long as Horsin' Around.

Rating 3/5