Daniel Salazar, 27.352.

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PERSUASIVE ESSAY – A BOJACK HORSEMAN REVIEW

Bojack Horseman at first glance seems like the typical adult cartoon that
goes nowhere and only uses the shock factor, at first, I thought it was decent and
had some positive characteristics, it told a pessimistic story of everyday life. As the
series progresses it starts to confirm my initial prejudice, it falls into the typical
sitcom formula even though it is not a sitcom as such and many times it feels
boring, the cartoon is ambitious but the fact that it is still a cartoon makes it difficult
to take seriously the depressive themes it pretends to deal with when most of the
characters are anthropomorphic animals, not to mention that bestiality is something
normal, something that makes me take the series less seriously if it is possible.

I have seen series that deal with ridiculous concepts that I can take seriously
to the point of making a reflection, but in the case of Bojack it is excessive how
seriously the series takes itself when you put it next to the fact that it is normal for a
horse to sleep with a human or a reptile with a raccoon. If it were an absurdist
comedy it might work, but Bojack doesn't work as a realistic series and it doesn't
work as a comedic one either. Starting with the fact that there are almost no funny
moments and when there are they are quite awkward.

The series is not constant in how problems are taken, something like an
actor not fulfilling his recording contract by leaving the set is solved simply by using
CGI, but out of nowhere Bojack is late for a meeting with friends and the series
becomes sad and has as a major problem something as small as that, again this
would not be such a big problem if it wasn't because the series pretends to stand
out in terms of realism. And if we try to highlight some of the social and political
criticisms it makes it also falls quite short, criticisms such as that guns are bad or
that abortion empowers women are not new things, much less in the place where
the series comes from, there is nothing ingenious or transgressive in making a
critical comment when the vast majority of the population agrees with that
comment.
 Talking about its exploration of characters and the conflicts that each one
suffers the series falls into a circular formula, the characters get obsessed with
something appealing in specific, it ends badly, another character lectures them,
they recover and some random event happens to fall into another obsessive
situation, it's like this during the whole series and the formula never changes. It's
as if the characters don't want to help themselves and if this is the case, then why
should I feel empathy or pity for them? It's not a story that progresses organically,
the writers seem to put the characters in random situations so they can give the
speech they want at the time. The following plots are not the result of the previous
ones, they are ridiculous situations one after another and always initiated by some
character falling back and making a bad decision.

Yes, there are some lessons that I agree with, such as not glorifying
victimization and self-suffering, but all this is difficult to value and follow when the
series itself falls into the error of glorifying sadness itself. The theme that most tries
to teach is to learn from the past, many times it is said explicitly, but again, this
argument ends up missing the point because the series itself does not end up
being consistent with its actions. The whole premise ends up being conformist in
the way it views nihilism, because the series tries to say that nihilism must be
overcome when what it really does is accept it.

Bojack Horseman has features that can be rescued as good, but when you
have the full context of the series most of these things are lost or directly end up
having the opposite effect of what is intended to achieve at the beginning, it does
not stand out in a realistic or comic sense and the more it advances the more
inconsistent it becomes with the things that happen in the plot, it seems to me like
a pretentious series that tries to attribute things that it doesn't really have, I do not
recommend it.