Lost At Sea

SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR THE NETFLIX SERIES BOJACK HORSEMAN

Finally back from my self-imposed hiatus! If you have any annoying friends, or you are the annoying friend, I can guarantee you have at least been confronted about the possibility of watching the Netflix show Bojack Horseman (it’s okay, I’m the annoying friend in this case). Maybe you have been attempted to be swayed to watch it with claims that it is “not like other shows,” and that you just need to get through the first season. I can’t say that I disagree with any of these claims personally, as it’s a show I watch pretty much constantly while I write, or do word searches, or listen to new music. Despite it’s uncomfortable, and at times incredibly heavy, subject matter, it brings me comfort to watch the silly sad horse guy fuck up his life over and over again. There are repeated motifs that pop up periodically throughout the show, but the most significant one in my mind is the usage of water. From Bojack’s interpretation of Narcissus to everything that happened in “Escape From L.A.,” the most impactful moments of this show are buoyed (sorry) by this connection to water. I am going to run through some of the most impactful occurrences through the series, and see if I can figure out why the hell it is so important to this show.

An early one happens in the oft-criticized season 1, during the episode “Downer Ending”. We see numerous scenes of Bojack submerged, particularly in a lake that he imagines himself living by with Charlotte. It starts off in a more positive light, with him watching their daughter swimming and growing while swimming, but takes on a more grim outlook when it cuts to a scene of Bojack himself, abandoned in the lake and struggling to stay afloat. He seems to be drowning under the expectations, both that he has placed on himself and that he perceives other people having on him; in light of how Diane seems to perceive him entirely in his memoir, maybe it is becoming too much and he is being suffocated by a wave of criticism, having to grapple with who he is and what he has done. Along with this, he is said to love treading water by the hallucination of Diane in this scene, implying that he is forever caught moving in place, with no forward momentum in his career or his personal development. This one is a bit more heavy handed than some of the rest, as these feelings are granted by other parts of the episode as well and do not hinge specifically on this episode.

There is a brief one in season 2 during a flashback, where Bojack and his former friend Herb Kazzaz go to a film set and jump in the water, only to find out that it’s just a few inches deep. This is more commentary on the setting of the show than on Bojack, highlighting the superficiality of their surroundings and, by extension, the people who become enveloped in it. But possibly the most notable and famous one of them all (arguable with one we will discuss shortly in season 3), “Escape From L.A.” does not directly feature any water or large bodies of it, but has a boat in its place. Bojack is floating off at this point, only dropping anchor briefly and having no specific place that he belongs. He lives in the boat for two months while becoming close with Charlotte’s family (much too close), only to be able to completely uproot himself after doing some serious damage to this family, and drift back away. He does not belong anywhere at this point, and is completely lost at sea. In the following episode, while Todd is off on a comedy cruise for his improv cult, Bojack is once again able to disregard everything and float away from any obligations, albeit for much more positive intentions of saving his best friend from a controlling group. 

Season 3 has quite a few notable fishy occurrences. “Fish Out Of Water”, a mostly dialogue-less episode, takes place almost entirely underwater, and is another contender for the most famous water reference in this show (even though it’s less of a reference here, than it is the entire plot). It is a foreign place for Bojack, despite his many experiences with water and what seems like a significant fear of his; there is a fun little aside where Bojack mentions that his mom tried to drown him in the bathtub when he was 22, which seems like the cause for these worries. Despite his aversion to going underwater, he seems perfectly comfortable with it once he is down there, albeit a little bit annoyed at his lack of ability to do, well, anything. Despite the possibility of drowning for real, he is left without the possibility of drowning himself in his other poor decisions, leading to him being relatively clear and level-headed for the entirety of the episode. The next two both come from the same episode, “It’s You”. While panicking, Bojack tells his agent Ana Spanakopita that he feels like he is drowning, so she tells him a story of a time where she almost did drown, but was able to save herself. While she was attempting to give advice to him in the form of following your air bubbles, Bojack seems to have disregarded this advice almost completely shortly after in the second drowning scene, where he literally tries to drown himself. When he crashes his new car into his pool, he seems content with it and does not attempt to save himself from the struggle, watching his bubbles float away and closing his eyes to drift down. He is shortly after saved by Mister Peanutbutter, and puts back on a cheery facade to distract people from the fact that he is too far gone. Despite being back on land, he is still drowning, and might never stop. The final time is in “That’s Too Much, Man!” in a callback from Ana to her drowning story. Except this time, she is the lifeguard and is witnessing someone drowning. Despite their pleas for help, and Ana’s seeming obligation to do what she can to save them, she notes that “there are some people you can’t save.” The further we get into this series, the further Bojack gets into the waves, unable to be pulled back in.

There is just one big drowning reference (maybe not just a reference) through season 4, and it happens in my favourite episode, “The Old Sugarman Place”. In what seems to be the location that his hallucinations with Charlotte take place in season 1, he hides from the press and everyone else following the overdose of his former co-star Sarah Lynn at his hands. After befriending his dragonfly neighbour Eddie and repairing the run-down home, Bojack tricks Eddie into flying after he had sworn it off following his wife’s death due to a plane. Enraged by this, he flies the two of them far into the sky to be sucked into a plane engine like his wife, but after Bojack wrestles himself free, they both plummet into the lake behind the Michigan home. This shows a significant turn for Bojack, where not only is he allowing himself to be taken by the water, he goes out of his way to save his now-former friend from the same fate he previously nearly did. He finally has his head above water; after his long hiatus from his life, he is clearer than he has been before, and able to swim to shore through all of his issues (even though none of them are quite gone yet). It serves almost as a symbolic baptism for him, with the event allowing him to come out the other side as a seemingly improved, or at least re-enlightened, (horse) person who is filled with more hope and who we can maybe begin to root for again. Sadly it doesn’t pan out this way, but it was nice while it lasted, right?

In season 5, one of the (many) turning points of the season is during the episode “INT. SUB”, set mostly as fake versions of each of the characters through the eyes of two separate narrators. Within the episode-in-an-episode of Philbert, they shoot a scene that takes place in a submarine, which is used to show Bojack that Diane (the episode writer) knows what happened in New Mexico during the events of “Escape From L.A.” While this isn’t an instance of Bojack himself landing in the water, he has become nothing but a bloated castaway in Diane’s eyes, left underwater in a grave of his past mistakes. She is seeing him drown actively, and has been, but wants nothing to do with helping get him back to the surface. She wants to see him suffer for what he has done, and feel the mental repercussions because he deserves it. So she throws him into the deep end, leaves him alone in this submarine where he can do nothing but think about his mistakes.

In my opinion, the real kicker is in season 6. The penultimate episode, “The View From Halfway Down”, follows Bojack through a drug-induced dream where he is having a dinner party with the dead people who were in his life prior to them passing, with the exception of his uncle Crackerjack whom he never met: his parents (with his dad being combined with Secretariat), Corduroy Jackson-Jackson from the shooting of Secretariat, Zach Braff, Herb, and Sarah Lynn. Except, it isn’t a dream this time, or a hallucination. This is Bojack’s life flashing before his eyes, as he drowns in what used to be his pool, a place he has found himself before; this explains why he tasted chlorine when he drank his water at the table. Even if he wanted to save himself, it is too late for that to happen; the waves are too strong for him to overtake them, and he is pulled deeper and deeper underwater. He has let everything else suffocate him, the burdens and expectations, the drugs and alcohol, and most importantly all of the horrible choices he has made in his life. He is nearly beyond saving at this point, much like what Ana referred to back in season 3. This was his last chance to get saved, shipwrecked out in the ocean, and if he did not take it he would be forever lost at sea.

Of course, this is all skipping the biggest and most familiar instance of Bojack and water: the literal opening credits. Each episode, we see him submerged in his pool after falling in, presumably drunk or high or both. It’s hard to specifically pin down what all of these references mean, despite my attempt to do so. But Bojack is drowning, and he always has been; up until the final episode (as far as we know), he never stopped from the moment we were introduced.