A review of BoJack Horseman. Is it as good as everyone says? Can Netflix originals be as good as cable television?
BoJack Horseman is an animated adult cartoon on Netflix centered around BoJack, a washed up star from a 90s sitcom. He’s being followed by Diane Nguyen, a Vietnamese ghost writer who’s writing a memoir on his life.
This show follows an actual plot, which is extremely rare for cartoons. Most cartoons will have episodic plots so the networks can run reruns of the show without anyone feeling lost (i.e. Spongebob or Family Guy). Since this show is on Netflix, a service where you can watch the entire series whenever you want, it decided to follow an actual storyline episode by episode, while still having that cartoony feel of a zany plotline that could never happen in real life.
The humor in this show is extremely dry, and most of the jokes will go over your head. But why does it work? Because the characters are so relatable. They’ve done something cartoons rarely ever do; create relatable, flawed characters in crazy situations and actually teach a moral. The characterization in this show is flawless. Not to mention BoJack is voiced by Will Arnett from Arrested Development, Diane by Alison Brie from Community, and Todd by THE Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad.
I don’t know how they did it, but they did. They’ve created an anomaly in the world of animation. I couldn’t stop watching this show. I needed to know what happened next. Very rarely will I like an adult cartoon because most of them don’t understand that there’s more to adults than inappropriate humor and gross out tactics. Being a cartoon targeted at adults let’s you do so much more, and this show tapped into all of its potential and still left me room for wanting more.
I’m going to keep this short because there aren’t enough words in my vocabulary to do this show justice. I actually teared up during the last episode. Thank god Netflix confirmed this for a second season, because we need more cartoons like these. Just watch it, please. But remember, this show is rated TV-MA. So expect some more mature humor and plotlines than your average Spongebob episode.