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Birthday Dad actually does seem like a decent enough idea for a family comedy, so much so that I'm a little surprised it doesn't already exist.
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Sep 20, 2018 12:33
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I felt this season was pretty strong, but it's problem was that it was too even in tone throughout, although it might be because I didn't have time to mainline it in one sitting like usual. I do have to say that I am looking forward to BoJack in rehab. I really do hope that it's not glossed over like so many other portrayals.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:07
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Pick posted:It's really weird to me that S5 has undercut a lot of scenes I liked in earlier seasons. One of my favorites being in Season 1, in the first episode with Sarah-Lynne, where she and Bojack have a talk on the bench and Bojack starts imagining "the credits" and emulating them with his fingers. I would say that since the beginning the show as promoted the idea that people, consciously or unconsciously, imitate what they see on tv to their own detriment. This is bad in the case of sentimental family sitcoms like Horsing Around, and significantly worse for a gritty antihero drama like Philbert. Both cases follow from the show exploring a larger theme about how people respond to media. The joke with Bojack acting out ending credits is that he is taking things way to far, as usual. The characters are always just characters first and foremost, not allegories. However, the show is (and always has been) pretty didactic. The characters don't directly represent something, but they frequently cause their own pain with the decisions they make, and viewers are invited to consider that in their own decision making.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:52
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PC wearing the same Amelia Earhart costume every year for Halloween is a nice touch.
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Sep 20, 2018 13:55
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Lurdiak posted:This season basically reminded the audience that if Bojack was a real person, you would hate him. And there's nothing realer than that. Honestly, I've always felt more pity for Bojack than hate. Especially in this season.
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Sep 20, 2018 14:50
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I might have hated Bojack this season if not for the overt messaging that you should hate Bojack, but at this point I just pity him and hope Season 6 focuses on his actual rehabilitation and has him start mending fences. Especially if it's going to be the last season, because I'd rather have the show end with Bojack on the path to believable recovery than his tragic suicide or irreversible fall from grace.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:22
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There’s a gulf of didacticism between “observe the consequences when people, who represent different viewpoints, make representative choices, the logic of which they explain” and “Bojack is ACTUALLY bad we can’t believe you don’t get it!!! Here, Diane will explain it for you”.
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Sep 20, 2018 15:27
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Pick posted:There’s a gulf of didacticism between “observe the consequences when people, who represent different viewpoints, make representative choices, the logic of which they explain” and “Bojack is ACTUALLY bad we can’t believe you don’t get it!!! Here, Diane will explain it for you”. Get it? Bad, because he does bad things, and other people people who do bad things like Bojack are also bad. Do you get it? Do you get the message that Bojack is bad? (please write me back and let me know if you got it).
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Sep 20, 2018 16:05
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Wasn’t Oscar Wilde or Baudelaire that basically said that doing stuff like that (spelling out stuff by being condescending as gently caress) pretty much shooting your own foot as a writer? The more I think about it, the more it draws out like a rotten blister in what would otherwise be a great season
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Sep 20, 2018 16:18
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If the purpose of Diane's over explaining and summarizing everything lovely Bojack has done was aimed at informing us about her character, I think it still fits. But the episode where she just lays it all on Bojack, he's clearly the focus.
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Sep 20, 2018 16:40
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dead comedy forums posted:Wasn’t Oscar Wilde or Baudelaire that basically said that doing stuff like that (spelling out stuff by being condescending as gently caress) pretty much shooting your own foot as a writer? I don’t know, but find it—I need it!
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Sep 20, 2018 16:53
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I'm baffled. Diane's actions are a harsh overcorrection from her conversation with Ana where she unironically critiques Ana for propping up that other actor when Diane is guilty of doing the same thing with BoJack. Those scenes are not about BoJack being bad. They're about Diane trying to come to terms with their relationship. I can't really fathom thinking that the writers decided to remind us that BoJack has done bad things.
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Sep 20, 2018 17:33
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Yeah, I think the show did a very good job of explaining how people like Diane can be just as awful as people like Bojack - Bojack is more plainly obvious in his actions but Diane is more subtle because she IS willing to exploit others for her own gain and her own sense of feeling superior to others, it's just more sinister because it's masked as social justice and making a difference. Diane spends her whole life pointing out how awful other people are but doesn't seem to make the same demands of herself or recognizes her hypocrisy in dealing with Bojack. That message resonates a lot more with me (especially since LA is chock full of people like that) than the idea that Bojack is a piece of poo poo because it's obvious that he is. The age old message of the road to hell being paved with good intentions holds up still as a very important one and it's one we do not address enough as a society. People are divided into obviously and always bad and obviously and always good these days, and Diane seems to have a slight acknowledgement of the ignorant simplicity of that message by the end of the season. Most people are just people who sometimes do good and sometimes do bad because we're not perfect and often have shades of a damaging past to wrestle with.
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Sep 20, 2018 17:42
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fawning deference posted:Diane spends her whole life pointing out how awful other people are but doesn't seem to make the same demands of herself diane is a nervous wreck because she makes the same demands of herself
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Sep 20, 2018 18:38
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I was a little taken aback by them saying Diane and MPB were already dating in 2009. It seems like a bit of a retcon. In season 1 they were portrayed as new couple, or am I remembering it wrong? I can excuse Diane having met Bojack before because, as MPB said, he probably doesn’t remember talking to her.
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Sep 20, 2018 18:43
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Diane looked rather introspectiveish while jamming out to "Under the Pressure," just saying
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Sep 20, 2018 18:45
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i am the bird posted:I'm baffled. Diane's actions are a harsh overcorrection from her conversation with Ana where she unironically critiques Ana for propping up that other actor when Diane is guilty of doing the same thing with BoJack. Those scenes are not about BoJack being bad. They're about Diane trying to come to terms with their relationship. The fight they had at the end of Head in the Clouds was pretty much the two of them digging trenches and very in-character, but the scene before that where she's giving a speech about how Philbert is a very toxic character and people shouldn't sympathize with him just because he's sad and vulnerable very much felt like meta-commentary on Bojack Horseman, the TV show. E: SweetMercifulCrap! posted:I was a little taken aback by them saying Diane and MPB were already dating in 2009. It seems like a bit of a retcon. In season 1 they were portrayed as new couple, or am I remembering it wrong? I can excuse Diane having met Bojack before because, as MPB said, he probably doesn’t remember talking to her. There was a flashback where Mister Peanutbutter met her at a Starbucks while talking about how Jessica Biel was really in synch with her new friend Justin. I think it was the 2007 flashback in season 3. It's an older retcon if it is one. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 18:46
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:The fight they had at the end of Head in the Clouds was pretty much the two of them digging trenches and very in-character, but the scene before that where she's giving a speech about how Philbert is a very toxic character and people shouldn't sympathize with him just because he's sad and vulnerable very much felt like meta-commentary on Bojack Horseman, the TV show. It wasn't about sympathizing with Bobert, it was about thinking Philjack was a cool guy to be emulated because he's just so damaged and dark and deep instead of realizing he's a guy who sucks plus he's got depression
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Sep 20, 2018 19:11
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:I was a little taken aback by them saying Diane and MPB were already dating in 2009. It seems like a bit of a retcon. In season 1 they were portrayed as new couple, or am I remembering it wrong? I can excuse Diane having met Bojack before because, as MPB said, he probably doesn’t remember talking to her. No, that fits with the timeline. They were together for ten years and met in 2007 (generic 2007 pop song! autotuned so all the voices sound weird!) so them spending their first Halloween together in 2009 seems about right.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:00
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fawning deference posted:Yeah, I think the show did a very good job of explaining how people like Diane can be just as awful as people like Bojack - Bojack is more plainly obvious in his actions but Diane is more subtle because she IS willing to exploit others for her own gain and her own sense of feeling superior to others, it's just more sinister because it's masked as social justice and making a difference. Diane spends her whole life pointing out how awful other people are but doesn't seem to make the same demands of herself or recognizes her hypocrisy in dealing with Bojack. I've seen this pop up a few times and - this hasn't really been a part of Diane's characterisation? Especially in this season, where her first scene at Girl Croosh is her literally saying, "I'm not interested in doing takedowns of celebrities any more, it doesn't make a difference and I think it's a hollow gesture". This isn't an emotional conclusion she moves towards over the season, it's where her character starts out in S5. I have to think that to some degree the people suggesting that Diane represents hypocritical social justice callout culture are reading more than is shown in the text. Whenever she has engaged in calling people out before, it's been assholes who are genuinely shown to deserve it like Vance Waggoner or Hank Hippopopolous. Yes, there are nods in this season towards how Girl Croosh's callout model is shallow and destructive, but a lot of that's coming from Diane herself, not from other characters.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:02
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Also she absolutely makes the same demands of herself, which is why she's devastated when she finds out her best friend is (possibly) a sexual abuser. If she didn't hold herself to a high moral standard, she would have been able to just shrug it off and pretend she never heard anything after Ana played her the tape. Even then, that doesn't push her over the edge: it's Bojack happily telling her that she's as messed up and broken as he is, and they're both morally equivalent to each other (as a cowardly coping mechanism for his own guilt), that makes her explode. Like, at that point she knows her friend did something weird and sexually inappropriate with a minor, and that he is happy to say her messed up life makes her as bad as that action makes him.
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Sep 20, 2018 20:14
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:The fight they had at the end of Head in the Clouds was pretty much the two of them digging trenches and very in-character, but the scene before that where she's giving a speech about how Philbert is a very toxic character and people shouldn't sympathize with him just because he's sad and vulnerable very much felt like meta-commentary on Bojack Horseman, the TV show. I think you're right with this, and it's caused a lot of issues. It feels slightly like cheating on the exam to go away and read interviews with the creators about what they were trying to do, rather than parsing everything through the lens of your own personal traumas, but there was something from them that Diane is intentionally written in the confrontation scene to be something of a hypocrite and have shades of gray. There's a lot of nuance there. The problem is that scene being a direct segway from Diane fully Mary-Sueing right out of your TV screen to let you know about an argument the writers had over lunch, even if it's done in a pretty way. She also suffers this season from the meta-narrative that she has to be the character to be angry about whatever Bojack is doing at that particular point, since everyone else in the show is actively enabling his downfall, and it's not going to work to introduce Belinda The Shrill Feminist Badger as a brand new character for no good reason. I'd hope that Season 6, and Bojack being in rehab, will actually give them the room to pay off and challenge the lovely things that Diane does, since it didn't really fit into Season 5 at all. That said, there does seem to be a story arc I can parse for her this season. Her and Bojack still interacting at all doesn't really make sense except for the fact that Bojack is the only person in the show that gets her in any way whatsoever. He's the only person that gets her ridiculous Halloween costume, even when he's blowing her off. I think she knows deep down that they are, if not the same, then very, very similar. And when she starts off from the narrative of Hollywood being full of "Good People Who Are Like Me" and "Bad People Who Can't Be Forgiven", the idea that Bojack might actually be one of the bad people is something that she can't deal with at all. She talks to Bojack about how it might reflect on her, and Bojack reads that as being about her career as a professional whiner and compiler of lists, and so tells her to cram it up her rear end, but I don't think that's what it was. And somewhere at the end, in being willing to support Bojack through rehab, grand gesture in the closing act that it is, she starts to realise how toxic that view of the world actually is for herself as much as everyone around her. FullLeatherJacket fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 21:28
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Android Blues posted:I've seen this pop up a few times and - this hasn't really been a part of Diane's characterisation? Especially in this season, where her first scene at Girl Croosh is her literally saying, "I'm not interested in doing takedowns of celebrities any more, it doesn't make a difference and I think it's a hollow gesture". This isn't an emotional conclusion she moves towards over the season, it's where her character starts out in S5. This is a very fair criticism of my analysis. Diane is certainly only talking about repeat offenders who do things recognized universally as inexcusable and I don't mean to imply that she is wrong for taking on her moral posture, just that she is struggling with the right way to create change in society, sometimes to the detriment of those around her. I think in S5 she does break through there. fawning deference fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Sep 20, 2018 |
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Sep 20, 2018 21:48
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Without an avenue for betterment, her moral judgment is pointless, as pointless as the US prison system she has disdained in the past.
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Sep 20, 2018 21:54
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I still think it’s odd that people think Diane is a Mary Sue when she lives the worst out of any of the characters. We actively see that her life is not fulfilling. We live in a culture that is worse than Bojack was when the show started. They can’t exaggerate fast enough to mirror a world where a Supreme Court justice didn’t rape someone, but if he did, why should he be PUNISHED about it?.
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Sep 20, 2018 22:05
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show: not only is Diane useless at creating positive change, she's actively part of the problem and is just now realizing this with all of the attendant existential angst bojack thread: wow i wish the writers would get over their pet character Diane 
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Sep 20, 2018 22:13
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Golden Bee posted:I still think it’s odd that people think Diane is a Mary Sue when she lives the worst out of any of the characters. We actively see that her life is not fulfilling. To be clear, I'm not talking about Diane's character as a whole, I'm talking about that specific scene, where she's very obviously being used as a mouthpiece for the writers. She then leaves that scene and goes into something else where you're not necessarily intended to take her 100% at face value, but I can see why people would struggle with that transition and assume that the writers are fully endorsing everything Diane says to Bojack as a message directly to them.
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Sep 20, 2018 22:22
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I kinda hope Birthday Dad gets made and is a massive hit in-universe, causing Greeting Card options to become the next big Hollywoo trend. And then if there are even more seasons I can't wait to see amazing posters and hear about projects for things like the the Oscar bait "Sorry For Your Loss" or the Wacky College-Frat Comedy "Graduating Babies".
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Sep 20, 2018 22:44
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I can't wait to see the results of Birthday Dad.
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Sep 20, 2018 22:54
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That scene with Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale better be setup for season 6, I kept expecting her to show back up in LA and she never did 
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Sep 20, 2018 23:13
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1stGear posted:And they used most of the Netflix jokes with WhatTimeIsItNow.com already, so I think that well is tapped out. I actually feel it was riffing on the even lower level of streaming services. Like, my Roku TV has prestige television dramas that I only found out about while fishing around for the settings. Or Playstation's original dramas that I'm paying for with my PS plus subscription, but I'll never watch because I didn't buy a Playstation for prestige TV.
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Sep 21, 2018 00:27
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Enjoying Bojack Horseman is like being in an abusive relationship.
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Sep 21, 2018 01:04
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SweetMercifulCrap! posted:I was a little taken aback by them saying Diane and MPB were already dating in 2009. It seems like a bit of a retcon. In season 1 they were portrayed as new couple, or am I remembering it wrong? I can excuse Diane having met Bojack before because, as MPB said, he probably doesn’t remember talking to her. It was shown that they first met in 2007. But I had the same thought. They seemed like a fairly new couple in the earliest episodes and their marriage felt a little hasty. Same for Bojack and PC. I was surprised that they had been off and on for so long and had been through so much together. In the pilot it comes across as a casual thing. But I guess stuff like that often gets retconned in TV shows. I just realised that it never came out that Bojack stole the D. I remember the wait between seasons one and two, being convinced that Mr PB would be caught out.
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Sep 21, 2018 01:45
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SalTheBard posted:I can't wait to see the results of Birthday Dad. Coming to Diane's womb Fall 2019
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Sep 21, 2018 01:53
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skooma512 posted:Coming to Diane's womb Fall 2019 That thought definitely occurred to me, as a point of conflict for Diane and MPB next season. I guess they did the abortion plotline already, but this time there's infidelity!
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Sep 21, 2018 02:02
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Next season is going to be entirely set in 1997-2007 because the writers love that era so freakin much.
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Sep 21, 2018 02:31
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Dork457 posted:Next season is going to be entirely set in 1997-2007 because the writers love that era so freakin much. Who doesn't
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Sep 21, 2018 02:57
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I liked Diane's comment at the end; "You're terrible, I hate you, but you're my best friend".
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Sep 21, 2018 03:06
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I'm glad that we got more Katrina.
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Sep 21, 2018 03:07
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I'm trying to remember when PC's weird ringtone was introduced and what the joke behind it was, but all I can think of is that it reminds of the Hockey Scores song.
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Sep 21, 2018 03:21
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