THE BLEAKNESS AND JOY OF “BOJACK
With silly animal gags and harrowing（['hærəʊɪŋ]痛心的，悲惨的） themes, the animated （['ænɪmeɪtɪd]）series is one of the most emotionally ambitious and goofiest（Goofy，傻子的，蠢笨的，动画人物高飞） shows on television.
BoJack is a horse. His agent is a cat. His biographer（传记作家） is human.
When “BoJack Horseman” débuted, in 201 4, it didn’t look particularly original. It was the hundredth series about a middle-aged man—well, a horse, but still—who did bad things. It was the latest scathing（['skeɪðɪŋ] 严厉的，损伤的） portrait of the downside of fame. It was the newest streaming dramedy: yet another adult animated alt-comedy meta-sitcom.
In an anti-antihero frame of mind, I took much too long to catch up on what turned out to be one of the wisest, most emotionally ambitious and—this is not a contradiction（矛盾，否认）—spectacularly（壮观地，引人注目地） goofy series on television. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, illustrated by the brilliant Lisa Hanawalt, and airing on Netflix, “BoJack Horseman” is a world-creation show, merging bleakness and joy. Like “The Simpsons” and its best descendants（后代，晚辈；ansestor祖先）, “BoJack Horseman” uses animation to imagine a teeming（多产的，丰富的，热闹的）, surreal（超现实的） alternative universe—in this case, a place called “Hollywoo,” in which animals and humans live side by side. BoJack, a former sitcom star, is a horse in a Cosby sweater; Diane, his sardonic（讽刺的，嘲笑的） biographer, is a human. Diane’s husband is a dog; BoJack’s agent is a cat; a bunch of whale strippers give lap dances（大腿舞） in “the blowhole（鲸鱼喷气孔） room.” Easily half the gags（插科打诨） are silly animal puns, verbal or visual, like Broadway posters for “Fun Ham,” kangaroo（袋鼠） bellhops（旅馆服务员）, or a painting of Manet’s Olympia as a shark. The sheer density of these giggle-inducing, collect-them-all punch lines（妙语） gooses（推动，提高） the show’s more harrowing（悲惨的，痛心的） themes, as if Nathanael West had written “Miss Lonelyhearts” in puffy（胀大的，蓬松的） glitter ink.
The basic story is this: In the nineties, BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) was the star of a network sitcom called “Horsin’ Around,” a hacky（出租车司机） “Full House”-like series about a bachelor raising orphaned kids. Since then, he’s become a famous has-been, marinating（ ['mærə,net]，海水腌制，泡在卤水中） in self-pity. This particular form of show-biz pathology（[pə'θɒlədʒɪ] 病理学，异常） has been explored a few times before; namely, in “The Larry Sanders Show.” In another familiar TV trope（比喻，转义）, in the first season BoJack fell into a love triangle, with Diane and her husband, Mr. Peanutbutter. The season took some gorgeous existential（[,egzɪ'stenʃ(ə)l] 存在主义的） leaps（取得飞跃）, particularly in the second half, but had it stuck entirely to the P.O.V. of BoJack, a dyspeptic（[dɪs'peptɪk] 消化不良的，有胃病的）, near-suicidal know-it-all（万事通）, it might have felt airless.
Instead, the show fanned open to multiple perspectives—among other things, during its brilliant second season it made the marriage of Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter feel as intimate as anything on “The Americans.” Meanwhile, BoJack fell in love with an owl his own age, a network executive who had just woken from a thirty-year coma. (When she met him, she said, “Who?”) He got cast in（卡在） his dream project, a Secretariat（[,sekrɪ'teərɪət] 秘书处； 2010年真实改变的传记片） bio-pic（传记片）. Eventually, in one of the series’ most lacerating（撕裂的，伤痛的） episodes, he landed in bed with his oldest friend’s teen-age daughter. Yet, magically, even as he trashed each opportunity, the series didn’t bog down（停顿，陷入困境） in bleakness: it was sympathetic to BoJack’s depression and the sources of his pain, but it didn’t glamorize(['glæməraɪz] 美化) his solipsism（['sɒlɪpsɪz(ə)m] 唯我论） as a special sensitivity（敏感）.
Better yet, “BoJack Horseman” never stacks the deck（暗中布局，暗中策划） by reducing more decent characters to dummies（复制品） or dupes（受欺骗的人）. Unlike lesser sad-guy shows, the series includes complex（合成的，复杂的） types like Princess Carolyn, BoJack’s agent and sometime girlfriend, a fortyish（['fɔːtiːɪʃ] 四十几岁的） workaholic in a series of dead-end relationships (with BoJack, a cheating jackrabbit（长耳大野兔）, and, most hilariously, Vincent Adultman, three little boys standing on one another’s shoulders under a trenchcoat（军用防水短上衣）). There’s also Todd, his sad-sack（冒失的，不中用的） roommate; the indie-film（独立制片） director Kelsey; BoJack’s deer friend Charlotte, whose family he took refuge（避难，躲避） with when Los Angeles overwhelmed him; and many more—a true moral menagerie（[mə'nædʒ(ə)rɪ] 动物园，兽群，人物荟集）.
In certain ways, the show’s most original character may be not BoJack but his mirror image, Mr. Peanutbutter (voiced by Paul F. Tompkins), a yellow Labrador retriever（拉布拉多寻回犬）* whose own awful nineties sitcom, “Mr. Peanutbutter’s House,” was a ripoff（盗窃） of “Horsin’ Around.” Unlike BoJack—but like many golden retrievers（金毛猎犬）—he’s preternaturally（异常的，超自然的） enthusiastic, full of silly show-biz（演艺界） ideas but also happy just to sit at home watching “Bones,” his tongue lolling（loll 懒洋洋地倚靠）. Mr. Peanutbutter becomes the host of a game show called “J. D. Salinger Presents: Hollywoo Stars and Celebrities! What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let’s Find Out!” He’s been divorced twice, including from a horrible Jessica Biel, who bravely plays herself. Artistically（在艺术上）, he has low standards. But he has a legitimate（ [lɪ'dʒɪtɪmət] 合法的，正当的，正统的） inner life. His openness to intimacy makes his wife, the unhappy Diane, itch（渴望，发痒）. It also provides a goad（N/V刺激） to BoJack himself, suggesting that even for the rich and famous there are better ways to chase your tail(瞎忙活).
The third season of the show, which recently appeared on Netflix, isn’t a masterpiece like the second: a few plot gears grind（磨碎，折磨）. But it lands powerfully, with an earned tragedy that’s as potent（强有力的） as anything on TV this year. Along the way, BoJack lobbies for（游说） an Oscar nomination（提名） at film festivals and at a bat mitzvah（[bɑ:t'mitsvə] 犹太女孩成人仪式，成年礼）—for an actual bat. There are some classic installments（分期，分集）, particularly an ingenious（[ɪn'dʒiːnɪəs] 独创的，精制的） silent episode set at an underwater film festival, a riff on “Lost in Translation,” with sardines（[sɑː'diːn]沙丁鱼） that cram into buses and a Chaplinesque（[,tʃæpli'nesk]卓别林式的） subplot about BoJack acting as a midwife（助产士） to a male seahorse. There’s a story in which Diane gets an abortion while the pop-star dolphin Sextina Aquafina, the “sexy fourteen-year-old dubstep（电子乐） wunderkind（ ['wʌndɚkaɪnd]神童）” for whom she’s been hired to write tweets, sings a hilariously rude pro-choice（主张流产合法的） anthem（ ['ænθəm] 赞美诗，圣歌）. Again and again, the show takes sharp jabs at（猛戳，猛击） modern culture, including a delirious（[dɪ'lɪrɪəs] 发狂的，神智昏迷的） vision of a post-apocalyptic（[ə'pɑkə'lɪptɪk] 后启示录） L.A. Times, with nothing left but customer service.
The show has always had a built-in（固定的） risk: as effective as BoJack is as a character, he runs in circles. That’s what addiction is, after all. BoJack’s life is a formula, one that he feels desperate to correct: he’s ashamed of who he is, attempts to become creative or feel love—and then inevitably binges（[bɪn(d)ʒ] 狂欢，放纵）, betrays a loved one, and runs away, realizing that it’s impossible to truly repair the damage. Then back to shame. Repetition is the signature of sitcoms, too; it’s their curse and their power. On “BoJack Horseman,” again and again, someone’s life crashes, and he ends up on the living-room sofa, high, bingeing on reruns of “Horsin’ Around.” The cynical, knowing characters may mock that show’s cornball（腐朽的，乡巴佬的，过时的） ways, but they’ve memorized every plot: it’s a shared set of memories much simpler and more comforting than the real ones.
On a junket（野餐，郊游）, BoJack rages at journalists who call “Horsin’ Around” a bad show: “It lasted nine seasons! Its whole purpose was for people to watch it so the network could sell ad time so the show could make more money than it cost to produce. It did that well. It was a good show.” But BoJack knows that it has more meaning than that. It’s no coincidence that “BoJack Horseman” itself replicates the plots of sitcoms—Princess Carolyn goes on a series of bad dates, BoJack crashes a wedding—to inject them with something rawer and more unsettling. It does the same thing with jokes, messing with ancient comedy math so that the missing beat becomes the joke. “I’m the only （ [æl'biːnəʊ]白化病的）albino-rhino（犀牛） gyno I know,” one of Princess Carolyn’s dates says, just before ordering a bottle of wine. “Oh, great, you’re also a wine addict,” she replies. It’s a clever joke for people who love dumb jokes.
In one episode, we discover that “Horsin’ Around” wasn’t BoJack’s only TV show. Back in 2007, he tried to make a dark comedy called “The BoJack Horseman Show,” with his writing partner, a Harvard-grad hamster（仓鼠） named Cuddlywhiskers. The two panicked when executives liked their experimental script, so they added heroin benders（饮酒作乐） and “anti-catchphrases（反广告用于）,” sabotaging（['sæbətɑːʒ]妨碍，破坏） their own creation for the sake of edginess（['ɛdʒɪnɪs]急躁）. Then “BoJack Horseman” itself offers up an episode, “That’s Too Much, Man!,” that includes the very gimmicks（噱头） that it makes fun of in BoJack’s failed show, including a weeks-long drug bender, with multiple blackouts（暂时意识丧失）. “This may be the nitrous（氮的） and bath salts talking,” BoJack says at one point, “but I want to do some more nitrous and bath salts.” There’s a caustic（腐蚀剂）—and then poignant（ ['pɒɪnjənt] 尖锐的；辛酸的；深刻的；切中要害的）—parody（['pærədɪ]拙劣的模仿） of the pointlessness of making amends（补偿，改过自新）; there’s an A.A. meeting at which a （鼻涕虫）slug’s rock bottom is literally under a rock. There’s the world’s most random joke, about the Oberlin a-cappella group the Obertones. The episode should seem self-indulgent（放纵的；宽容的；任性的）, but, miraculously（[mi'rækjuləsli] 奇迹般地；神奇地；非凡地；出乎意料地）, the risk pays off（有回报，值得）. It does what “BoJack Horseman” does best, allowing the most heartbreaking parts of life to leach into（渗透，过滤） the genre that’s meant to soothe（安慰，平静） them. ♦
