Don't look back, Mr. Blue
- Arm Jeungsmarn
- Jul 8, 2020
- 8 min read
The stories of BoJack Horseman and Rick Sanchez from Rick & Morty
Mr Blue, I told you that I love you, please believe me.
This line might just be Diane’s final unsaid message to BoJack.
As the credit roll and we – the audience – look back at the long, perilous and yet familiar story of BoJack Horseman, we feel a deep understanding of those words of consolation. Please believe me… it does feel a lot like something Diane would say to BoJack. Or want to say to him. For they might not ever meet again.
From season one to six, Diane acted as the psychological and emotional mirror to the titular horse from horsing around. And this is not pretexted either.
Diane and BoJack frequently talked about how much they understood each other. Yet they couldn’t save each other. They helped each other from time to time. However, at the end of the day, Diane didn’t pull BoJack out of the pool. He survived because of chance. This made Diane realise she couldn’t always save BoJack.
And that final line of the song, begging for him to believe her, rings even truer as the credits finish and the series ends with the characters embracing the uncertainty of life and the inevitability of death.
This scene is one of the most powerful in BoJack Horseman, a show already packed with incredible scenes. If you have never watched this show, you might feel weird and even turned off by the fact that the show features a cartoon humanoid horse walking around a fictional version of Hollywood. But if you have seen even just snippets of the show, you know that this absurdist style crucially underlies the humanity at the core of the show.
The animalistic design seems to create a paradox within us. We feel alienated from these characters, yet we deeply empathise with their recognisably human struggle. This paradox parallels the contrast between hope and despair that the characters wrestle with throughout the six seasons.
In the final scene between BoJack and Diane, this internal struggle is brought to the forefront. The scene is dramatic but nonchalant. Tender yet cold. It is a look into the empty future through the lenses of past mistakes. It feels like living in a nutshell.
By this point, we see how far BoJack has come despite his flaws. He graduated from the nihilistic philosophy that led him down a dark destructive path to fully embracing a more existentialistic worldview. A view that allows him the agency to move forward, even in the face of darkness. It is this notion of agency that truly makes BoJack Horseman a great show. It tells us that no matter how bad things get when faced with death, we will inevitably understand what makes life so precious.
The same notion applies to Rick and Morty, making it yet another special show.
Masquerading as a crazy, senseless and crude display of hedonism, R&M is actually an exploration of a philosophical school: nihilism. Rick is a scientist who seems to know everything and can do everything. Throughout the show, we’ve seen him save and destroy worlds, fix a paradox in space-time, fell a galactic empire, engage in a fistfight with god and impregnate a planet.
To quote the man himself, guess who’s got two balls and all the agencies.
He is free in every sense of the word.
And yet, you would never consider Rick a happy person.
In one of the darkest moments in the series, Rick comes face to face with the fact that the people around weren't going to wait for him to change. In one of his flings, this time with a being that literally assimilated an entire planet, Rick was left a note that told him upfront that there was no hope for him to change. In a fit of sadness, Rick attempted suicide. He tried to shoot himself with a laser beam but he fell asleep midway and accidentally dodged the laser. This man evades capture by a literal galactic army and survives a fight against god… yet his life would have ended if not for an accidental head tilt.
Nihilism is explored in a more negative light in BoJack Horseman. While BoJack tried to get better, he found himself trapped by the consequences of his actions. Meanwhile, Rick could escape the consequences of his action and he did do so. He could go to a different timeline, assumed a different identity; go get drunk on a different planet; build clones to take his own place and assume his responsibility or put people he didn’t like but could not kill in a Matrix-like machine that gave them whatever they want so that they would never bother him again.
Rick proves to us that Sartre’s famous mantra: men were condemned to be free is true. Even if someone were to have EVERYTHING, all the power they wanted, they would not be happy. And truer than anything, Rick, the freest being in the universe is nothing more than a king of loneliness.
This was where Rick found himself at the end of season 3, alienated and forced to accept the rules of his family. Because deep down, he couldn’t and doesn’t want to be alone. This is shown in the therapy session scene in the famous Pickle Rick episode. While most fans might focus on Rick’s Shenanigan, it’s the scene where his entire worldview is deconstructed that caught our attention. After completing a classic Rick adventure, Rick – in a form of a humanoid pickle – walked in the family therapy session he had tried so hard to avoid. He gave a rant that he assumed would piss off the therapist: therapy was for people who wanted to be calm like agentless animals. He claimed that if he wasn’t happy, he would change the world. Hence, he was beyond the need to change himself.
A classic Rick Rant indeed.
But we know it was completely wrong. And the therapist – Dr Wong – does too. She points out that Rick chose this life. His intelligence was nothing more than an excuse to do bad things, to remain in the sickness Rick portrays as objectively correct. His choice led him to hurt people around him, made him sad, left his mind literally vegetating in your [his] own hand. The speech ended with a choice for Rick: be better or don’t. He has a choice. Doesn’t this sound familiar?
BoJack Horseman has a way of using the word fuck. Probably the best use of that word was in Season 3 Episode 11. BoJack revealed to Todd that he had slept with his girlfriend. Todd was upset and BoJack responded with the classic speech, I was drunk and these things happen...
No! No, BoJack, just… Stop.
Any fan of the show would’ve been taken aback by the sudden change in Todd’s tone. It was sombre and serious. What follows is a speech so good, we just have to quote:
You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when you were a kid. It’s you. Alright? It’s you.
That is a moment of epiphany that bookmarks a midpoint of the entire show. Much like Dr Wong’s speech, this moment functions to reemphasise the main character’s agency. They both have the freedom to be better. BoJack dealt with this by running away. Season four explored the history of the BoJack family - an aspect of Bojack’s life that he never had control of. This was an attempt to explore whether BoJack can be better despite the forces from the past that are truly beyond his control.
And lo and behold, the fourth season ended with a resounding yes!
BoJack CAN be better.
But it’s really season five that does something different.
Despite trying to be better at the beginning, BoJack remains trapped in his egocentric worldview as he refused therapy or help of any kind. The structure of season five forces us to root for BoJack all the way through. He doesn’t seem to be getting better. But he’s... trying to?
The season actually has BoJack starring in a show about a drunk detective who eerily resembles the very part of himself that he’s trying to escape. Tragically, that darker side won. BoJack almost strangled a co-star to death.
Here, the show makers seem to be making a commentary on our relationship with the show. Audiences often have a fascination with or soft spot for dark and destructive characters. From the brooding Bruce Wayne to the classic drunk detective of the neo-noir films (the very type of stories that BoJack season Five was satirising). When BoJack committed the unforgivable crime, in a meta-way, this acts as a wake-up call, reminding us that it is time to outgrow this drunk, destructive and depressed character. We cannot wallow in what BoJack was. We cannot use his bad behaviours as a justification for self-pity… This is the exact message Diane said to BoJack, which in part, was also directed to the audience.
In season three of R&M, we witnessed the gradual decline of the family’s respect for Rick. The characters began to see Rick as the irresponsible father and grandfather he was and still is. In the final scene, we see how Rick couldn’t even make a choice whether he wanted his daughter to stay with him. Instead, he, the man with all the agencies and power, left it all to chance.
It was at this moment that Rick, and also us, truly come to the realisation: Holy shit, I’m a terrible father.
On the bright side, realisation is the first step to change.
At the end of season five, BoJack realised that he had to take responsibility for himself and finally went to rehab. He reformed himself but was still haunted by his past actions. As BoJack became targeted by the press and began to lose everyone he loves, he regressed, falling back into alcohol and drugs once again. He overdosed and came close to death. Yet he survived. And he re-enters the uncertainty of life once more.
Would he relapse again?
Who knows.
BoJack asks Todd… what happens if he fails again?
Todd responded: then you get sober again.
We are reminded of Dr Wong’s words:
The thing about repairing and maintaining and cleaning are; it’s not an adventure. There’s no way to do it wrong, you might die. It’s just working, and the bottom line is some people are okay going to work, and some people, well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose.
We know what BoJack would choose. He had stared death in the face in the penultimate episode and was grateful to be pulled back from it. While Rick had attempted suicide, we also know that he is willing to be better. Season four ended with him trying to heal his best friend. We hear the song Don’t Look Back. This is a voice telling Rick to move forward, to trust that happiness is somewhere out there, waiting for him.
But how do we keep doing the hard work of bettering ourselves without the guarantee of success?
Not even the smartest man, or horse, in the universe could answer that question.
But the only way forward is to trust that voice.
This is not a voice of reason, but one of hope. It’s the hope that everything would be okay in the end. It’s this irrational hope that led every human through the unending existential terror of life. And it is this voice that guards against the darkness of nihilism. It’s the voice that rings in emptiness. Aimless and Unsure.
Mr Blue, I told you that I loved you, please believe me…
Roll credits.
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