Bojack Horseman: The Root Cause of Your Unhappiness

"Have a bad life!" "The joke's on you! I already have one!" BoJack Horseman season four is about facing the past. The story sends the message that letting go of memories that hurt us doesn't work: we can't just grit our teeth and work on being happy. “Here is the secret to being happy. Just pretend you're happy and eventually you'll forget you're pretending.” Most of us have been damaged by childhood or by the damage our parents received from their parents, or we might feel hurt by other things that happened to us in years past. "You're doing the best you can considering

your

asshole parents." BoJack Horseman tells us that the way to break this cycle of pain is to access the past while we can and understand the

root

cause

s of our

unhappiness

.

Only after all this will a better life be possible. "See? When you make peace, don't you feel lighter?" "Well, I also ate a lot of Bugles, so no." Before we continue, we want to talk a little about the sponsor of this video: Skillshare. Skillshare is a great online learning community with thousands of classes on everything. Bitcoin trading, guitar playing, stop-motion animation. Click the link in the description below to get 2 months of free access to all classes. The whole arc of Hollyhock's search for a mom, with BoJack taking on the role of dad, is a clever red herring: "I told you from the beginning that I have 8 dads." "Yes.

Yes. Good." But... I've never had a brother." and season 4 proves to be less about this perceived daughter figure and more about a different woman in BoJack's life. His mother, Beatrice Horseman, transforms from the central villainess of the series into a tragic figure on par with BoJack himself "You just said..." "The arrow of time doesn't stop or go back, after all. It just moves along." The series has always generated sympathy for BoJack's bad behavior through scenes of Beatrice's horrible parenting, "I'm punishing you for being alive." But at the end of season 4 we are challenged to sympathize with him.

Beatrice's bad behavior due to her horrible upbringing: "Come on, be strong." You can't let

your

feminine emotions consume you. You don't want to end up like your mother now, do you? "No". Just as we come to understand why BoJack is tempted to sleep with Penny, takes drugs with Sarah Lynn, and almost takes his own life, I can finally understand why Beatrice detested her father, resented her husband, and abused her son. Beatrice is both a horribly cruel mother and a damaged person of her own: the trauma she has suffered does not change or necessarily excuse the bad things she has done. fact, but it makes us understand it and feel for her "Your throat is almost closed by the swelling." So maybe you'll finally lose some of that weight that's causing you so much trouble, wouldn't that be nice?" However, it's notable that the writers keep all the information we learn about Beatrice's life hidden from BoJack.

He can return to his family's lake house, but he can't witness his grandmother's grief over her dead son or her subsequent lobotomy. "Well, I intend to put his mother in a nursing home, but he can't see her being cruel." ". childhood friends, her misogynistic father, her unfaithful husband, her lost dreams, or the expectations of the period in which she was raised and raised him. None of this knowledge is available to BoJack, in part due to Beatrice's dementia. and partly to that, BoJack doesn't ask. His anger towards his mother, even if justified, has made him completely reluctant to try to meet her.

We never see each other." BoJack's ignorance makes us think about something we could often forget: that our parents are people too. The trap many of us fall into is seeing family members only in relation to ourselves. ; it's right there in the name, relative, but we feel better when we gain that perspective that in reality our parents are nuanced beings with personal needs and wounds that must be respected, and were raised under a set of circumstances and social norms that We can't really imagine it, due to the completely different set of rules that govern our own times.

When BoJack shows instinctive compassion towards Beatrice in the moments before leaving her side, possibly for good: "Can you try the ice cream, Mom? "Oh, BoJack, it's so... delicious." We have the depressing feeling that her relationship might have been totally different if he had shown her that kindness sooner, or if she had somehow made peace with her own trauma and avoided hurting his son so deeply. she. “This whole time I thought you were a terrible father. And you were. But I screwed up even worse. It turns out that being a father is impossible.” With that wisdom, BoJack shows that he is capable of empathizing with the woman he hates, while BoJack, the show, wants us to learn from his characters' mistakes: if we don't want our family to leave us to die alone, we have to treat them well. , and the only way to be psychologically equipped to do so is to address our flaws at their source. "When you do bad things, you have something you can point to when people finally leave you.

It's not you, you tell yourself. It's that bad thing you did." It's easy to find ourselves in BoJack's position: completely unaware of our parents' truth be

cause

we're too absorbed in our own or too hurt by the consequences of theirs. "Stop! You're out of luck." But if BoJack Horseman, the show, stands for anything, it's that we should take advantage of access to the past while we can: ask questions; "My grandmother seems like quite a character. Can I meet her?" engage with our families' stories so we can better understand ourselves. We won't always have the opportunity. BoJack fails to do this and suffers his entire life for it.

He shows that misunderstanding our family makes us cling to anger and misplaced emotions. "You stupid piece of shit. You're a real stupid piece of shit. And everywhere you go, you destroy people. Of course your mother never loved you. What do you expect? That's why Sarah Lynn died. That's why Charlotte never will." . I forgive you." On the contrary, learning about the past can lead us to forgiveness, because we can see that much of the pain that was caused to us was not intended for us or caused by anything we did. Think about the old saying that the truth will set you free: the past is where we search for that truth, to free ourselves from the limited or false narratives we have been living with.

BoJack's unwillingness to know his mother's truth is in stark contrast to Hollyhock's sincere search. in her past: "I always wanted to know who my mother is." , because a lot of 17-year-olds think you have to be mean to be funny, but Hollyhock is so... sweet." That's why BoJack Horseman teaches that understanding our past strengthens us and that seeking that truth is imperative for our well-being. "She has to know. You don't have to tell her I was here. I'll stay out of her life forever. You can tell her I'm an asshole. You can say you found this on your own.

I-I don't care. But you have to tell her." . And since much of the season is set against the backdrop of Beatrice's old age and her loss of mental faculties, the show reminds us that there is no time to waste. Two of the supporting characters' stories in season four are brutal reminders that even if we make positive changes, it's hard to maintain them until we address the underlying reason for our

unhappiness

. "I've had five miscarriages." Princess Carolyn seemed to be showing growth with her newfound ability to balance work and her relationship. But in season four, as she faces the pain of suffering another miscarriage, she faces a situation she cannot control. "I just think... maybe we should talk about other options." "Okay.

Here's another option: get out of my apartment!" She reverts to her old thinking that hard work will solve anything, that she can do it herself and that she doesn't need Ralph. "Go out! Save it for your next girlfriend... the one you can take home to your parents, the one that's easy." "Goodbye, Princess Carolyn." She denies it because she's afraid of her body's capabilities, but instead Considering other ways to bring "Ruthie" closer to reality, she literally jumps into the first project that comes across her desk and makes Philbert her new "baby." Could you tell people?” "But it's false." "Yeah, well, it makes me feel better." Once again, her fundamental desires to be a mother and have a family are pushed aside because she doesn't address her irrational fear of inevitably ending up alone.

How difficult is it to start a family at my age?" So she makes sure she is alone and will continue to fulfill her own prophecy of singleness until she challenges this deepest fear head-on. "If you spend too much time with stories, you start to believe that life is just stories, and they are not. Life is life. And that's very sad because there is very little time and... what are we doing with it?" Like Princess Carolyn, Diane in this season abandons the fight for a relationship that seemed to be an answer to her problems and returns to old habits. “Even when I was on the surface I wasn't satisfied.

Oh my God, I'm the problem. In previous seasons, Mr. Peanutbutter's cheerful presence helped balance Diane's cynical worldview: "Anyway, what?" How are things going for you?" "It's not good. I should have known it was a waste of time to come back here." "Oh, that's horrible. When you get back, I'll give you one of my patented peanut butter hugs!", but season 4 revealed that this doesn't work in the long run, and the message is that we can't overcome our sadness and pain by ignoring it or want to be happy. It's no coincidence that we've seen this before. In Season 2, Diane comes to the same conclusion that her marriage to Mr.

Peanutbutter is a dead end in my life, so that's how I'm going to feel for her. always". She is trapped in a vicious cycle. We see in it a lack of purpose and an inability to get involved or commit. "It makes me feel shit! Like you, you're just visiting until the next thing! And you'll leave me when you get bored or when you find something better! But, like her, we still don't fully understand what made her like this. She knows she doesn't want to feel that way: "I'm so tired of squinting," but she still doesn't know why she feels that way.

Diane's story raises the really challenging question: What do we do when we don't know what we want. , when we know something is wrong but we don't understand why? Am I stuck?" What Diane really needs is psychological help from someone much more certified than BoJack. "Don't feel bad for feeling bad." And ultimately, she needs to identify the deeper cause of her pain. BoJack Horseman is at his best when the audience learns from the ways his characters incorrectly or poorly handle his depression and despair. "Can we please put some alcohol in my mouth?" But after the first hopeful season finale the show has given BoJack, season 5 may. give us what we really want: to finally see these characters learn on their own. "You're responsible for your own happiness, you know?" "My God, that's depressing." For my own happiness?

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