(Netflix)
Thinking of making Netflix’s BoJack Horseman your next binge-watch?
The animated show is a lot of things: a lewd cartoon about a washed-up Hollywood star, who’s also a horse. A comedy voiced by a handful of your favorite stars (Will Arnett, Aaron Paul, Amy Sedaris and Alison Brie, among others). A stinging satire with arguably the best repertoire of pop culture references on TV today. A startlingly bleak tale of fame and relationships that lures you in with its silly animal puns, then sucker-punches you with its devastating honesty. The story of a narcissistic, womanizing, alcoholic anti-hero — think a washed-up Hollywood Don Draper with twice the self-loathing. And hooves.
And in one critical episode from BoJack Horseman‘s second season, which premiered this weekend on Netflix, the show is a prescient cultural satire.
BoJack‘s second season transcends its animated-shows-for-adults counterparts (the bro-y comedy of Archer, the trippy animated farces on Adult Swim, Seth MacFarlane’s button-pushing potty humor) by nailing the basics: imaginative, three-dimensional characters, impossibly timely references, devastating emotional resolutions.
The show is at its strongest in its sixth episode, “Hank After Dark,” where the show’s main female character goes on a futile quest to expose the truth about a beloved late-night host in Hollywood who’s been accused of sexual assault by a number of his former secretaries.
Sound familiar? The subject matter of “Hank After Dark” gets an assist from the new round of Bill Cosby revelations, the newest of which surfaced on the New York Times the day after the episode hit Netflix. The show’s fictionalized TV host isn’t specifically identified as Cosby, though his father-figure reputation and love of kooky prints suggest a connection.
But, as the episode makes clear, it could be referencing any number of stars — it’s just Cosby’s name in the headlines this month, the latest in the parade of revered Hollywood figure to walk away from sexual assault allegations, their reputations untarnished, leaving the whistleblowers and victims behind in the wreckage.
In a show where cartoon humans and animals drink, fight and copulate around a fictionalized Hollywood as equals, BoJack often uses its animal characters to add another level of absurd clarity. The character accused of harassment? The friendly, grandfatherly host is, naturally, a hippo. (Named Hank Huxtable — sorry, Hank Hippopopolis.)
Hank Hippopopolis, the revered star of ‘Hank After Dark.’ (Netflix)
No spoilers here, but as you may have guessed, things don’t end well for the woman who fought to bring Hank to justice. The episode nails the far-too-familiar sequence of events we’ve seen unfold on cable news shows, on Facebook and Twitter, and in conversations with confused family members whenever a beloved Hollywood figure is accused of something sinister. In the process, the woman is silenced by her critics, abandoned by her friends and intimidated by more powerful forces. And then she gives up.
There’s plenty of other standout moments in Bojack‘s new season — its second-to-last episode is particularly devastating. But if you’re looking for a compelling-enough reason to start watching an animated comedy about a horse instead of the other critically-acclaimed series sitting in your watchlist, it’s “Hank After Dark.”
Stream BoJack Horseman on Netflix here.
