Roast of the town

Hollywood has brought out several large-scale auto-roasts in the last decade or so. Netflix’s animated series BoJack Horseman, whose second season began on 17 July is perhaps the most effective of them all: a take-no-prisoners romp of surrealism that starts off by targeting Hollywood and steadily expands its scope to skewer just about every major aspect of modern-day pop culture.

In a way, BoJack Horseman is an excursion into the history of American television. It starts off with some features of the goofy sitcom/romcom, segues smoothly into dramedy territory before plunging itself into longform storytelling peppered with “concept episodes”. The array of guest star voice-overs covers the genres: Henry Winkler, Garry Marshall (Happy Days), Fred Savage (The Wonder Years), Stephen Colbert, Amy Schumer, Ricky Gervais and John Krasinski. Between the main cast—Will Arnett, Aaron Paul and Alison Brie—we cover Arrested Development, Breaking Bad, Community and Mad Men, four of the most influential series from TV’s ongoing golden era. In time, BoJack Horseman may well join this elite club.

In a world where anthropomorphic animals live alongside humans, BoJack Horseman (Will Arnett) is a self-loathing ex-superstar who made his name with a Diff’rent Strokes-like TV sitcom called Horsin’ Around. He now spends most of his time making terrible life decisions, fuelled by hatred, bitterness and not a little alcohol. BoJack lives with a human named Todd (Aaron Paul), a slacker who stayed over after one party and hasn’t left since. The aftermath of BoJack’s hi-jinks is usually cleaned up by his long-suffering agent Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris). Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie) is the woman he loves, a Vietnamese-American writer who ghost-writes his memoirs.

The first season is really two seasons in one: In retrospect, the first six episodes were only “throat-clearing” stuff compared to episodes 7-12, where the show broadened its horizons. While the entertainment industry remained the blimp they sought to prick, the show’s writers parodied more than Hollywood. For instance, the avaricious publishing industry is personified by Pinky Penguin, an anthropomorphic Emperor Penguin (of course) who’s depending on BoJack’s salacious memoir One Trick Pony to save his company.

As with Breaking Bad however, it’s the second season of BoJack Horseman that’s the fire-starter. In one of the most talked about episodes of the season, the show’s writers confront the Bill Cosby situation: Diane calls out an old, beloved TV star named Hank Hippopopalous (Seinfeld’s Philip Baker Hall, ridiculously good) for doing something unspecified, but horrible to eight female assistants. Just like Cosby’s legion of fans have been trying to slut-shame his numerous accusers, the Vietnamese-born Diane is attacked (by television anchors/panellists as well as the general public) with racist comments about the Viet Cong. It crushes her already fragile self-confidence, she spirals into a bender of epic proportions, and Hippopopalous successfully weathers the PR storm.

In another superb episode, we meet author J.D. Salinger, who has faked his own death and is working at a bicycle shop before Princess Carolyn, BoJack’s agent, coaxes him to make a comeback by conceptualizing and producing a celebrity game show. The show is called Hollywoo Stars And Celebrities: What Do They Know?: Do They Know Things?: Let’s Find Out!. At one stroke, this parodies both Salinger and Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Newsroom). In the countdown to the show’s pilot, Salinger delivers two Sorkin trademarks—the rapid-fire walk-and-talk scene and the rousing pep- talk monologue.

BoJack Horseman has two great strengths. The first is its ability to remain deadly serious even as it introduces the most deliciously over-the-top scenarios. The second is its rigorously unsentimental treatment of its protagonist. BoJack’s failures are not accompanied by canned laughter, but depicted as the snowballing catastrophes that they are.

It is now clear that Netflix has another winner on its hands.