5x04 BoJack the Feminist

[7.7/10] It seems like every season, BoJack does an issue episode, where more than telling a story to advance the plot really, the show focuses more on a specific cultural issue and filters it through its characters. Ideas of when men who’ve been exposed for bad acts in public can/should make their comebacks, and notions of male feminism seem particularly in BoJack’s wheelhouse, so the exploration of those things largely works here.

My issue is that the show gets a little over the top and didactic with it. BoJack tends to be much better on subtlety when it comes to its characters’ emotional lives than its messages, but there’s still some solid laughs and commentary to be had here. The back and forth with ersatz Mel Gibson and BoJack making the rounds to do apology tours, collect plaudits for good but easy opinions, and lob various bombs at one another is an entertaining spine for the episode. I particularly enjoyed BoJack obliviously reveling in the attention and praise, which feels both like a good jab and true to his character.

The episode is strongest, though, when it’s channeling all of this through Diane. While Diane can often be one of the show’s more blatant mouthpieces in these issue episodes, it also does a good job of digging into her frustrations of having her ideas stifled when espoused by her but lauded when championed by others. There’s also a lot of interesting ways in which her words are twisted or used by others on both sides of the argument. And the fact that she gets hired to help out on Philbert to make the show less sexist, only to realize that she’s a prop is another of the show’s well done “everything isn’t magically solved at the end of the half hour” resolutions to a complicated topic.

With all that heavy stuff, I appreciate that we get a comic relief B-plot where Mr. PB and Todd team up to try to help Mr. PB seem tough. The two of them trying to concoct scenarios for Mr. PB to show how serious and scary he can be, while continually running into people finding him genial and affable in escalating ways is a great continuing gag. Plus, that pairing is always gold.

But what I find most interesting about “BoJack the Feminist” is how it plays the same idea for laughs (and biting social commentary) that it eventually plays for the seriousness of it. There’s a loonyness to how the Mel Gibson expy continually does terrible things and makes his way back to the spotlight, and a lot of satire about how easy it is for men to pretend they’ve changed and get chance after chance after chance without ever showing any real growth or understanding, with a not-so-subtle suggestion that we, as a society, shouldn’t be nearly so willing to accept or forgive such transgressions.

And yet, in the very same episode, it shows BoJack rising through his performative feminism and reaching a genuine epiphany -- that like Diane said, he is helping to normalize a certain view and treatment of women through his work, even if it doesn't glamorize it. And better yet, he takes concrete steps to try to correct for it, acknowledging Diane’s contributions to that realization and inviting her onto the show to try to fix it.

But then, Diane is confronted with Ana Spanakopita’s tape of BoJack’s confession about what happened with Penny. You have the sudden realization that yeah, however much we’re invested in BoJack and want to see him get better and improve his life, he’s done some pretty terrible shit. That cuts both ways -- both to broaden the audience’s perspective and make us think twice about how much forgiveness and success we ought to want for BoJack, but also making us think twice about how to treat public figures who do genuinely have demons they’re running from and have made concerted efforts to change.

For however blunt “BoJack the Feminist” seems for much of its runtime, it acknowledges the complexities of the issue it’s tackling in startling, personal fashion in its final frame, in a way that speaks to both story and character, which makes it noteworthy even among the series’ similar episodes.