6x13 The Horny Unicorn

[7.3/10] This was a tough one to watch too. Again, its tough to see BoJack as a pariah, even if it’s the mess he himself made. We’ve seen him make so much progress in his life, and years of storytelling have led us to expect that means the universe will karmically reward him with good things. Well, BoJack isn’t a normal show, and is instead positioned him as a public punching bag, getting accosted on the street, made fun of on television, and glared at in diners. There’s an extent to which BoJack deserves this, but it also doesn't make it particularly fun to watch.

The other side of the coin is that this is an interesting exploration of where publicly shamed people turn when they have nowhere left to go. BoJack has alienated most of his friends (the irony of Todd kicking him out isn’t lost on me), and so looks to anywhere he gets validation. That becomes particularly troublesome when the only guy who’ll give him the time of day is a libertine fuck-up himself who enables BoJack more than he helps him. That character, BoJack’s new “sponsor” is a little over the top, but communicates the ways in which the only people who will associate with BoJack after all his public misdeeds are, well, the worst people.

It dramatizes the way that BoJack’s only appeal now is to people who would go see a “Horny Unicorn” movie, or frat guys who think that feminism has gone too far, or others who share his old worldview that nothing he did or does is his fault or something that he has to take responsibility for. BoJack did such good work to get better, and yet the ghosts of his old self have come back to push away the good things he got back into his life because of that, and drag him back down into the muck.

The B-stories along the way are glancing, but solid. Todd trying to throw a fancy party to impress his mom is interesting and a touch amusing. The three party phrases and Mr. PB’s reaction to them are worth a laugh. It’s unclear where they’re going with this, but color me intrigued.

At the same time, I like Diane’s little story here, where she’s worried about trying to write “real literature” rather than another Ivy Tran adventure, until she realizes that it actually allowed her to connect with Sonny in a way she wasn’t expecting. There’s both sweetness and comedy to Sonny demeaning the book as for “girl losers” while sheepishly having connected with its ideas and emotions himself.

Still, the emotional throughline in this episode is BoJack trying to hold onto the various connections that have kept him afloat. Diane is one of those connections, but she’s a thousand miles away right now. But one of his most important is Hollyhock, and the letter he carries from her in his pocket is a great device to represent his fear that she’s cut him out of her life. When it looks like she has,, BoJack goes into a trance and, in the final moments, maybe relapses.

With that, “Horny Unicorn” is an interesting look at the personal effects of public shaming like that, the effect it has on people, even people who deserve it. But it’s understandably unpleasant to watch.