One of the greatest animated series of all time. It ended before it entered the expected creative decline.
Bojack: Life’s a bitch and then you die, right?
Diane: Sometimes. Sometimes life’s a bitch and then you keep living.
—
Bojack: La vita fa schifo e poi si muore.
Diane: Qualche volta. Qualche volta la vita fa schifo ma continui a vivere.
When I saw billboard for "Fireflame" I remembered the storyline I was looking forward the most in the second part of the season.... The rumors probably true - Netflix did pull the plug earlier than creators were planning.
But I, personally, always have conflicted feelings about "meaningful endings" vs "life keeps going" ones.
Previous episode was powerful punch in the gut, the pool was a neat Madman's type bow on the whole ordeal... but it would have been too easy. Too poetic. Too dramatic. For the show itself and it's main character.
This one let's you go easier, there are no catharsis (almost) or as writers very subtly called it ''disaster'' this time. But in away it's even more harsh to Bojack this way. Mr. Peanutbutter does "one's step forward, two steps back" routine. HollywooB didn't change, and therefor Bojack will be 99% chance back running in circles, even through he did changed, ironically enough.And finally the last scene was perfect - Diane delivered the gut punch, amazingly, entirely through subtext. And simultaneously made the right decision to cut him from her life. Overall it was the right call to end story here.
This was amazing show that would be constantly rewatched missed.
Simply put, one of the best final episodes of a series I've ever seen. The conversation on the roof is perfect. Must watch TV
Notes
Review
Man, that was a wild ride. I was half-expecting there to either be a disaster or a feel-good ending that would make me cheer or something. Instead, this episode presents it like real life. There's no melodrama, no drama at all, really, just catch-up, cocktails and closure. It's beautiful, and I'm glad BoJack doesn't have a closed ending.
I expressed my fear in my previous review that once I finish this show, it'll feel like these character's lives are over. If I never reach the end, it seems like they're living their lives without me. Thankfully, the series is open-ended, and so there are unlimited possibilities. Unlimited. Anything could happen from here on out, and it isn't overly optimistic, sappy or depressing, but it's more hopeful than when the series started.
BoJack Horseman is good at depicting human emotions and real-life moments. Despite 3/5s of their main cast being anthropomorphic animals, each one feels distinctly human. With each meeting and chat with the other four—Mr Peanutbutter, Todd, Princess Carolyn, and Diane—the closure they all share is so mundane that it's relieving.
This ending is perfect. BoJack's finally ready to reintegrate into society, Princess Carolyn has found happiness, Todd has rebuilt his parental relationships, Mr Peanutbutter has looked inward, and Diane has found someone she trusts. They've all grown, changed, and are ready to move on with their lives. Man, I can just imagine what amazing things they will do in the future.
Well... it was nice while it lasted. :)
SCORE: 7/10
i still have a lot of questions!!
It was somewhat disappointing. After all, it almost feels like Bojack hasn't changed. Perhaps that was the message all along: that people like him don't really change. Diane knows this and it's why she takes the decision to permanently cut him off. So, I get it but I still feel disappointed.
I have so many questions and this episode feels rushed almost as if it they weren't actually planning on the show ending this way. There were so many conflicts and plots set up by the first part of the season and I thought that a) we were going to get closure for all of them and b) that it would take a longer time for us and the characters to have to deal with them (like Bojack getting exposed and all that).
I thought 6x15 was brilliant but it just doesn't have as much impact for me after this episode. It's like they were setting us up to make us believe Bojack would truly die only for the next episode to be like "Ha, gotcha!". It just doesn't make sense for him to go through that journey of acceptance of death only for him to be miraculously alive in the next episode.
[7.3/10] I’m not the kind of guy who tends to subscribe to wild fan theories or behind-the-scenes conspiracies. For the most part, I think artists give us what we need in the text, and that most “here’s what was really happening” explanations tends to be some combination of a stretch and wishful thinking. With that caveat in mind, let me throw out two baseless theories that, in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe and have no strong evidence for, but find interesting nonetheless.
Theory #1 is that in actuality, BoJack really died at the end of the last episode, and “Nice While It Lasted” is just another dying dream where he has the chance to make peace with his closest friends. “The View from Halfway Down” was very impressionistic to let the audience know that this was all a delusion or at least something fanciful that BoJack experienced while he sat in the pool, but maybe the series finale is actually just another form of BoJack’s brain “giving him what he needs” to be at peace. Maybe the prior episode is him grappling with his feelings about the people he’s lost, and the current one is about him grappling with the people who’ll survive him. Maybe he just wants to reassure himself that they’ll all be okay.
Theory #2 is that Raphael Bob-Waksberg and the rest of the creative time at BoJack Horseman wanted to kill BoJack off at the end of “The View from Halfway Down”, but Netflix said no, either because they thought it was too dark or too alienating or just wanted to leave the door open to revive the show in some form someday. So maybe this is a compromise, where Bob-Waksberg and company got to do their thing in the penultimate episode, and then fulfilled the necessity for a studio-mandated dose of take-backsies in the finale where BoJack survives, but “dies” in the sense that he’s not going to be in these people’s lives anymore.
There’s a lot of problems with these theories. As my wife pointed out, a big issue with Theory #1 is the fact that if BoJack’s brain was trying to let him make peace with everyone in his life, it would have included him reconciling with Hollyhock, whose absence is still noteworthy here. What’s more, I have no actual evidence for Theory #2, and it’s just a wild guess based on the sort of abrupt transition between the prior episode in this one. If anything a few creators have boasted about the lack of interference from studio execs.
But I spin these theories not because I truly believe them, but because I want to believe them. Let me be frank. BoJack Horseman chickened out here. It would be a bold move, one not seen with such force since The Sopranos, to show your main character coming so close to getting better, only to sink back into old habits and (at least implicitly) die.
And yet it wouldn’t be as dark as David Chase’s landmark series was, because one of BoJack’s last good acts was to help improve the lives of those closest to him. There’s poignance in the idea that BoJack couldn’t fix himself, but could at least help repair the harm he’d done to so many people who had supported him, and help set them all on brighter paths.
“Nice While It Lasted” feels like a fingers-crossed version of that same idea. It still has some weight to see BoJack effectively excised from the lives of Todd, Princess Carloyn, and Diane (or at least minimized). There’s melancholy beauty in the notion that BoJack’s dearest friends have become new people, people who have changed for the better thanks in part to knowing him, but that those changes mean he doesn't really have a place in their lives anymore.
But it’s weakened by the way that the series finale kind of undoes the consequences that the whole season (or at least half-season) built up to in the span of a two-minute opening montage. BoJack’s past misdeeds didn’t come back to destroy him. His hubris in wanting to do another interview didn’t send him on a downward spiral that leads to being a pariah, relapsing, and eventually recklessly causing an end to his life in his depressed self-loathing.
Instead, he’s physically fine, seemingly having suffered no ill-effects from his face down excursion to the pool. Sure, he has to go to jail for fourteen months, but that’s just given him a chance to get sober. And what’s more, he even has a career to look forward to afterward if he wants it, since “Horny Unicorn” is tracking to be a hit. On BoJack Horseman’s account, Hollywood and people in general have short memories, meaning he can pick up where he left things more or less if he wants to.
That development has a certain cynical charm to it, in the idea that even someone who gets jeered at on the street can, with enough time, just make his comeback once something else has become the cause celebre. And yet, transporting a lack of consequences in real life to a lack of consequences in your story, without making it the focus, makes this ending feel emptier than it should.
Despite that, there’s a good deal to admire about “Nice While It Lasted.” While the show shys away from killing off its title character, it does suggest there’s at least some cost to BoJack’s choices over the past season and longer, in that it’s prompted his enablers and those hurt by him to take a step back from his life. Rather than going for some big, grand guignol final frame, the show laudably goes for something low-key, just a series of conversations among friends. And those exchanges are pleasant, put buttons on some of the show’s running gags, and are all-around well-written.
Mr. Peanutbutter is still his cheerful, friendly self, but one who’s grown from his usual co-dependency and is recognizing some of his own patterns for the better. He seems like the one person who’s still likely to be in BoJack’s life on a regular basis (he jokingly sentences BoJack to a life filled with his friendship), and there’s an irony to the fact that he’s probably the person in BoJack’s circle whom he liked the least.
His mini-escape with Todd is a pleasant one, mixing amusing gags about the existentialist lyricism of the “Hokey Pokey” with the notion that the future is unknown and with that comes possibilities that are unexpected but encouraging. After all his shenanigans and struggles, Todd ended up meeting someone he could settle down with and reconnecting, in some tentative way at least, with his estranged mom. It’s a nice place to leave him.
It’s a nice place to leave Princess Carolyn too. Her and BoJack’s conversation about his imagined “go to him” scene at her wedding is the best in the episode, one that nicely invokes the “difference between real life and television” theme that has been with the show for a long time. It’s heartening to see PC still carrying her bits of apprehension, but also having achieved the life she wants, with a child, a supportive partner, and success on her own terms. Most importantly, she no longer feels bound to clean up BoJack’s messes or prop him up.
There’s a similar tack to the showpiece of the episode, which comes in BoJack’s closing conversation with Diane. It nicely addresses the emotional burden he put on her with his near-death phone call, the way it nearly toppled her life into disarray once more, and nicely reveals her subsequent righting of the ship, move, and marriage. It explicates the way their friendship changed each for the better, while not erasing the people each were before, but also putting their lives in different places now, literally and figuratively. It’s a little too cute and writerly in places, but their conversation works, and does a nice job of vindicating what it is arguably the core relationship of the series.
With that, the finale takes to put a bow on BoJack’s relationship with each of the series’s main characters, in commendably unadorned ways. If this is the direction the show decided (or hey, maybe was forced) to go with where we leave Bojack, the approach isn’t bad. It’s a good, not great ending.
There is something warm and wistful about all of the show’s supporting characters being in a happier, more stable, more fulfilled place than we left them, while leading lives that BoJack will mainly see from the outside in. There’s a Moses-esque bittersweetness to the way he sees his closest friends entering a promised land of joy and satisfaction that he himself cannot enter. It’s just a flinch from the stronger message, the bolder stroke, that the series seemed willing to make in the lead-up to this one.
But BoJack Horseman still ends its run as an adventurous, hilarious, and often harrowing series that constantly took chances and went places that a silly animal show, and plenty of serious dramas, wouldn’t take or go. Its final season touched on so many things that needed to be addressed, tying off the loose ends of so many characters and developments and ideas. It leaves the airwaves gently, with a lot of talk and a sweet but sad goodbye, and an indie song to set the mood.
I can’t help but wish it had gone one step further, but it’s hard to look askance after the boundaries this show pushed over the course of six seasons. As the title portends, the series was nice while it lasted. In the final tally, it gave a real life audience reason to see BoJack and the lives he touched in the complicated but comprehending way he seemed to crave so desperately within the show, and to remember him. Don’t act like you don’t know.
When season 6 first aired, I just knew it was going to end with BoJack either dead or in prison. As it turns out, he's a bit of both (he's actually in jail and he's basically dead to every single person he's been close with in the past). I also knew that Mr. Peanutbutter, Todd, and Princess Carolyn were going to be fine (did PC's relationship with Judah remind anyone of Peggy and Stan from Mad Men or was it just only me? What a great surprise! I happen to love them together very very very much and I'm incredibly happy at the idea of Princess Carolyn being with someone who actually respects her, loves her, understands how her job works and how important it is for her, and is always willing to go the extra mile for her), but I always worried the most about Diane. I've always felt very connected to her and I kind of hoped things worked out for her because that could mean that things will eventually work out for me as well. I was a little bit disappointed to find out that she's no longer with Guy because I also wanted her to be with someone who truly loves her and cares for her, but then I remembered what Sonny said to her a couple of episodes ago about Guy always choosing "broken women" whom he then "fixes" and who eventually leave him when they're better, and I realized this: maybe that's why Diane is no longer with Guy. She is not "broken" anymore. And her final scene, in which she cuts off BoJack from her life for good, is further proof that she is, in fact, alright.
"WOULDN'T IT BE FUNNY IF THIS WAS THE LAST TIME WE EVER TALKED TO EACH OTHER?"
A magnificent conclusion to the greatest animated television series of all time.
10
i loved s6 and this finale destroyed me
Quite possibly my favorite episode in all of television.
it felt a little lacking but it is what it is,it has to end and that how it ended,it does the job.
Holleyhock is strait up forgotten oh well.
Such a wholesome ending to such a devastating but beautiful show.
mr peanutbutter had some great final puns in this episode. really liked how this wrapped up!
finally got to the line: “ sometimes life’s a bitch and then you keep on living”
I was really really hoping it was another Mr Peanutbutter cut when the flatline happened. And then the rest happened. I fucking cried man! This show has been amazing. Hands down best animated series I've ever watched. Funny thing is, you eventually forget he's a horse.
Sadly that was an unnecessary episode, which is felt even more strongly after the power of the previous one.
The first seconds with the dead/not dead parts, nice. The rest, not so much.
He didn't go to prison for his involvement in Sarah Lynn's death, but get 14 months super max for breaking and entering in what was his former house in a state where nobody could ever even suggest that it was on purpose ?
Some back to the origins with the D. And it had been so long since we got a Mr Peanutbutter ad message mistake
Past that ? Well it's basically just the main cast putting nicely a term to their relationship with Bojack one after another, in a feel-goody but melancholic closure. It's been a year, they all had their storyline ends in episode 14, and nothing is new. They are exactly at the same point, which is stressed out because they're just basically telling Bojack what happened at the end of their storyline (PC+ Judas, Mr Peanutbutter is single but happy, Diane moved to Boston with Guy, Todd is talking to her mom). That's it. Most of them apparently didn't even care enough to even know whether he was still in prison or not !
So was there really a point to throw out the previous ending, go through all these theatrics (not dead, but goes to prison, they let him out, but not really, just for the wedding, but it's not the real wedding) just for that ? I don't think so.
The two minutes around Diane's retelling of the voice mail were a little above, but everything else was really sub par quality. Yeah, life goes on, differently, whatever...
And we don't even get to see Judah !
Am I a Green Day song? Because I walk this empty street on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, damn, I'm really sad that PB and Diane didn't back together after all.
It sucks, but oh well...
Diane: When I found out you weren’t dead, I was angry. I was relieved, but I was also angry that I’d given you that power over me. I was angry at you for a really long time.
Bojack: Are you still angry at me?
Diane: No, i don’t know. What good has being angry at you ever done for me? I wish I could have been the person you thought I was, the person who would save you.
Bojack: That was never your job.
Diane: Then why did you always make me feel like it was? I don’t know, maybe it’s everybody’s job to save each other. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad you’re alive.
Bojack: I am, too.
—
Diane: Quando ho scoperto che non eri morto ero arrabbiata. Ero sollevata, ma ero anche arrabbiata per averti concesso quel potere su di me. Ce l’ho avuta con te per tantissimo tempo.
Bojack: Adesso ce l’hai ancora con me?
Diane: No, non lo so. Tenere il punto con te non è mai servito a molto. Avrei voluto essere chi pensavi io fossi, quella che ti avrebbe salvato.
Bojack: Non è mai stato compito tuo.
Diane: E allora perché mi fai sempre sentire come se lo fosse? Non lo so, forse spetta a noi il compito di salvare gli altri. Non lo so. In ogni caso, sono felice che tu sia vivo.
Bojack: Anche io.
«You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. You turn yourself around»
—
«Facendo l’hokey pokey fai un bel giro attorno a te stesso. Fai un giro attorno a te stesso».
Shout by crybunnyVIP 8BlockedParent2020-02-09T15:40:57Z
This was a great show, and while the last episode was what really captured my heart in these last eight or so episodes, I felt this one was really good, too. Everyone is in a place that felt right for them. Like how Hollyhock more or less cut off contact with Bojack, and while this was hard for him - and probably even more so for her - she knew what was right for her. I'm also super pleased there was a happy ending for Princess Caroline.
Even the last scene really resonated with me. My mum complained saying "why are we just listening to music now?" but I took that end scene to mean that Bojack and Diane knew they weren't really going to talk anymore but they weren't really ready to walk away from each other for what really could be the last time.
I enjoyed this series and I'm hard-pressed to think of another show that was as real and frank and yet at the same time so whimsical and something I could laugh at. Definitely one of my favourite shows of all time. Sad to see it end.