Up until season 6, Netflix series Bojack Horseman has revolved around Bojack’s (Will Arnet) struggle with depression, anxiety, addiction and the overwhelming need to look for help in all the wrong places, but the man-horse seems to have turned a corner for the final season.
While this final season is split into two parts, the second which comes out in January, this first part contains a satisfying beginning, middle and end.
Bojack begins season six in rehab, reeling over the death of his former co-star, Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal), on the fictional show “Horsin’ Around.” Sarah, like Bojack, struggled with addiction to various narcotics when a ridiculously long binge with Bojack ended with her overdosing on a batch of heroin aptly called ‘Bojack Kills.’
While in rehab, Bojack makes small steps of improvement as he fights to leave his toxic past and self behind him. Every time something threatens to send him reeling back into old habits, Bojack sees the planetarium’s simulated sky that Sarah died under in his arms. This symbol becomes a bastion for hope mixed with a deep despair.
Bojack’s journey becomes threatened when he confiscates a water bottle full of vodka from another celebrity in rehab. As it only serves as a reminder of what he did to Sarah, he throws it out the window. In a wild turn of events, the bottle ends up in the hands of his sober therapist Doctor Champ (Sam Richardson), himself a recovering alcoholic. First, Bojack stays with him overnight so no one else would know a sober therapist fell off the wagon. After it becomes clear that Champ will not quit on his own, Bojack checks him into another rehab center, which leads Champ to blame Bojack for his current state.
“Of course you did this to me – because I cared bout you and you ruin people who care about you,” Champ says. “I want you to remember this, Bojack. I want you to remember what you did to me.”
Bojack replies, “I remember everything. I’m sober now.”
This line marks a paradigm shift of who Bojack is as a horse-person. What would have once sent him careening down a cliff of self-hatred and alcoholism is now being used to depict how much progress he has made in accepting his addiction.
However, accepting himself as an alcoholic is only the first step.
In the final minutes of this part of the season, a terrible secret is about to be revealed to Bojack’s half-sister Hollyhock.
In season two, Bojack took his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, Penny, to prom with her two friends, Peter and Maggie, and got them drunk. Bojack ended up leaving Maggie at the hospital to get her stomach pumped while Peter was forced to deal with the situation.
Now, Peter finds himself bonding with Hollyhock at a party discussing previous traumas. As the shot cuts to black, the audience is left knowing that Hollyhock, herself recovering from trauma inflicted while Bojack was addicted to painkillers in season five, is about to hear one of Bojack’s darkest secrets, and wondering whether Bojack will own up to his mistakes to someone he deeply cares for.
