sux 2 sux

Season 2: Okay let’s be honest he’s deeply depressed and messed up and had a horrible childhood but he’s still an unbelievable asshole and I’m glad the narrative isn’t trying to excuse his actions because of his pain.

Season 3: He just keeps sabotaging himself and in doing so dragging people down with him. He never thinks about the consequences his actions have on others, and even when he admits that he hurts people it’s always in a self-centered way. I love this show, and I love the side characters, and Bojack is an absolutely fascinating, complex protagonist but I will never, ever, ever actually like him.

i have half a mind…

Stupid piece of shit, nobody likes you!

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Rick Sanchez, Don Draper, and BoJack Horseman are three examples of a popular male character trope: the intelligent, talented, toxic, disconnected, detached man who fails to connect with others and is consistently and wildly self destructive in his quest to fill an emotional void with anything but human connection. The problem with this character archetype lies with the fans, insofar as a lot of people, a specific subset of men in particular, miss the entire point of the character.

They’re so easily sucked in by the flashy veneer of masculine bravado on the surface of these damaged characters that they fail to understand why the characters are presented this way: you do not want to be like them. You are not supposed to identify with them positively or see them as someone to emulate, you are not supposed to sincerely root for them to win most of the time, they are antiheros.

In spite of being the protagonist Rick, Don, and BoJack are almost never the “good guy” in any given scenario, they are almost always selfishly motivated, and explicitly harming innocent people for their own gain. The rare moments of redemption usually don’t last.

Idolizing and lionizing these characters as an ideal or something to aspire to entirely misses the concept of the characters, and worse, celebrates behavior that is explicitly shown to be toxic and harmful.

If you identify as “a Rick” then the entire concept of the show has gone completely over your head. The creators of all three shows position their characters clearly, and get more blatant with each season.

Josh Radnor is the guy who plays Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother.