the thing i love most about Bojack is how it portrays the different kinds of abuse and shows two versions of what can come of that abuse.
Bojack and Diane are the most obvious cases, both coming from a toxic family dynamic that destroyed their ability to love or be loved. Bojack endlessly tries to fill the void hoping he’ll someday strike gold and find the person or project that will fix him just like in the movies. Diane retaliated against the abuse and developed a militant sense of justice, able to stand up for herself and others but when the fighting stops she is reverted back to that vulnerable little girl who is unable to process affection.
PC and Sarah Lynn both suffered from neglect. Princess Carolyn responded to this by obsessively fixing other people’s lives while simultaneously being unable to rely on others. Sarah Lynn was never set boundaries and will hop from one enabler to the next without any care for their or her own wellbeing.
But most interesting to me is Ana and Mr. Peanutbutter, who are perhaps the most subtle in how they’re portrayed.
Everything we learn about PB’s previous wives is through throw away gags that are glossed over for comedic effect. The first time we hear he’s been divorced twice already we just assume he’s the same as any other vapid Hollywoo bachelor who can’t keep a relationship afloat without getting bored. But when we actually meet his exes we see that both of them were pretty abusive to him. Katrina was an obvious alcoholic with an abrasive attitude towards him and his career. In the first scene we see her she’s being dismissive at the awards ceremony and PB chuckles at all her blatantly disrespectful behavior and nervously reminds her that they’re in public. Jessica is an obvious narcissist, openly belittling PB and his work while bragging about her own projects. In both scenarios we see how quickly PB goes from being excited and loving to a fear response, worried that he’s somehow fucked up again in a way he doesn’t understand.
In season 4 Diane literally refers to Katrina as ‘cruella deville’, a villain whose motive was to murder puppies and wear their skin, during an arc where Katrina is trying to put PB in power so she can use him for her own agenda. Suddenly all the jokes about Mr. Peanutbutter being Diane’s dog instead of her husband have a much more sinister subtext. He is an incredibly subservient person, and all of his relationships fell apart when his partner couldn’t or wouldn’t find a use for him anymore. He tries to make up for this with grand almost compulsive gestures, trying to do anything to keep Diane from leaving him like the others, which is ironically the thing that gives them the most strife. Diane doesnt want a pet, she wants a partner who will converse with her as an equal instead of simply worshiping the idea of her whilst doing everything to impress her while doing nothing to actually make her happy. He’s come to see his relationships as pet and mistress, to the point where its weirdly jarring to watch him have sex with his own wife.
Ana is the opposite. We don’t learn a lot about her, but from the hesitance she shows to get closer to people I get the idea that unlike Diane who wants an intimate relationship but doesn’t know how, Ana has been burned in the past. The mantra she lives by is “Sometimes you have to let people drown so they wont drag you down with them.” And while she only talks about this in reference to Bojack I get the idea that she’s gone through all this before. She states while having casual sex with Bojack that he wont love her for who she is at home, that without the glamour of an inappropriate work relationship he’d grow bored of her. Unlike Mr. Peanutbutter who throws himself into new relationships and will do or say anything to try and maintain those relationships, Ana’s insecurity is far more deeply routed and she keeps her distance from people because she doesn’t feel good enough to be loved in her simplest form. The only way she can trust the various men she knows not to hurt her is to maintain an image of absolute superiority, and knows full well that the men who are attracted to her only like her because of this superiority.
PB tries to be everything, Ana is too afraid to try at all.
I feel like the reason Bojack Horseman is such an immensely relatable show is because each form of trauma is represented by two sides of a spectrum. I’m sure if I dig harder I’ll be able to find other interesting dichotomies with the rest of the cast, like Bojack and Peanutbutter’s reactions to nihilism, (I cant believe nothing matters vs. thank god nothing matters) or Diane and Princess Carolyn’s retaliations against society, (Fighting oppression vs. manipulating oppression for personal gain). No matter what trauma you’ve experienced, its likely you’ll find yourself between two character’s feelings about it, and because of this are able to relate to the cast at large much more easily.
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