“Don’t you break my heart, BoJack Horseman”
BoJack Horseman sleeps next to Princess Carolyn after they have had sex. The year is 2007 and Princess Carolyn has been consoling BoJack over the horrendous reviews of ‘The BoJack Horseman Show’. She reminds him that if people can’t see how great he is then that is due to their stupidity, not his lack of talent. BoJack berates himself for not always remembering this and thanks Carolyn. They share a sweet moment as BoJack tells Carolyn how important she is to him and how she keeps holding him together and makes him feel better about his permanently crumbling life. They fall into bed together and afterwards Carolyn whispers “don’t you break my heart, BoJack Horseman”, waking BoJack with her wistfulness. BoJack rudely tells her to be quiet so that he can sleep whilst Carolyn stays awake looking anxious. The opening credits roll.
The cold open of this episode reminded me somewhat of the cold open to Breaking Bad’s phenomenal ‘Ozymandias’, which consists of a flashback to the early days of Walter White’s drug operation, back when he and Jesse were still amateurs out in the desert cooking meth in an RV. In that scene, Walt calls his wife, Skylar, after practicing the speech that he will give her about why he is late home. They discuss baby names and have a warm, loving conversation. The naivety of a husband trying his best to provide for his family seems so much more heartbreaking when we know where his plans will lead him to. The phone call ends and the gunshots of the present day desert scene echo in the background to bring us back to reality. The opening credits roll and we return to the hell that we left in the present day of the previous episode. The two scenes have parallels in how they break the viewer’s heart by contrasting the naive people of the past who began with good intentions and the failure that those people ended up with. In its earlier days Breaking Bad was a frequently slapstick affair with Walt and Jesse’s ineptitude the main source of the show’s comedy. To open ‘Ozymandias’ with the contrast between the earlier, more carefree days and the latter day reality of Walt’s crumbling empire is a genius move by Vince Gilligan and episode director Rian Johnson. By the time of ‘Ozymandias’ Walt’s ego has annihilated the humanity that we see in the cold open’s flashback. To be reminded of the bumbling, worrisome family man that he once was makes this downfall all the more unsettling.
The structure to the opening of ‘Best Thing That Ever Happened’ follows a similar path. A younger and more naive BoJack and Princess Carolyn display some genuine love and affection for one another yet by the end of the scene we see seeds of behavioural patterns that will lead to Princess Carolyn getting her heart broken over and over again by BoJack. From the beginning we have the feeling that this episode may be the end of their relationship (just as we sense in the opening of ‘Ozymandias’ that Walt’s empire has a short time left for this world) and to open the episode with a reminder of what they could have had if they were just slightly different people will make the impending breakdown of their relationship all the more upsetting. In the present day we know how right Princess Carolyn was to worry back in 2007. BoJack has let Carolyn down and broken her heart repeatedly yet, despite this, Carolyn has continued to be a rock for BoJack, both professionally and personally. She has been a great friend and an almost perfect agent, and she is now going to have to fight a losing battle for her client and, in turn, her career due to the snowballing of her recent mistakes.
Much of the tension of ‘Best Thing That Ever Happened’ comes directly from the ‘bottle episode’ format that the episode takes where the characters are kept locked in the same location for pretty much the entire episode. Bottle episodes can seem like cheap ploys from networks in order to dupe fans into watching an episode that will skimp on what they love to see (they are generally cheap to produce due to a diminished number of sets and actors used). However, some of my favourite television episodes of all time are bottle episodes for one simple reason: if two characters are forced together with no escape it gives a ripe opportunity for writers to dig into the potential goldmine for conflict that inevitably arises from such a claustrophobic environment.
Thus, placing a bottle episode at this point in the season, and featuring these two characters, is a masterstroke from the BoJack Horseman writers. It is a rare opportunity in a show to have two characters that we know as deeply as these two hash out all of the complex details of their relationship with so much on-the-line in the outcome. Arguably Todd and BoJack have grounds for a similar conflict at some point but Todd simply isn’t a clever or complex enough character to have this kind of episode-long clash with BoJack. Similarly, a Diane-Mr Peanutbutter episode based entirely on their failing marriage could also be excellent and heartbreaking but I think Mr Peanutbutter is also just slightly too simple a character to really carry a conflict for an entire episode (although he has been given adequate depth and shading to his character when required). BoJack and Carolyn are the most fully formed characters on the program and they are also the characters who have known each other the longest (23 years, as is constantly referenced by Carolyn throughout this episode) so the ground that is unearthed between them is the most fertile ground that this program has to offer.
It is a credit to the strength of storytelling and characterisation on this show that, despite BoJack’s narcissism and ego, this is a genuinely two sided argument with nobody being completely right or wrong, just two flawed people breaking down and then rebuilding their relationship. The reason this episode works so well is because it doesn’t try to vilify BoJack for now trying to fire Carolyn after all she’s done for him. Carolyn almost certainly is the ‘Best Thing That Ever Happened’ to BoJack; yet she is also the reason that he is now currently jobless and it is completely fair for BoJack to fire her after the events of the previous episode. Likewise it is understandable for Carolyn to feel hard done by and attack BoJack’s disloyalty towards her for not giving her another chance. When Carolyn explodes at BoJack outside of the restaurant, she isn’t just chastising his recent decision; it is 23 years of pent up anger being released. Carolyn has stood by BoJack through his meltdowns and self sabotage, even sticking by him when he became “too portly for TV”, and therefore she can’t accept that he won’t give her the same leeway that she was always willing to give him as a client.
But, despite Carolyn’s anger and pleas throughout the episode, BoJack knows he has to remain strong and look past their history with one another to make the correct decision for his career. Carolyn knows that BoJack can rightfully fire her, and most of the episode is spent with her dealing with the grief of that realisation. It’s a big cliché but Carolyn does tick off the list of the so-called ‘stages of grief’ throughout the episode: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Carolyn is actually fairly patronising towards BoJack when she tries to bargain for her job, asking him if they can “skip the part where he is mad”. This doesn’t really work so well as an option when BoJack can’t skip the part where he’s jobless due to her mistakes.
BoJack, however, has no desire to skip being mad and cannot help himself from going back to fight with her more throughout the episode after they storm off from one another. It isn’t enough for him to have fired her; he has to have the upper hand in the argument as well. This incessant arguing from them is exactly why BoJack was correct at the beginning of their meeting to state that there is no longer any “professional integrity” to their relationship (even if he is almost entirely to blame for this lack of professional integrity). Of course, the argument eventually turns personal and BoJack admits that part of the reason he wants to end their relationship is because he feels bad around Princess Carolyn because she makes him feel as though he wasted her thirties. This is an incredibly selfish statement for BoJack to make. He pointedly tells Princess Carolyn, “you make me feel bad”, putting the blame on her. In reality, it isn’t Carolyn’s fault for how he feels. BoJack feels bad because he has wasted her time over the years and it hurts him to have to face that reality about himself all of the time.
Eventually, as is common with a bottle episode, the arguments and spewed insults eventually lead to a new place of freedom and honesty between the two characters. They make up, at first because they have to, then because they want to. They are finally able to acknowledge the good things about one another and the positive effect they have had on one another’s lives. Carolyn tells BoJack that she didn’t simply put up with him, she enjoyed being with him and she doesn’t regret it, even if it has led them to a place in life where neither of them are particularly happy, professionally or personally. Carolyn accepts BoJack for who he is at this point, not bothering to argue back against him when he claims that there is no point in love because someone will end up hurt. Princess Carolyn definitely does not agree with this definition of love but, at this point, why argue against it? She is not going to change the mind and heart of a broken, middle-aged man and she knows it.
In a similar vein, Princess Carolyn can’t really change who she is at this point either. She turns the car around and goes back to the restaurant to help BoJack even though she knows she shouldn’t. She can’t help herself from going above and beyond. This makes her a great friend and, most of the time, a great agent. But just because somebody is always willing to break their back for another person doesn’t mean they should expect the same behaviour back. Carolyn returns to help BoJack because she wants to and it is indicative of their whole relationship (the first time they ever met Carolyn hosed down a passed-out BoJack and put him to bed without him even remembering that they had met). BoJack can be a caring person but, unfortunately for Carolyn, the crux of her argument for keeping her job is to ask an incredibly self involved person if they’d be willing to put their own needs aside for once and focus on hers.
And the answer Carolyn gets from BoJack is a perfect finish to this episode. Ending an episode on a definitive ‘no’ after all the back and forth throughout is such a powerful thing to do (as fans of ‘The Sopranos’ will know). More importantly, it feels like the right thing to do, both for BoJack’s career and for the show itself. BoJack and Princess Carolyn have spent an extremely small amount of time together on screen this season, something that is almost certainly by design. Furthermore, Carolyn’s storyline for the whole season has focused on just how much of a mess her life has become at this point. Meanwhile BoJack’s storyline has focused on the struggle he has about how much winning an Oscar would mean to him. At this point BoJack simply cannot risk keeping the owner of a sinking ship as his agent if he wants that Oscar. Meanwhile, the writers are clearly looking to take Carolyn’s professional descent as far as possible. Therefore, when combining these two storylines, it only makes sense at this point for a career-conscious BoJack to fire Carolyn. It may come to pass that BoJack wins his Oscar but loses Carolyn as a friend in the process due to this decision, and that is exactly the type of place BoJack Horseman excels at taking its characters. If BoJack does win his Oscar at the end of this season I feel very confident in saying that it will not bring him any happiness. He’ll have a great night, as Ana told him right at the beginning of the season, and then he has to go back to being himself. And he may have to go back to that life with one less friend in it.
