How the Hollywood Redemption Machine Works, According to <em>BoJack Horseman </em>
This story contains spoilers for Season 5 of BoJack Horseman.
There’s an episode early in the new season of BoJack Horseman that condenses a famous actor’s ugly past with an efficiency so ruthless, the story line would seem cartoonish were it not so familiar. A few minutes of screen time chronicle a decade’s worth of vile behavior: A fictional celebrity named Vance Waggoner bounces from scandal to scandal, whether it’s the news that he beat a prostitute with a bat, or that he called his teenage daughter a slut and threatened to kill her. After each story breaks, Vance does what men accused of such acts often do: He goes on TV to explain himself, to offer an excuse, and to insist that he’s changed.
But Vance’s reputation is exactly what makes him an attractive candidate for a role in a new prestige drama called Philbert, starring BoJack Horseman (voiced by Will Arnett). After it’s revealed that Vance once choked his wife, BoJack finds himself tasked with defending the actor on a talk show. But his efforts backfire—simply acknowledging that it was bad for Vance to choke his wife earns BoJack a standing ovation from the show’s all-female audience. So BoJack decides to lean in, declaring, “This is just old BoJack talking, but—how about we don’t choke any women?” To which the crowd starts chanting, “Don’t choke women! Don’t choke women!”
As is typical for , the episode is surreal in its presentation but more literal in its message, as it goes on to condemn Hollywood’s perverse eagerness to forgive abusive men. If the show had continued to follow Vance’s return to the spotlight, it might’ve made foris already about a messed-up, middle-aged actor waging a comeback, a man who’s spent much of his adult life using, mistreating, and hurting women. In Season 2, he nearly had sex with his friend’s teenage daughter. , he coaxed a young woman, who saw him as a father figure, out of sobriety and into a month-long bender that killed her.
