BoJack Horseman and The Good Place ended this week after wrestling with what it means to be "good"

Variety

"Both shows are wildly funny and deeply strange, pushing the conventional bounds of what a TV comedy can, or should, be," says Caroline Framke. "And despite their distinctly different premises and approaches, that same question of 'what does it mean to be a good person?' form their spines." It was not too long ago, says Framke, that “hot messes” like Eleanor from The Good Place and grim “antihero” jerks like BoJack reigned supreme as TV shows embraced dysfunction. But BoJack Horseman and The Good Place showed the benefits of committing to decency. "Even just over the past year, there’s been a growing feeling on television that, perhaps, the boldest thing a character can be is truly thoughtful about their impact on themselves and the worlds around them — and no, it’s probably not a coincidence that this wave of onscreen character growth is happening in the wake of the real world seeming to become more catastrophic by the minute," says Framke. "Who needs to spend time with unrepentant fictional jerks when the news feels dominated by so many real ones? Who wants to watch the world burn on television when you can feel the flames licking at your feet in reality? And so there’s something undeniably poignant about The Good Place and BoJack Horseman ending within a day of each other, their missions as complete as they’ll ever be. Each emphasized the importance of self-awareness, mutual respect, compassion, and paying it forward. These shows found new roads into self-actualization, and made the act of committing to it their driving engines. They made their characters face the grey areas that once scared them so much, eventually having them dive in with clear eyes and a willingness to not just engage, but screw up their strength and make the active decision to grow. That might not be as poetic as walking into the sunset, but as the denizens of The Good Place and BoJack Horseman learned after going through literal and figurative hell, it’s a whole lot more rewarding."

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• BoJack Horsemen's series finale signals the end of the Netflix era: "It’s unclear if BoJack Horseman would have succeeded if it was ordered today. It’s a show that needed time to breathe, and that’s a luxury most shows don’t get on Netflix anymore," says Julia Alexander, noting that the animated series premiered to lukewarm reviews in 2014. "BoJack Horseman feels like the end of an era for Netflix, one that produced long-running series like Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards," says Alexander. "All three shows were ordered by Netflix between 2013 and 2014, an ambitious time for the company. This was a period when Netflix didn’t have a new series or movie every week. Netflix slowly started rolling out original series to its subscribers, designed to exist alongside and stand out from the plethora of licensed series already on the service. To get shows like House of Cards, which was in the middle of a bidding war between other networks, Netflix had to do the impossible: pay for two seasons upfront. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos told The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 that Netflix didn’t want to echo a network like Starz by taking a sheepish approach to 'seeing what sticks.'"
• BoJack's brilliant series finale subverts the typical Hollywood ending: "Existentialism, the belief that free will and the lack of an absolute morality dictated from on high endow each person with the ultimate responsibility for how we spend our time on Earth, has always been the core philosophy of BoJack Horseman," says Judy Berman. "In (Raphael) Bob-Waksberg’s anti-sitcom world, life is only what you make it—and, as the show’s second-to-last episode reiterates, no divine reward or punishment will come along to pronounce that life a success or a failure, or to otherwise force meaning out of it. BoJack is Camus’ Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back to the bottom again. And the rock he’s pushing, which threatens to crush him, keeps getting heavier because it bears the weight of all the destruction he’s wrought. Still, when the alternative is the nothingness of death, it’s not such a sad image."
• BoJack series finale was perfectly messy: "Ever since I finished watching the finale, I’ve been trying to figure out if the ending came too soon and if there was another season of story left in this show," says Liz Shannon Miller. "There are, after all, characters who feel shortchanged to some degree by the final episodes, which aren’t just focused on BoJack, with other characters largely only seen through his specific prism. BoJack gets some degree of emotional closure with Todd, Princess Caroline, and Diane. But there are plenty of others, most especially Hollyhock, who feel a little lost. But there’s perfection in those imperfections, a bravery in leaving behind some mess. And that’s really the thing: when a show like this ends, the question often becomes what did it leave behind?"
• BoJack's final season was quite obviously truncated from a slightly longer story: "Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg thought he might get two full seasons to finish the series, and it’s evident that a potential 24 to 26 episodes were crammed into 16," says Emily Todd VanDerWerff. "The final stretch is much more self-serious than is typical for BoJack Horseman because there’s less room for levity. But those episodes did something rather daring that I’ve never seen another show pull off quite as well, splintering the show’s core friend group and scattering it to the winds."
• BoJack Horseman was always about the messy contradictions of being alive: "BoJack Horseman has ascended into television lore because of its canny, nuanced analyses of both individual foibles and larger societal issues: systemic sexual abuse, Hollywood exploitation, and pop culture’s simultaneous ability to normalize and expose bad behavior," says Sam Corey. "BoJack’s enduring legacy lies in the delicate balance between forgiveness and accountability, and with each passing season, the show took a gorgeous existential leap into the personal struggles that lie behind the dazzling facade of showbiz pathology. Humanity is messy, and it’s rarely dealt with in moral absolutes. The painful crux of the show’s resonance lies in each of the main characters’ attempts to overhaul their lives, scrambling to stay ahead of the anxieties that stalk them, only to shrug through the circular humdrum of modernity."
• Sadness isn't pathologized on BoJack -- it's presented as part of the human condition: "For some audience members, BoJack Horseman's willingness to probe despair and disappointment has been emotionally exhausting," says Arielle Bernstein. "Many viewers discuss the need to pace out the "sad horse show" because they know that watching the series is going to make them cry. Still, the show's central premise that change is hard offers something uniquely fulfilling, one that our TV obsession with the rapid-fire makeover that we see on shows like Queer Eye and Tidying Up simply can't — a commitment to seeing something beautiful and inspiring in the journey itself, rather than the final outcome. In BoJack, sadness itself isn't pathologized; it's presented as simply part of the human condition. The characters who have grown the most over six seasons are the ones who learn to acknowledge their pain, rather than hide from it."
• In the end, the series makes no real judgment about what kind of ending BoJack or any of these fallen figures “deserve": "On another show, declining to answer these questions might feel like a whiff—an abdication of the writers’ responsibility to make meaning out of all the debauchery and devastation they’ve depicted," says Laura Bradley. "But that’s not the case here—because BoJack Horseman was never about those things. It has always been, and remained to the end, an unflinching examination of its central character’s psyche, as well as the ways his surroundings can reflect and even encourage the nihilism he displays. Although the show clearly does not want us to root for its central character, it’s never been interested in absolutely condemning him, either. Instead, the series, especially in these final episodes, considers the ways in which each character—especially BoJack—chooses to take responsibility. In doing so, it seems, they find contentment. Whether or not BoJack deserves that is, somehow, beside the point."
• BoJack's final season serves as an epilogue to TV's "Difficult Men" era: "Because BoJack Horseman is a Hollywood satire that underscores the hypocrisy of the entertainment industry, the concluding eight episodes also serve as a commentary on how our culture grants absolution and the way it lionizes men for simply owning up to, if not fully correcting, their mistakes," says Jen Chaney. "It’s a comedy that aggressively wrestles with what it means to be a man and to be a TV show attempting to address toxic masculinity. As they’ve done throughout the series, especially in later seasons, BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and his team make a point of emphasizing that the world stretches beyond the concerns of one flawed equine male. Unlike the holy trinity of Difficult Men prestige dramas — The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men, which zero in on their protagonists in their final frames — BoJack Horseman ends with a two-shot, a reminder that this series was never just about a single (horse)man. If Mad Men felt like the end of a specific chapter in anti-heroic TV, BoJack Horseman, which debuted less than a year before Mad Men’s finale, serves as the epilogue that officially closes the book."
• BoJack Horseman ends as it ran: extremely well and with respect towards the unavoidable reality of cause and effect: "What happens to its characters is not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention, but the beauty in how the story is told and the knowledge that their choices and actions mattered is more than enough to cement its final episodes as a worthy finale to a truly excellent show. It's not too much, man. It's precisely enough," says Alexis Nedd. "What more could anyone ask for?"
• This may be the least funny season of BoJack, but it's also the most bingeable: "With the exception of one harrowing showstopper episode, the second half of BoJack Horseman's final season goes all-in on straight drama, solidifying itself as a show about the disease of addiction and its effects on the addict and the people around them," says Brian Patchet, adding: "Suspense, drama, and the sense of inevitable doom make it tough to see but impossible not to watch."
• Episode 15 feels like BoJack Horseman: The Drama while the start of Episode 16 feels like BoJack Horseman: The Sitcom
• In reaching out so personally and daring to tell such raw, human stories, BoJack Horseman has generously provided years of much-needed catharsis for viewers around the globe
• The home stretch of BoJack Horseman proves a fitting sendoff, not least because it touches on so many of the show’s now-established trademarks
• Check out a field guide to BoJack Horseman's Hollywood
• Read an oral history of BoJack Horseman: "The character of BoJack was not written with Will in mind," says Raphael Bob-Waksberg