BoJack Horseman saved its kindest “f*ck” of all for its final episodes

The A.V. Club

"There’s a rule—never explicitly codified by the show’s writers, but well-understood among its fans—that BoJack Horseman only ever employs a single use of the word 'f*ck' per season," says William Hughes. "It’s a matter of restraint, not Standards And Practices. (Considering that the show lived and died on the digital Wild West of Netflix, its TV-MA rating was always largely perfunctory, in any case.) And yet the rule stood, across six and a half seasons of funny animals and bitter depression: When someone in Hollywoo says 'f*ck' to someone else, they, and the writers, want that sentiment to land....In light of all this, the absence of the word from the show’s final run of episodes, released on Netflix last Friday, feels significant. You could argue that Season Six already spent its allotment of 'f*cks' to give last year, when 'A Quick One While He’s Away' put one in the mouth of one of Gina’s co-stars, elegantly illustrating the ways her BoJack-inflicted trauma has damned her to the Hollywood purgatory that the phrase 'difficult actress' so painfully contains. But for a final half-season heavy with so many opportunities for a cutting of the ties—one in which the world, his loved ones, and BoJack himself all rise up in rejection of his existence—the fact that the word itself never appears is telling."

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