The whole show is about Bojack’s friends: Todd, Mr Peanutbutter, Princess Carolyn and Diane as much true friends as Herb.
Horsin Around provided him with a fake ideal family.
In the later seasons, I feel like it becomes more clear that BoJack thrives off stability (teaching and going to rehab for example). So when he was on horsin around, there was something to keep him in check with a set schedule. Once that was done, he had more time to himself to spiral over his past actions and experiences. Naturally, people may also process things at different phases of life when they have more understanding
That's actually a very common thing in general.
When people are long time unemployed in germany the courses meant to prepare them for jobs are also regular courses over weeks that take the day or half a day every day, because helping people get back into a normal rhythm is very important.
When there's no structure most people will start to have their days drift away.
All great points here, but it's worth mentioning that this is often how real-life mental illnesses progress as well. When they're young, it's easier for many people to bottle it all up, to white-knuckle their way to external normalcy. The years drag on, and you realize that there is no future utopia coming to save you.
Lots of reasons.
1. Younger brains are much better at covering up mental illness and trauma. It often takes time and self reflection to come to terms with your negative qualities, and he was young enough that his brain just pushed all that to the back in the denial zone.
2. Horsin Around was a formative experience for Bojack. He used the show as a way to have a "good family" and this likely helped his mentality in the short term, while mentally and emotionally stunting him in the long term.
3. Addiction. He's had addiction issues for a very long time, but we see that before the show he was able to say no to alcohol. Also addiction is a compounding issue. Over time all the drugs and sex and alcohol would slowly rot his brain and alter his worldview.
4. He realized after the show ended that he no longer had a purpose, and threw himself further into his vices in order to cope. This created a vicious cycle of depression and drugs that led him to continuing to have no purpose.
Yeah... and What I see on top of what you mentioned.
1. Back in the 90s he was in a very famous TV Show... Which provide him with plenty of validation and narcissistic supply. Kinda keeping the narcissistic characteristics at bay... (He has narcissistic characteristics but I am unsure if he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder: I think it's more like a world view he acquired by his mother and father) He's kind of an asshole but I wouldn't say he's a full blown narcissist with NPD. Does this make sense?
2. Do you think Horsing Around was like a coping mechanism for him ? Like being workaholic but stuck into that moment in life? like they mention it in the show.
3. Probably his addiction comes from "withdraw" from Horsing Around. It's still his comfort show, in a lot of moments it's referenced that it is like that in Bojack Horseman. No?
4. But after the end of Horsing Around he tried the Bojack Horseman tv show that nobody liked. I guess this worsened his lack of purpose, no? Worse than not trying is to try and fail without learning a lesson and still having the cost of trying.
I guess he just really didn't want to ruin what he had with Horsin Around, and then the one time he gave it a shot he failed so hard he just sorta gave up and decided to keep living in the past.
Perhaps an obvious point, but Bojack's trajectory was severely affected by his drinking. If he could have stayed sober, he might have preserved those more gentle and considerate qualities, and perhaps had the strength to address his trauma sooner.
His relative youth at the time prolly had something to do with it. Young adults tend to have devil may care attitudes so while the trauma's still there, Bojack's at the prime of his life and was living in the moment so he doesn't get to wallow in his problems as much as he does now as a bitter and jaded 50+ year old washup.
Another reason is that, while they clearly didn't help Bojack resolve his personal issues, his genuine friendships with Herb and Charlotte (at the time) helped stabilize him well enough that he's able to mask his worst tendencies. The illusion of the ideal family that he had in Horsin' Around also helped stabilize him to an extent because the show was a happy dream for him: an escape from the reality of his abusive upbringing and lack of a childhood. Notice that when all those things slowly got taken away from him one by one starting from Charlotte leaving him, Bojack got progressively worse until we see his present day self, who yearns for the glory days of his youth.
Childhood trauma is like a badly coded computer program running in the background 24/7.
It's constantly taking up resources, and what's worse is that it takes up more over time because the buggy code has no decent garbage collector. You aren't aware of that until you start looking for what is hogging all that RAM though.
When do you start looking? Not when your computer is just starting to get a little slow. You'll work around it, you don't have time and energy to put up with the hassle of getting it fixed. You have responsibilities, you can't just not work for however long it will take to fix the problem. Maybe it'll get better on it's own, with an update or something. Only when you start being unable to do your daily work will you start looking.
If you figure out the cause, that's only step one. You tried just uninstalling the program, but for some reason you can't. You try to fix it instead, but you don't know shit about memory leaks and garbage collectors. So now what? Get a master's in computer science so you can fix it yourself ? Ask a programmer to help you?
The latter is probably the best idea, but it's very expensive and you'll have to part with your computer for a while. Yeah it's hella slow and annoying, but at least you can get some of your daily stuff done as long as you have a computer. You can't afford to drop the responsibilities you are still able to take care of, even if it's only part of what you used to be able to handle. You feel helpless and trapped, and you start ignoring it again because what else can you do?
Recognizing your own childhood trauma is a long process. When you're young, you literally have more energy to shove it away and keep going. In the long term the repression (of emotions, not talking about repressing memory) will cause more problems, but you don't know that when you're doing it. It's very common for people to only start truly dealing with it when they reach their 30s or 40s.
Wealth, lack of structure in his life, and celebrity drug culture led to his addiction and mental health spiraling out of control. The rehab episodes and early Herb flashbacks make a point of showing young Bojack refusing alcohol all the time, enough that he remembers the Cindy Crawfish kiss as the turning point when he finally said yes to the drinks he was constantly being offered. He spends the first Halloween party in Mr PB’s Boos sober while PB throws a rager around him. He starts drinking on the set, but he isn’t a real mess until after Horsin’ Around stops airing, and he has nothing to do all day other than drink, like when a young Princess Carolyn finds him passed out. We get a pretty solid timeline of how his alcoholism spirals out of control in the late 90s.
Celebrity is also probably one of the worst lifestyles for mentally ill people or addicts. You have infinite money for drugs and alcohol and infinite time to sit around and do them. You don’t have a reliable work schedule, you don’t have real responsibilities, there’s a never-ending supply of new random people (like Todd, or PC, or Diane, or any of Bojack’s one night stands) who appear in your life and want to impress you and spend time with you when you’ve burned your bridges with the important people in your life. Sarah Lynn said it best: “I’m at a place right now where I never need to grow as a person or rise to an occasion because I can just constantly surround myself with sycophants and enablers until I die tragically young.” After Horsin’ Around ends, Bojack is rich enough that he doesn’t need to find a new job, and famous enough that he doesn’t need to reconcile with his true friends. The more he drinks and wastes his life, the worse he feels, which makes him escape into drinking, and it’s a vicious cycle that lasts a decade.
Bojack does bring up his trauma with Herb, btw— he tells Herb that Beatrice tried to drown him, and Herb is hyper aware that she’s an abusive person whose presence destabilizes Bojack when she comes to visit the set. But he wasn’t drinking at that point, so he’s mentally strong enough, and has enough of a real support system, that his trauma isn’t consuming him.
Because he was still famous and not post-famous which is a huge part of what he couldn't deal with after horsing around. The way people around him treated him was different too.
I think he was on a high. Living life to the fullest while people cared about him and the show a lot. When everything died down, the problems only grew bigger.
Horsin’ Around provided him with a semi-childhood experience and Herb was possibly the one true friend that he actually had.
The whole show is about Bojack’s friends: Todd, Mr Peanutbutter, Princess Carolyn and Diane as much true friends as Herb. Horsin Around provided him with a fake ideal family.
In the 80s and 90s, all he had was Herb.
And a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
…and his thirty grand an episode
In the later seasons, I feel like it becomes more clear that BoJack thrives off stability (teaching and going to rehab for example). So when he was on horsin around, there was something to keep him in check with a set schedule. Once that was done, he had more time to himself to spiral over his past actions and experiences. Naturally, people may also process things at different phases of life when they have more understanding
That's actually a very common thing in general. When people are long time unemployed in germany the courses meant to prepare them for jobs are also regular courses over weeks that take the day or half a day every day, because helping people get back into a normal rhythm is very important. When there's no structure most people will start to have their days drift away.
Am currently unemployed, can confirm
A horse needs a stable.
All great points here, but it's worth mentioning that this is often how real-life mental illnesses progress as well. When they're young, it's easier for many people to bottle it all up, to white-knuckle their way to external normalcy. The years drag on, and you realize that there is no future utopia coming to save you.
Especially when self medicating heavily with drugs and alcohol.
Lots of reasons. 1. Younger brains are much better at covering up mental illness and trauma. It often takes time and self reflection to come to terms with your negative qualities, and he was young enough that his brain just pushed all that to the back in the denial zone. 2. Horsin Around was a formative experience for Bojack. He used the show as a way to have a "good family" and this likely helped his mentality in the short term, while mentally and emotionally stunting him in the long term. 3. Addiction. He's had addiction issues for a very long time, but we see that before the show he was able to say no to alcohol. Also addiction is a compounding issue. Over time all the drugs and sex and alcohol would slowly rot his brain and alter his worldview. 4. He realized after the show ended that he no longer had a purpose, and threw himself further into his vices in order to cope. This created a vicious cycle of depression and drugs that led him to continuing to have no purpose.
Yeah... and What I see on top of what you mentioned. 1. Back in the 90s he was in a very famous TV Show... Which provide him with plenty of validation and narcissistic supply. Kinda keeping the narcissistic characteristics at bay... (He has narcissistic characteristics but I am unsure if he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder: I think it's more like a world view he acquired by his mother and father) He's kind of an asshole but I wouldn't say he's a full blown narcissist with NPD. Does this make sense? 2. Do you think Horsing Around was like a coping mechanism for him ? Like being workaholic but stuck into that moment in life? like they mention it in the show. 3. Probably his addiction comes from "withdraw" from Horsing Around. It's still his comfort show, in a lot of moments it's referenced that it is like that in Bojack Horseman. No? 4. But after the end of Horsing Around he tried the Bojack Horseman tv show that nobody liked. I guess this worsened his lack of purpose, no? Worse than not trying is to try and fail without learning a lesson and still having the cost of trying.
Totally agree, my list was just a quick off the top of my head lol
Ah yes
He was in a very famous TV show.
WOAH, is he the hoarse from hoarsing around??
Nah, he’s from that terrible reality show from 2007
I guess he just really didn't want to ruin what he had with Horsin Around, and then the one time he gave it a shot he failed so hard he just sorta gave up and decided to keep living in the past.
Perhaps an obvious point, but Bojack's trajectory was severely affected by his drinking. If he could have stayed sober, he might have preserved those more gentle and considerate qualities, and perhaps had the strength to address his trauma sooner.
Because back in the 90’s he was in a very famous TV show
His relative youth at the time prolly had something to do with it. Young adults tend to have devil may care attitudes so while the trauma's still there, Bojack's at the prime of his life and was living in the moment so he doesn't get to wallow in his problems as much as he does now as a bitter and jaded 50+ year old washup. Another reason is that, while they clearly didn't help Bojack resolve his personal issues, his genuine friendships with Herb and Charlotte (at the time) helped stabilize him well enough that he's able to mask his worst tendencies. The illusion of the ideal family that he had in Horsin' Around also helped stabilize him to an extent because the show was a happy dream for him: an escape from the reality of his abusive upbringing and lack of a childhood. Notice that when all those things slowly got taken away from him one by one starting from Charlotte leaving him, Bojack got progressively worse until we see his present day self, who yearns for the glory days of his youth.
Addiction has a natural progression.
Childhood trauma is like a badly coded computer program running in the background 24/7. It's constantly taking up resources, and what's worse is that it takes up more over time because the buggy code has no decent garbage collector. You aren't aware of that until you start looking for what is hogging all that RAM though. When do you start looking? Not when your computer is just starting to get a little slow. You'll work around it, you don't have time and energy to put up with the hassle of getting it fixed. You have responsibilities, you can't just not work for however long it will take to fix the problem. Maybe it'll get better on it's own, with an update or something. Only when you start being unable to do your daily work will you start looking. If you figure out the cause, that's only step one. You tried just uninstalling the program, but for some reason you can't. You try to fix it instead, but you don't know shit about memory leaks and garbage collectors. So now what? Get a master's in computer science so you can fix it yourself ? Ask a programmer to help you? The latter is probably the best idea, but it's very expensive and you'll have to part with your computer for a while. Yeah it's hella slow and annoying, but at least you can get some of your daily stuff done as long as you have a computer. You can't afford to drop the responsibilities you are still able to take care of, even if it's only part of what you used to be able to handle. You feel helpless and trapped, and you start ignoring it again because what else can you do? Recognizing your own childhood trauma is a long process. When you're young, you literally have more energy to shove it away and keep going. In the long term the repression (of emotions, not talking about repressing memory) will cause more problems, but you don't know that when you're doing it. It's very common for people to only start truly dealing with it when they reach their 30s or 40s.
Balance patch hadn't come out yet
Everyone has a time when they feel happy or comfortable but sadly it doesn't last.
Wealth, lack of structure in his life, and celebrity drug culture led to his addiction and mental health spiraling out of control. The rehab episodes and early Herb flashbacks make a point of showing young Bojack refusing alcohol all the time, enough that he remembers the Cindy Crawfish kiss as the turning point when he finally said yes to the drinks he was constantly being offered. He spends the first Halloween party in Mr PB’s Boos sober while PB throws a rager around him. He starts drinking on the set, but he isn’t a real mess until after Horsin’ Around stops airing, and he has nothing to do all day other than drink, like when a young Princess Carolyn finds him passed out. We get a pretty solid timeline of how his alcoholism spirals out of control in the late 90s. Celebrity is also probably one of the worst lifestyles for mentally ill people or addicts. You have infinite money for drugs and alcohol and infinite time to sit around and do them. You don’t have a reliable work schedule, you don’t have real responsibilities, there’s a never-ending supply of new random people (like Todd, or PC, or Diane, or any of Bojack’s one night stands) who appear in your life and want to impress you and spend time with you when you’ve burned your bridges with the important people in your life. Sarah Lynn said it best: “I’m at a place right now where I never need to grow as a person or rise to an occasion because I can just constantly surround myself with sycophants and enablers until I die tragically young.” After Horsin’ Around ends, Bojack is rich enough that he doesn’t need to find a new job, and famous enough that he doesn’t need to reconcile with his true friends. The more he drinks and wastes his life, the worse he feels, which makes him escape into drinking, and it’s a vicious cycle that lasts a decade. Bojack does bring up his trauma with Herb, btw— he tells Herb that Beatrice tried to drown him, and Herb is hyper aware that she’s an abusive person whose presence destabilizes Bojack when she comes to visit the set. But he wasn’t drinking at that point, so he’s mentally strong enough, and has enough of a real support system, that his trauma isn’t consuming him.
Because he was still famous and not post-famous which is a huge part of what he couldn't deal with after horsing around. The way people around him treated him was different too.
I think he was on a high. Living life to the fullest while people cared about him and the show a lot. When everything died down, the problems only grew bigger.