BOJACKS6E9:

Initially, I thought that I would have to hate Hollyhock. The sentimentality of sibling relationships alone never swayed me in television; I defend Charles McGill to this day. This is a more blatant matter. When Hollyhock meets Peter Repeat, whom we might presume to have conferred unto her some sort of sensitive information, there was a very clear course of action for her: she might have either dismissed the gossip, on bloody PR!NC!PLE, or she might have done her research. Even Sarah Lynn, an absentminded drug addict, could find Penny Carson online, and it takes even less time to find an age of consent for a state in the United States. It would not have been poor form to investigate the incident that Peter inexplicably recounted; professional journalists were already showing interest in doing so. At any rate, even were the means for her investigation barred, she might have successfully reconstructed the event mentally based simply upon an intuitive grasp, and that would have been EAS!ER to do than it would have been for anyone to predict the “outcomes of” BoJack’s encounter with Penny Carson in Season Two. If that were not enough, Hollyhock might simply have TALKED to BoJack, who had given her absolutely no reason to hate her. His presence at Wesleyan is not “selfish”; to be more precise, the quality of its being or not being “selfish” is by no means determined by some infantile need to ask her for permission to teach a CLASS once requested to do so. At any rate, a professor who is thought of highly by Hollyhock’s BEST FR!END must certainly be deemed sufficiently trustworthy that Hock would feel safe confronting him. I would have expected nothing less than this: “I know that this might seem absurd, but through what appears to be an incredible coincidence I have made the acquaintance of a young man who claims to have been formerly associated with you. Knowing that you are a celebrity, I will not presume upon the validity of his account, for you surely encounter many, but I must ask you to either corroborate or to deny it if I am to sleep well at night, since some elements of his account called your character overtly into question.” You see, that is what one would EXPECT of a young woman at a University. It is also synonymous with decency, and one hopes for nothing less upon GROW!NG UP.

The fact remains that BoJack had every right to sleep with Penny Carson, and it’s only tragic that they were interrupted by Charlotte. Penny’s mother demonstrates a considerably inhibited capacity for moral reasoning in her old age, especially by contrast with Penny, who knows her own legal rights, as well as those of BoJack. BoJack had neither right nor motivation to dismiss her autonomy with ageist prejudice, and any university student should feel some sting of injustice that he would even consider doing so under the force of illusory pressure. Yet if BoJack’s initial refusal of the call to adventure was an act of Sartrean bad faith (a philosophy mentioned on several occasions throughout the series, including references to Sartre overtly by name) then he was heroic by contrast with Charlotte, whose “happiness” is threatened by the mere PRESENCE of BoJack. When Charlotte concludes that BoJack “makes [her] sad”, she attempts to escape responsibility for her own emotions. The life that she has “built for herself”, narcissistically, is a bourgeois fantasy and a sham, easily disturbed by the mere presence of an old friend with stronger feelings than her own husband or children ever showcase. If BoJack’s feelings of authenticity “make her sad”, it is because she is sad already. While some critics insist that she has found a more authentic happiness by foregoing short-term gratification for long-term gain, and while the ham-fisted B-stories of this most recent episode seem to reinforce this platitude like a children’s rhyme, the fact is that positive behaviour does NOT produce positive outcomes in the BoJack Horseman Universe, and neither can we presume that Charlotte is Good because she is “happy”, nor that BoJack “did something wrong” because he is met with misery. Charlotte has only her past and her hopes for the future. BoJack acts truthfully within the Moment, just as Cuddly Whiskers prescribes, though the philosophy may have been bastardized by Copernicus. Charlotte has Some Nerve calling in a favour from BoJack at the end of the episode. How was HE supposed to know about those journalists?

Making rational sense of an absurdist comedy is by its nature futile, but if the comedy is sufficiently informed then its relevance is not lost in personal life. Expecting some sort of a melodrama, I sat down to watch, upon its release at midnight, with some reflections of my own. I have had to conclude that most young women, by contrast with older ones, have treated me with contempt in direct proportion to the affection that I showed them, and such a double-standard is unacceptable. Thankfully, I have made the acquaintance of a few whom I can tolerate and understand, in whom I can place my faith as both an academic and a man, thanks to the miraculous Internet. Yet perhaps it was this same device that produced so many self-entitled fakes. About half of these women who found the authority to spurn my affection were themselves involved in romance. Having been single for nine years, a decade come my twenty-ninth birthday, I must find their hypocrisy laughable, if only to prevent its becoming tragic. I did nothing to wrong these women. THE!R feelings are not MY consequences. If I COULD possess myself of the capacity to control the emotions of others, I would not know how to use it, for even with a goal in mind the apparent mechanics of emotional reaction are absurd. Even were it proven to me that I had such a power, and hence such a responsibility, I would disown both to preserve individual autonomy*.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

*My foregone conclusion that this power is illusory, a conclusion corroborated by the few women in my life who are serene enough to imagine an amoral world, despite strong moral convictions of their own, is an expression of respect for this autonomy, and hence it is morally imperative to conclude.