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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

I adore that show so much. I have this sticker on my laptop.

If you haven't seen Bojack Horseman, it's funny and heartfelt. Palpably existential. If that kind of thing speaks to you, you owe yourself a watch.

In terms of a complete animation package, I think it easy outdoes Futurama. There's so much relatable depth to it. It hits hard, but it stays lighthearted enough to make you feel good about it.

As it turns out, I'm now working on filmtech, so that "Hollywoo" sticker fits me even better now.

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Just a warning to anyone who read this comment, the show (in later seasons) gets incredibly dark, existential, and depressing, to the point where I couldn't watch it anymore as it made me both anxious and depressed.

Anyone prone to anxiety or depression or sad thoughts in general should probably avoid, it's really that depressing, and I can imagine it making suicidal people even more suicidal.

I would echo this, and reiterate not to underestimate that the impact of watching this if you’re anxious or depressed. I was in a pretty rough place for the better part of a year after watching a few particularly dark episodes.

> It hits hard, but it stays lighthearted enough to make you feel good about it.

That wasn't my experience of it. It's a brilliant show, to be sure, but at some point I felt the bleakness, particularly around Bojack's inability to help himself, became too much for me. Maybe different parts of the show resonate in different people.

I agree it wasn’t light at all in the later parts. Very bleak. If it was ever supposed to be a comedy it didn’t end as one but I can’t think of other animated series you could class as a drama.

I think it is one of only about three animated shows that are genuinely outstanding as TV and not just animation or comedy. The other two being Simpsons and Futurama.

I couldn't finish watching the show, it was just too depressing and dark for me to the extent that it made me personally more anxious and depressed.

> I can’t think of other animated series you could class as a drama.

Honestly, there are tons. They’re just all Japanese.

> but it stays lighthearted enough to make you feel good about it.

There were plenty of parts that were dark enough to make it difficult to watch. There were lighthearted parts, but that's not a description I would've applied to the show as a whole.

I want to like Bojack and I know it has drama and heartfelt moments (watched all of season 1 I think), but in my opinion it's undone by its moments of "wacky" humor. I don't even mean that there are humanoid animals and humans living together, no explanation -- I can embrace that. I mean the Simpsons/Family Guy kind of humor... I could do without it and I think it would make the show better.

Or maybe it does get better after season 1? Since everyone seems to love it.

Season 1 is definitely the weakest season, especially at the start. There's definitely still wacky humour in the rest of the show, but it loses the family guy cutaway gags.

I'd personally recommend giving season 2 a shot, if you still don't like it then the shows probably not for you.

Season 1 is definitely weakest; very common in great TV series. Just start from season 2 right now and I'm pretty sure you'll love it. It will always have "wacky" moments with a character like Todd in it though.

It’s very Los Angeles nihilist in tone. If that doesn’t make you happy, maybe skip it.

I remember reading they had to make season 1 "wacky" to sell the show. What the show becomes later would have been ... hard to describe to studio executives.

I’m at the other end, I think the show suffered due to its insistence on querulous characters as a means to pathos, but was kept afloat by its wit and humor (much of it indeed “wacky”). That is of course very much a personal preference thing, but I couldn’t connect with much of the darker side of the show, even while I admired much of its execution.

As others have said though, it definitely gets better as the seasons roll on, along both the humor and drama fronts. The final season has many of the funniest and most poignant moments of the show.

A tear shed for Simpsons being called wacky humor.

I think bojack hit its stride over time, but I always liked the juxtaposition of dark reality with cartoon silliness. On some level I think it reflects a theme of everyone else’s life seeking to be so simple and stupid and trivial compared to your own. Of course even Todd’s problems are shown to be pretty real even if they’re also cartoonishly comical.

> A tear shed for Simpsons being called wacky humor

You know what I meant, hopefully? I predate the Simpsons, and I remember when they and their brand of humor first appeared. I also remember how annoyed I felt towards Family Guy (a cartoon I never liked, unlike the Simpsons) because it felt like a cheap copy. And yes, over the years the Simpsons turned wackier and wackier while retaining nothing of what made them good at first.

I don't claim Bojack and the Simpsons have the same kind of humor, it was a shortcut to hopefully explain what I found jarring about the former?

Given the rest of the comments, I'll try giving Bojack season 2 a chance.

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