BoJack Horseman: Breaking The Rules Of Structure

This week we are going to be talking about BoJack Horseman, but we aren't just going to be talking about the series, we are going to be talking about one very particular episode, and doing a really deep breakdown: Season 4, Episode 9 which is entitled Ruthie. A lot of the times when we talk about television, we talk about TV bibles, we talk about the idea that every show needs to have an engine, a structure that is replicable, that can be done again, and again, and again. Selling a series is like selling a franchise, like selling a McDonalds or Starbucks-- you are selling not just the brilliance of your writing, or the brilliance of your idea, you are selling the replicability of it. You are selling the ability to do it again, and again, and again, even if the writing team changes, even if the showrunner changes, even if the directors or in this case the animators change, that you have the same engine again, and again, and again. And so, what is really exciting about this episode is that it shows what starts to happen, once you really understand your engine, once you really understand the formula for your series.You can start to play within it, and then you can also start to play against it. You can start to open up new avenues of what your series can be, especially, once you’ve established what it is for both your audience and for yourself as a writer. What is really interesting about this episode is, we don’t start in the present, we start in the future, we start with Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, who is telling a story about her ancestor, Princess Carolyn. Now, if you don’t watch BoJack Horseman, let me catch you up a little bit about how this series works. BoJack Horseman is both the most ridiculous and the saddest series that you will ever watch on television. It is an animated send up of Hollywood, in a world in which some of the people are people and some of the people are part animal. And, the animal-people are basically just people except they have certain animal traits… Pretty wild concept already for a series! And generally in the series, what happens is we watch BoJack Horseman, who is the ultimate narcissistic movie star, and we watch the funniest possible trainwreck we could ever watch as BoJack consistently makes his own universe harder, and harder, and harder. Princess Carolyn is BoJack’s former lover and former agent, and Princess Carolyn is a cat who is dating a mouse, and her mouse is pretty much the perfect man. And all Princess Carolyn has wanted for the whole season is just to get pregnant, and it is just not happening. Usually we would watch Princess Carolyn’s story as a B story in an episode. But in this episode, Princess Carolyn’s story becomes the A story. Now how do you get away with this, you aren't supposed to just be able to reverse the whole structure of your series; you’re not supposed to just change up what you’ve been doing especially in a series as successful as BoJack, why did they get away with this? Well, what is interesting is they don’t just get away with changing the focus; they also get away with changing the structure, because we are actually going to the future. And we are going to start off watching Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great granddaughter tell the story of Princess Carolyn’s awful, awful, awful day. So the A story is going to be Princess Carolyn’s journey, the B story is going to be BoJack’s story, and the C story is going to be this unusual thread that starts in the future, and then flashes back to our present. And what is really cool is this is something that the series has never done before. There have been times where we flashback to the past into BoJack’s story, or even into BoJack’s mother’s story, but, there has never been a point where we have flashed from the future back to the present. So, what is happening is the engine of the series, the rules of the series,