Author: Daniel Kurland / Source: Vulture
“But there’s nothing more realistic than that. You never get a happy ending because there’s always more show. I guess, until there isn’t.”
BoJack Horseman is a television show that’s fearless in not only the topics that it tells stories about, but the ways in which it tells them.
The series has almost made it an unofficial tradition to feature one “big” episode each season that’s especially ambitious in terms of its structure. These experiments have resulted in silent episodes, nonlinear entries that explore the messiness of addiction, or a devastating take on the pains of mental illness. In spite of all of those previous accomplishments, BoJack’s “Free Churro” from its fifth season feels particularly risky and unique.Death may not seem like a natural topic for comedies to tackle, but it’s an important area that deserves exploration. There have been plenty of memorable episodes of sitcoms that deal with death in big ways, such as The Wonder Years’ “Goodbye,” The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” or even something more creative like How I Met Your Mother’s “Last Words.” That said, BoJack Horseman zeroes in on the topic in an honest, uncomfortable way that’s arguably never been done before in a comedy — or a drama, for that matter.
Perhaps the closest that another comedy has gotten to what BoJack Horseman achieves with “Free Churro” is either NewsRadio’s heartbreaking “Bill Moves On” or Community’s“Cooperative Polygraphy.” These are both bottle episodes that allow their characters to stew with their grief over a lost life (and in the case of the former, the real-life death of a cast member). BoJack Horseman goes one step further with its focus: It not only concentrates on a character’s eulogy, but the episode is the character’s eulogy for the entire running time. It’s a 25-minute one-man show where a character delivers a powerful, moving monologue about death and loss that doesn’t allow itself a reprieve.
But “Free Churro” didn’t even initially come from the funeral angle. According to BoJack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who wrote the episode, the monologuing solo act came first. “We did discuss other ideas for why BoJack could be talking to himself for a half hour, but once we came up with the eulogy it felt right,” he said. “The idea of a one-person show felt like a good opportunity in the story of BoJack eulogizing his mother and to honor that fraught relationship and the different things that he’d feel afterwards.”
This installment of BoJack Horseman operates on a provoking, challenging literary scale, but then strives to push the envelope even further. During one stretch, BoJack comments upon the eulogy that his mother delivered when his father died: “My husband is dead and everything’s worse now.” The meaning of her words completely evades him as BoJack attempts interpretation. This moment and many others pose questions about grief, loss, and mourning, while not providing the relief of answers. An insurmountable amount of doubt is raised as the episode continues, and it eloquently comments on how nobody really has the answers when it comes to death.
“Free Churro” exhibits a unique stream-of-consciousness quality that gives the episode’s rawness an added edge. When it devotes a ten-minute conversation to the various meanings and interpretations behind a simple phrase like “I see you,” it feels like a precarious tightrope walk that could end in disaster at any moment. The episode allows no escape from BoJack’s free-falling grief, and opts for a morbidly dark monologue instead of a respectful…
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