As the story turns back to BoJack, the series also takes the opportunity to delve into an under-explored character, Beatrice Horseman. BoJack's mother's cruelty has long been pointed to as a reason that BoJack's so messed up, but before now, we didn't really get a good sense of why she's such a bitch. "The Old Sugarman Place" clears it up, and true to BoJack Horseman, the truth is unfathomably sad.
BoJack, not really knowing what to do after alienating everyone in his life, drives to his mom's parents' summer home in Michigan (which I hear has had its tourism hurt by the advent of air travel). The place is a dump, and we get some great comedy out of BoJack trying to fix the place up while doing a very poor job of assuming a fake identity. For the record, if I had to fix up an old place like that, I probably would have been just as ineffective as BoJack, with the exception of when I got to the hardware store, I wouldn't have had a damn clue what to buy. BoJack lived my nightmare in this episode.
The structure of the episode is very clever. It interweaves BoJack's story at the house in present-day and Beatrice's childhood with her family. Her older brother CrackerJack, (voiced by Lin Manuel-Miranda!) is headed off to war, which doesn't end well, as he's killed in battle. The family, particularly Beatrice's mother Honey, is never the same again. Honey falls into a manic depression trying to fill the new hole that's been punched in her life, but nothing works, and her husband Joseph is basically an embodiment of stereotypical male attitudes towards women in the World War II era. He actually utters, "As a modern American man I am woefully unprepared to manage a woman's emotions. I was never taught, and I will not learn."
That sort of ridiculous admission takes a turn for the dark when, later in the episode, Honey pleads with Joseph to make her better, saying that she doesn't know how to fix herself. Joseph, in turn, does one of the most unspeakably awful things I've ever seen in real life, live action TV, or cartoon TV. It's a crushing moment when Beatrice encounters the "new" Honey. Her personality is muted and there's stitches across her forehead. The bastard made her get a lobotomy because he couldn't deal with her struggles. As if that wasn't hard enough to watch, the last line Beatrice says -- echoing an earlier quote in the episode -- is, "Why, I have half a mind...". It ranks as one of the most brutal moments that BoJack has ever done.
In the present, BoJack actually gets his house repaired thanks to the generous help of the Sugarmans' neighbor, Ed, who is a dragonfly. It's clear Ed's wife passed away some time ago and that he's still in pain from that, and BoJack and Ed actually form a sort of bond as they work to fix the house. There's a great scene in which they overlay the past and present and Honey and Ed perform the same sad song for a crowd. The experience sort of unhinges Ed and when BoJack stupidly falls off a roof in a weird attempt to get Ed to fly again, it works, but culminates in Ed exclaiming that he doesn't want to live anymore after BoJack saves him from drowning in a lake.
BoJack eventually talks to Diane and I like to think that how much he misses her, rather than her pep-talk, is what drives BoJack to head on home. I'm thoroughly convinced that we haven't seen the last of a BoJack / Diane romance, and this episode went a long way toward fueling that fire. The next thing we know, BoJack has the Sugarmans' house destroyed and a bewildered Ed is just left there trying to figure out what the heck this was all for. BoJack simply says that it was all a big waste of time, and quotes Sarah Lynn with a solid "suck a dick, dumb shit" before vacating the premises. Ed was simply another victim of BoJack's self-serving behavior. He destroys everything he touches and while the show doesn't provide any further updates on Ed in this episode, there's potential for darkness here.
"The Old Sugarman Place", while packed full of gut-wrenching moments, is what BoJack Horseman is at it's core and how it works at its best. The creative storytelling, the stellar voice acting, and the way that Raphael Bob-Waksberg & Co. give such depth and vivid angst to their animated characters never ceases to amaze me. We didn't have to wait long for the first fantastic BoJack episode of Season Four, and after a shaky premiere, it's a relief to see that this show hasn't lost itself.
Bullet Points:
- Maybe we should all be just a little bit more concerned about Joseph's secretary's self-esteem, huh?
- "Oh, of course, the twelve hundred pound horse will shimmy up a drain pipe to get it, that makes more sense than the dragonfly, who has the word "fly" in the name of what he is."
- The easiest way to get BoJack's goat remains talking about how fat he is.
Episode Grade: A
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