#free churro

[pataliemortman]

the episode where Bojack’s mom dies is probably one of the best episodes of television

[dongslinger--420]

Ok but. The scene in s2e09 "The Shot" fucking breaks me and here's why. BoJack sees Kelsey as a merge between his parents and Herb, what with her being older than him and jaded but also she's a boss figure. And for this reason, BoJack spends a lot of time (shown most in "Chickens" but also a lot of the season tbh) trying to win her approval because she's not giving it to him willingly. He keeps going about it in the wrong way, as we see in Chickens when he is trying to turn her actual literal daughter being in danger into a fun day out, but I think the biggest issue with this is actually that he doesn't really have anything to prove. Kelsey purposefully sought him out for the job because she genuinely believed him to be the best actor there, and although she shows frustration at him not being able to do his job properly, she does still keep this image of him in mind. Which is why the thing that actually does lead him to win her approval is him delivering a genuinely good performance, and said approval just comes in a simple recognition of his skill. BoJack has been in desperate of simple appreciation from his parents (reflected in stuff like the "I see you" theme from Free Churro) and he has been missing the attention and extremely intimate love of his performance that Herb gave him while he was directing him, and Kelsey's "no, I knew" quote manages, in three words, to deliver both to him perfectly. And THAT'S what breaks him. Between the sheer emotional connection he feels towards this woman, and the lack of this connection that he received from the people he wanted it from the most, it just becomes too much for him, and THAT'S what leads him to start crying. It is one of the most layered, emotionally intimate moments of the entire show, and it breaks me every time I watch it.

[wish-i-was-milena]

you think you can hurt me? I memorize bojack horseman monologues for fun-

[docholligay]

The best thing about this episode is the way it plays out the unique pain of grieving someone you do not love. Or worse maybe even, someone you did love, once but they disappointed you so intensely that all you can feel is rage and despair.

Bojack actually doesn't have to be giving this eulogy at all. That's not a requirement. There's no rule that says you have to have any kind of funeral at all.

But he does. And he keeps going on, even after he says that he has nothing more to say about his mother. Because he does. He has so much more to say, and there is no other place in his life where he will ever just be allowed to talk about his mother and the way he felt about her, outside of the therapy that he is absolutely not going to go to.

Complicated grief is an interesting thing, and for my money it's harder than "normal" grief (if grief is ever really normal) and that's why this is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever, is I'm not sure I've ever seen it dealt with where the emotions are so much more than just sorrow. Sorrow isn't easy, but it is simple.

But, what Bojack goes into, is anger, and disappointment.

It starts with him continuing to joke, with telling his mom to knock once if she's proud of him, and him saying how nice it is to be in a room with his mother and just be able to talk without her telling him to shut up. It's this knife tip, just working its way out of Bojack's mouth, and the jokes keep coming, but they are less funny and more this weaponized humor.

Then even that breaks down, and he starts to realize what the problem was, what the problem has always been. Even while he's realizing that he is perpetuating this same set of problems, he's thinking about the grand gesture. And how Tv convinced him that someday, he would see the one thing that let him know his parents loved him.

But it's the consistency. I love the way here, he basically yells at the coffin.

To love someone who has consistently disappointed you, to be joined with them, and the rage that comes out of that, it's so real. And Bojack can't even look at his parents and say, 'You tried" because they didn't. They didn't try even one day in their lives. Not with him. But there are so many people in our lives we allow to disappoint us over and over again, and when they die, or leave your life completely, you have this realization, that, they were never ever what you needed. You convinced yourself that maybe someday they would be, but they were never going to be, maybe they even couldn't, and then YOU feel like the fucking idiot. For wanting it. For thinking that it could happen. And then we're all Bojack here, yelling at a dead body, and it's worse than pointless, and that is part of the complication of this grief, is, not only is it not going to get any better, but you can't even offload it back onto that person. You have to swallow your role and their role in it all, forever.

And then we come back to that "Knock once." asking her if she loved him and wanted him to know that he made her life a little brighter. He knows she won't knock, he knows she can't respond. It's still a joke but it's a joke he's playing on himself.

This anger, that she was never going to be the mother he needed, comes around at the end in some of the best stuff, and this is the kind of stuff that gets it so right that it causes me physical pain.

The worst part, of someone dying, that you have a difficult relationship with, is that it will never get better. Someone disappoints you, and they disappoint you more, but then someday, they die, and they can never ever get better. They can never turn it around and they can never make it right. "My mother is dead, and everything is worse now, because now I know I will never have a mother who looks at me from across a room and says, “BoJack Horseman, I see you." WHile someone is alive, they could always get better. At one point in my life, I was a selfish, mean-spirited person who spent my days doing whatever I wanted and my nights drunk, and doing whatever I wanted. I didn't do anything that would put me out. I got better, because I lived long enough to pull my head out of my ass.

But when someone doesn't do that. When you wait for them to have some epiphany, and hold out their hand, and do better, and then suddenly, they can't, and, everything is going to be stuck, the way it is. It is the death of possibility that makes this sort of complicated grief so painful. Someone who was wonderful dies, you miss what they were, but someone difficult dies, you miss who they could have been, and that's so impossible to describe to someone that I had never seen it well done, before this episode.

[peachybugsworld]

I saw this on twitter and oh my god 😭 genuinely because they don’t age them I’ve never thought of them aging

u/funshineyy on twitter

[randomt0ast]

[starlight-bread-blog]

i just wanted to say your pfp reminded me of diane nyugen from bojack horseman. speaking of which, do you have any opinions on bojack horseman you'd like to share?

That is Diane! :)) My header is also BoJack Horseman with Diane's amazing quote "Sometimes life is a bitch and then you keep living". I love her and this show SO MUCH, and I absolutly have opinions I wanna share.

If I had to pick an episode that encapsulates what this show is, my picks would be:

Let's Find Out

The Shot

That Went Well

The Underground

Episodes that balance comedy with drama so well I can't even begin to dissect it. Let's Find Out's framing device being a game show is so smart, AND THE ENDING- The Shot is so objectively silly but god, it's the only time (?) we see BoJack full on cry. In The Underground they burn and eat Zach Braff✨️ That Went Well just- words can't do it justice.

I also really like the ending. It's PERFECT. (Not literally). BoJack's journey was about radical freedom, about how all of his actions are his fault, about how after rock bottom, life will still continue.

This theme is the reason why the most important episodes aren't the finales. Having BoJack face all the consequences for his actions is the best way to conclude his journey. It's not conclusive, but that's what the show has been saying this whole time.

Also also, Diane's arc in season 6>>>> Like. That's so real. Stories just kinda creep up on you sometimes fully formed. Negative emotions fuel so much art, and her need to make sense of her trauma by using art to help others, and how it parallels Penny--- the show actually stated that tragety has no meaning in season 2. Herb's death was so stupid and served nothing. BoJack tried to give it meaning, but there was none.

Also also also-- the show called out all the freaks who use BoJack to excuse themselves.

You see these writers care about what they're putting out there. And on top of that, it's also an amazing scene. It's like It's You being followed up with That's Too Much Man. Head in the Coulds -> The Showstopper.

Btw – two of the best episodes if the show are one with all words and no words. Both end with a joke that has a meaning. BoJack could have apologized this whole time. And I love that theme that played at the end of Fish Out of Water. AND Free Churro was nominated for an Emmy! Deserved.

I could keep going, but other points I'd like to touch upon deserve a full meta. Thank you for this ask, I had an excuse to talk about BoJack Horseman! Asks about Bjhm are ALWAYS welcome.

[coqueliccot]

I have words behind my tongue, scratching the back of my throat, that I can neither swallow nor blurt out, from fear someone might choke. My heart is so kind, I can almost let you live. If it weren't for those nights, I felt my hands around your neck.

Fingerprints of a childish hand on every doorknob. We're intertwined like the hairs of a tight braid. We need to be washed out of our shape, that's what we need. To cure us both.

If compared to death, I'd say my loss had no grave. My loss doesn't feel like one to fate, it birthed a grotesque and ugly sadness, produces vomit and bone screeching anger. My loss was to grieve for in secret. It was undefinable and complex. It morphed, grew and matured with me like a faithful friend. It took all forms and shapes.

I'd say at first my loss was milder than death, but it never ended and for years I kept losing, and the pain only grew more piercing it was much worse than burying a man. It was living with the corpse it was talking to a ghost it was never reconciling with the thought, that I was fatherless. Because of those cursed weekly meetings where I had to kiss the cheeks of the man I despised with all I was and still am. It was to hate a man as a child, as a daughter and as a woman. It was to wish harm and ruin on my blood, then take it back. It was to sit in the backseat drying my tears, it was feeling the anguish in my throat, choking me when I tried to speak, it was the anxiety that shook my body when he spoke. It was my heart breaking again and again. It wasn't only sorrow, it was soul crushingly heavy, like my spine could yield at any moment. But it never did, and I still carry the burden, and it feels like my body is growing accustomed to the weight, building itself around it, letting it shape it, define it, leave its print all over it.

Is it cruel to envy closure of the tomb. Wishing I had buried my sorrow deep into the earth's soil. Father, if you read this would you disown me. What would it even mean. My heart couldn't wish your death, it's too late for that. Death would simply be the end of hope, brutal and abrupt, "my father died and everything is worse now". And out of spite, I hold back the words that could cut the branch from which you're hanging. If I am choking you will too, if I am sleepless you'll be too. So we're both hunted, and it's almost like "which one of us died and which one of us is grieving ?".

[amateuraspect]

Suddenly, you realize you’ll never have the good relationship you wanted, and as long as they were alive, even though you’d never admit it, part of you, the stupidest goddamn part of you, was still holding on to that chance. And you didn’t even realize it until that chance went away.

Bojack Horseman, S5:E6 - Free Churro

[julia0689]

Time’s Arrow neither stands still nor reverses, it merely marches forwards...  The many faces of Beatrice Horseman.  6 hours, Adobe Photoshop. 

[littldolli]

this is so bojack horseman

[dongslinger--420]

BoJack's "I have this friend" digression in Free Churro feels so tender to me. Live Fast, Diane Nguyen was one of the first times these two properly connected, so to see him feel such a connection once again, especially when their relationship is at its rockiest, just shows how much he cares about her. We also see that his parents' abuse made him internalise the ideology that he doesn't need anyone around him, which is why he can't do this in INT. SUB, despite the fact that he wants so desperately to connect with her over this again. I also think it's really interesting that, out of the many words he could've used to refer to Diane with, he chose "friend", because that is truly what Diane has been for the past 4 years. For better or for worse, she has been there for him, and he tries to connect with her once again by referring back to her in the eulogy, but just can't bring himself to do it in person.

[dramasetter]

[jitterbugjive]

Got my new tattoo in memory of my dad whom I had a complex relationship with. He was a fun guy... when he wasn’t drunk. But he was also pretty toxic sometimes even without drinking.

If people don’t know what it is Bojack is holding, it’s a churro. Because he got a free churro from someone who felt bad for his mom dying and that’s the only positive thing he got from her death.

The “Free Churro” episode of Bojack Horseman is a godamn masterpiece and was what finally gave words to the emotions I felt about my dad’s death.

[kalakilo]

i'm currently watching bojack horseman for the first time because i heard it brought up in relation to succession and i just watched free churro today. and. when bojack says "all three of us were drowning and we didn't know how to save each other, but there was an understanding that we were all drowning together" all i could think about was my golden trio......kendall roman and shiv all drowning together in trying desperately to please and be loved by their father

[wrongcarwhy]

BoJack Horseman (2014–2020) S05E06 - Free Churro