- In a great cosmic match, the Good Place and BoJack Horseman series finished their races almost at the same time.
- The heroes of The Good Place and BoJack Horseman are obsessed with the same moral question: how to be a decent person?
- The two series also reflect on death and are two meta-narratives on Hollywood and its mutations.
Two "sprites" of good series! In a great cosmic match, The Good Place and BoJack Horseman finished their races almost at the same time. The NBC philosophical comedy ended on January 30 in the United States, on January 31 on Netflix in France, as did the zoologically incorrect satire. While in 4 seasons, the comedy The Good Place turned into a referenced and didactic work, the animated series a la Simpson BoJack Horseman transformed in 6 seasons into an existential acid drama. If their last two episodes overlap, it's because the creations of Michael Schur and Raphael Bob-Waksberg have pursued the same hobbyhorse: pushing the conventional boundaries of what a TV comedy can or should be. Explanations.
Two moral series
In Hollywoo, in the anthropomorphic fiction of animation by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Bojack Horseman, actor of sitcom has been and conceited, suffers from depression, loneliness and his toxic attitude with his relatives: Mister Peanutbutter, his dog friend excessively optimistic and faithful, Diane, her lost biographer, Princess Carolyn, her career cat agent, and Todd, her asexual roommate.
In Michael Schur's philosophical comedy, the egocentric, rude and selfish Eleonor (Kristen Bell) accidentally enters paradise after her death. She meets there Chidi (William Jackson Harper), professor of moral philosophy pathologically undecided, Tahani (Jameela Jamil), socialite obsessed with his status and Jason (Manny Jacinto), a moron from Jacksonville.
The heroes of The Good Place and BoJack Horseman are obsessed with the same moral question: how to be a decent person? BoJack Horseman, a vestige of Mad Men, Breaking Bad or The Sopranos antiheroes, adheres to existentialist theories and the belief that free will and the absence of absolute morality dictated from above give everyone the ultimate responsibility for the way we spend our time on Earth.
What is the meaning of life ? What can we say about human nature and the choices we make? What is selfless action? Does the end sometimes justify the means? In four seasons, The Good Place leads an ethical reflection on Good and Evil, while skillfully getting rid of the question of God, revisiting Kant, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato or Heidegger.
Two thoughts on death
The penultimate episode of The Good Place could easily have been the last. Just like that of BoJack Horseman . To the question "Is there life after death?" ", The Good Place responds in the affirmative. And after four seasons spent wandering in the afterlife, our dead heroes finally arrive at the title "Good Place". When they arrive, however, they discover that eternal happiness is a source of boredom. The place chosen by the producers to represent Good Place is the Getty Center, the art museum in the hills overlooking Los Angeles. If paradise is in the hills of Hollywood, so is hell.
For 6 seasons, BoJack Horseman has been afraid of drowning, literally and figuratively. In the penultimate episode, the equine effectively fails to drown in its old pool, a scene almost prophesied in the credits of the series. He will then face the ghosts of his friends and family in a sort of purgatory dinner before finding himself outside a door, symbolic and terrifying entrance to the kingdom of the dead.
In The Good Place , even eternal bliss needs a happy ending and a door too. Once someone has crossed it, no more good or bad places ... Just peace and serenity. Our deceased heroes bow out "If life (and the afterlife) had no end, it would lack flavor," concludes the philosophical series. The early schoolboy comedy with its giant shrimp attacks ultimately turns out to be a comic assessment of philosophy, human nature and the meaning of life.
In Bojack Horseman, everyone has the right to a happy ending, except the horse-man who survives, wakes up and has to start all over again with the people who are still alive. A worse fate than death for the anti hero in search of redemption. And the last episode ends with a series of one-on-one conversations, of increasing gravity. "Sometimes life is a bitch, and then you go on living," concludes Diane. In the world of Raphael Bob-Waksberg, life is only what we make of it and it is up to us to write our history.
Two meta-narratives
These two series also have in common that they are meta-narratives around Hollywood and the world of television. Bojack Horseman portrays behind the scenes of a sitcom and show business. Hollywoo is a self-critical construction of the Hollywood star-system, of Hollywood and its excesses in the post-# MeToo era. In Hollywoo, the animated comedy about a tortured hero ends in existential drama with emancipated female characters, Princess Carolyn and Diane, finally freed from the toxicity of BoJack.
For its part, The Good Place is a comedy on a network of showrunners (“architects”, like Michaël) who try to obtain better scores (of audiences?) By constantly rewriting the history that they are in storytelling for finicky fans (Justice Gen). Television, here is the hell of The Good Place , which like the experience of Janet's time, is no longer linear. At any time, the spectator can return to any good place ... The ends are inevitable, but on television, nothing really ends. After all, in his apartments, judge Gen has just started watching The Leftovers (which inspired Michael Schur The Good Place ).
The Good Place and Bojack Horseman pushed the limits of comedy by becoming moral tales about the nature of man. Sometimes the viewer needs to be reminded that humans are always capable of creating a better world together. And sometimes he needs to be reminded that an animal is sleeping inside. These two series are finally the mirror of a rapidly changing Hollywood system. If philosophy can teach people to be better, can a TV series do it? This is the essence of these two series.
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