Why 'BoJack Horseman' Works and '13 Reasons Why' Doesn't

in 76 episodes bojack horseman deals with depression drug abuse unhappy marriages adultery suicide and a mountain of other controversial topics and i think the show thrives off of that because of two main factors the fantastic writing and the animation that second one might not make total sense but before i explain let me list a few things that happen throughout the show out of context the main character's former best friend dies of cancer and refuses to give him closure one of the main character's friends dies from an overdose on drugs that the main character gave her the main character breaks into his old house takes a bunch of drugs and nearly drowns in a pool then he spends the next episode in purgatory and finally the main character gets caught about to have sex with a 17 year old girl those are all pretty bad taken out of context they sound more like news headlines than plot points of a television show but bojack horseman manages to pull it off and again part of the reason that it does is because of the fact that it's animated when a film or show is animated there is this disassociation with real life because no matter how serious that subject matter might be each of them is being played out by a talking horse throughout the show each time one of these things comes up it'll either involve just animals or one animal and one human because of the fact that they're animals the severity of what just happened to them it doesn't really click it's the same thing in real life if you hit a deer with your car you'll get out and make sure the car is okay if you hit a person you ditch the car and flee the country plain and simple animals just aren't valued as much as humans are so when secretariat kills himself it's messed up but at the end of the day it's still a talking horse if this had been played out in real life by a real actor then this scene would be way more messed up than it already is that being said when dealing with subject matter like the one the show deals with there is a very thin line between compelling and ridiculous and bojack horseman perfectly walks that line like a gymnast on a tightrope and the great thing about the show's writing is that whenever it does go over the line into the area of ridiculous and overly dramatic it's always played for a joke which is another great thing about the writing the comedy of the show actually props up the drama because every character is cracking jokes every couple of seconds so whenever the rapid-fire jokes suddenly stop then the tone shifts to a much more serious one adding weight to the already tense scene but that weight never overstays its welcome it strikes whenever it's most effective and stays for just as long as it should so what would happen if bojack horseman was live action set in a high school overly dramatic from start to finish had awful characters and even worse dialogue well that's how you get 13 reasons why i'm not a virgin anymore boy this show is a great big [ __ ] mess if i have ever seen one although i'm not so much talking about the first season but more so the second third and especially the fourth while i don't think the first season is great or anything like that it is the most comprehensible of any of them so before we get into the meat of why exactly 13 reasons why flop so [ __ ] hard let's do what we did for bojack i'm gonna list a few things that happened throughout the show out of context the main character learns there's going to be a school shooting and goes right up to him and tries to talk him down then the main character goes to the effort of covering up this crime the show later redeems this man who is going to murder everyone the show spends the entirety of its third season trying to redeem a serial rapist the main characters actively cover up this murder and pin it on another character and the show treats this like it's the morally right thing to do and finally the main character commits several more crimes than the one i've already mentioned and he has never met with any consequences whatsoever for these actions as i'm sure you can clearly tell there are some stark differences between these two lists with this list the bullet points read like news headlines this one looks more like the premises of some shitty snl skits remember earlier how i mentioned bojack walks a fine line between compelling and ridiculous well that doesn't really matter for 13 reasons why because they leap right over the line and dive straight into ridiculous all four seasons take place over the course of clay's junior and senior years of high school so at the most all of the [ __ ] and everything else i didn't mention takes place over two calendar years not only is that downright ridiculous it is completely and utterly implausible this school would be shut down and under investigation immediately if there were this many murders sexual assaults and just crimes within two years in one high school 13 reasons why is more fanatical than a disney movie i'm surprised they even included gravity they break so many [ __ ] laws in the show they might as well go for the laws of physics while they're at it is this actually what high school in america is like i'm from england and i'm genuinely curious yes season 3 and 4 of the show are set during clay's senior year of high school think of everything that happened during that year now let me ask you what is the craziest thing that happened during your senior year of high school because i live in the state where you can bring a big ass 44 caliber revolver strapped to your hip into a kroger's like it's the wild wild [ __ ] west and the craziest thing that happened during my senior year was someone [ __ ] their pants during prom not only is this show just plain awful from a storytelling perspective it is flat out dangerous in april of 2017 the month the first season was released on netflix the use suicide rate went up by over 25 in the united states in all seriousness 13 reasons why literally killed a portion of its audience but for some reason netflix renewed it for another three seasons but i guess that's not saying much anymore going back to this show's merits as a story let's go back and look at our list let's go a bit deeper on this last one here throughout the show the main cast of characters if they're not the antagonist they are free from any and all consequences in bojack horseman consequences are a huge part of the show and they for the most part all center around bojack whenever bojack gave sarah lynn the drugs he paid the price with sarah lynn's death or more accurately she paid the price for his choices that's the thing about bojack there are consequences but rarely is he the one that's paying for them every choice every decision every single wrong move that he makes the people around him suffer bojack gets addicted to painkillers and as a result he strangles gina bojack tells ceralyn the way he views things and says that nobody will ever really love her as a result she ends up just like him time and time again bojack negatively affects the people around him he is a cancer to his friends and he knows it in a way bojack's hatred of himself is justified this is all very serious and the show treats it that way and so does 13 reasons why it treats all of the subject matter it tries to deal with with a absolute seriousness but the tone doesn't matter if what the characters say and do are absolutely unbelievable this video in of itself is a sin for just comparing these two bojack is one of the best television shows i have ever seen it easily lands in my top 10. the way it portrays characters and relationships is amazing and feels unbelievably real despite the animation and most of the characters being animals bojack horseman is an amazing show and 13 reasons why is a morally bankrupt piece of [ __ ] there are many lessons that bojack horseman can teach its viewers too much drugs and alcohol can make your life suck don't hang yourself while you jerk off don't be an [ __ ] to your friends but most importantly your actions have consequences and they will affect others besides yourself and while yes this may be a pretty simplistic theme it delivers it in a complex and compelling way but 13 reasons why i spit on that consequences are a foreign concept in this fantasy realm it's amazing that the show about talking cartoon animals is the more realistic of these two 13 reasons why is a cancer thing glorified suicide and depression and is one of the worst shows i've ever subjected myself to and there is a very real possibility that some people may still be alive and it never been made [ __ ] this show you

Channel: Cynicide

Views: 1,246,286

Keywords: BoJack Horseman, 13 Reasons Why, Video Essay

Id: iHbhf5MgVeY

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020