BoJack Horseman season 6 episode 2 review: Princess Carolyn does it all
While the season 6 premiere of BoJack Horseman focused primarily on BoJack, the second episode shows us what the other characters are up to.
While the previous episode of BoJack Horseman dealt with BoJack exclusively in rehab, the second episode zooms back out to the other characters in the world of Hollywoo, picking back up with Princess Carolyn as she wraps her latest project: Mr. Peanutbutter’s adaptation of the greeting card “Birthday Dad.”
At a “Women Who Do It All” photoshoot with Manatee Fair, Amanda Hannity (Christine Baranski) warns Princess Carolyn that she can’t let her career, which is going so well, fall to the wayside like Karen Kitada’s, who disappeared after taking only three weeks of maternity leave (a real and terrible thing that happens to women in the workforce all the time).
An exhausted Princess Carolyn tests whether she can truly do it all while caring for her newly adopted, as-yet-unnamed porcupine baby girl (Untitled Princess Carolyn Project).
In vivid blue, purple, and pink, shadows of Princess Carolyn walk behind her to complete multiple tasks all at the same time, illustrating the huge undertaking that is new motherhood.
Princess Carolyn is confronted with her struggles head on, as the women around her tell her the right or wrong ways she is handling her life. It’s a subtle treatise on the ways that women communicate, especially through the co-option and misuse of feminist language to judge other women.
“It sounds like you’re doing it all for yourself,” Vanessa Gecko (Kristen Chenoweth) purrs, “but the new doing it all is doing it for other women.”
Ironically, none of the women in the scene offer to help a clearly overwhelmed Princess Carolyn in any way, but instead add more to her plate, suggesting she plan a women’s empowerment luncheon that quickly spirals into a “Do It All Ball.”
The colorful shadows are a presence throughout the entire episode, muttering, “Kitada. Kitada. Kitada,” to varying degrees of volume in the background as a reminder of what’s at stake, whether Princess Carolyn is at home or at work, reminding the viewers of the mounting pressure.
It is a bold choice for the writers to make in telling the story. For the last few seasons, so much of Princess Carolyn’s arc focused on wanting a baby — trying to conceive and eventually working through the adoption process. It would have been very easy to tie a nice little bow on the whole thing now that she has a baby.
But ask any new parent — it’s not a “roll-credits” moment once the baby comes home. It is an exhausting adjustment period for a long time, whether you have given birth or adopted.
As Princess Carolyn’s responsibilities and anxieties increase, so do the number of shadows and the chanting rhythm of, “Kitada,” until she finally finds herself at Pastiches, BoJack’s rehab center, in an effort to retrieve Mr. Peanutbutter, who had visited BoJack in an effort to distract Pickles the pug from the truth about their relationship.
A rough-looking Princess Carolyn is checked in and given a blanket and soon falls asleep. It’s a bittersweet moment as she finally gets some much needed rest. But horrifyingly, she wakes up two days later to BoJack reminding her of what happened.
Thankfully, Todd has taken care of Untitled Princess Carolyn Project. In typical “failing up” Todd fashion, his affability, along with the baby’s confusing nickname, leads to a very real television project, which Princess Carolyn invites Karen Kitada to work on.
In all the chaos, Princess Carolyn misses the Do It All Ball. A defeated Princess Carolyn asks her greatest frenemy, Vanessa, for advice, and she advises her to buck up and think of the baby as just another one of her projects — the toughest one yet.
The theme of the episode–doing it all–also makes an important distinction from another common phrase thrown at women: having it all. It’s a slight but incisive difference.
While having it all implies that you can have your cake and eat it too (maintain your career and family), doing it all recognizes the labor that comes with it, while glorifying the self-sacrifice, a specific part of the female/motherhood experience. It’s the particularity of the writing here that continues to make BoJack Horseman one of the most thoughtful shows out there.
Next. BoJack Horseman season 6 premiere: A horse walks into rehab. dark