BoJack Horseman season 6 episode 9 review: Professor Horseman
The first episode of the second half of BoJack Horseman’s final season finds BoJack settling into his new role on campus, but distant from Hollyhock.
When we last left off with the final season of BoJack Horseman, his little sister Hollyhock had just learned his deepest shame: what happened in New Mexico.
We pick back up with BoJack’s first day of school as a theater professor at Wesleyan, the same university Hollyhock attends. He’s stopped dying his hair and has gone to a beautiful, natural gray, and has first day jitters. While at first, he tries to force the class into a specific, rehearsed direction à la James Lipton, the class quickly veers into a workshop environment.
While the old BoJack would have given crass, harsh feedback to the young actors, new BoJack provides specific, helpful direction that gives the earnest theater kids something to bite into. In short, he’s actually a great teacher, and it’s only something he could become now.
The acting class allows for levity in the episode while also showing the progression in BoJack’s character. One of the great structural tropes of BoJack is an over-the-top gag with something dark teeming under the surface. This particular episode finds BoJack seriously attending AA only to be repeatedly interrupted by his students trying to prove to him they’re good actors.
It’s the kind of ridiculous joke, with an undercurrent of real emotion, that is BoJack Horseman‘s trademark. The rule of threes applies, of course, when a student shows up for AA to get help only to be chastised by BoJack (who soon realizes what happened and feels guilty).
On the other hand, Hollyhock isn’t doing so well. Not one to poke the bear (or the horse), she hasn’t confronted BoJack with the truth about New Mexico, choosing instead to avoid him and grow more passive-aggressive by the moment.
Through an effective montage, the episode shows once again how far BoJack has come (and he never tries harder than he does with Hollyhock). Hollyhock has joined the rugby team, and BoJack fails at getting it but goes to the effort of learning everything he can and becoming the team’s biggest fan, only to force Hollyhock to quit.
In turn, Hollyhock doesn’t go to BoJack’s end-of-semester showcase, leading BoJack to run to her dorm in the middle of the show and confront her. While Hollyhock doesn’t tell him she knows about New Mexico, she does tell him they’re “in a fight,” lobbing another delayed emotional bomb, the kind at which this show excels.
BoJack runs back to the showcase in time for the finale and standing ovation. He’s surrounded by his students, who give him a bouquet, as well as peers and friends in the audience. (Diane and Todd are there!) It’s a well-deserved moment for someone who has worked so hard to get something simple and good.
But as with every moment in BoJack Horseman, just as soon as a moment of happiness arrives, another moment of karma does, too, in the form of Charlotte (Olivia Wilde) calling to tell BoJack to get the reporters off her daughters back, who are hounding for the truth about New Mexico.
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