BoJack Horseman season 6 episode 10 review: Diane meets Ivy Tran
Episode 10 of BoJack Horseman’s final season finds Diane continuing down her path of happiness and personal fulfillment after starting on antidepressants.
When we last left BoJack Horseman’s Diane, she had gotten on antidepressants after a visit from BoJack where he saw her at her rock bottom due to the intense book deal she got with Princess Carolyn.
In a montage only BoJack Horseman could do, we pick up with Diane long enough into her antidepressants journey that she’s gained some weight (love Chubby Diane!) and figured out how to navigate the world happily enough. And everything is better… right?
But Diane is still stuck on the first chapter of her book. A brilliant structural and visual format for the episode shows Diane’s writing process in the form of scribbled pencil lined animations, following the neurotic tangents, brainstorms, and constant self-doubt that happens in every writer’s mind (let alone one with anxiety and depression).
After a trip to the mall to write, Diane pops into an aggressively trendy store called Trauma, where she copes with her new size and unhelpful attendants, one of whom is named Ivy. Her next writing sprint finds herself imagining Ivy’s adventures at the mall. She pictures Ivy as her inverse — someone colorful, happy, and full of agency, while Diane is still penciled and static.
As she grows more frustrated, she can’t figure out what’s wrong with her. Guy tries to suggest that maybe it’s the writing itself, and not her, that’s the problem, since the issue hasn’t changed since she got on her medication. But Diane, like many other people who experience side-effects, decides to blame her medication and quits cold turkey. (PSA: Don’t do this, people, with any drug that affects you neurologically. Ever.)
We see the effects of this when Diane backslides hard and Guy takes matters into his own hands, sending the Ivy Tran pages to Princess Carolyn so he can get her off Diane’s back for a few days. When he tells Diane this, she panics, saying she could never write something so fun. But Princess Carolyn loves it and wants to turn it into a franchise.
At BoJack’s showcase, she sees Princess Carolyn and tries to get out of the Ivy Tran series, but Princess Carolyn tells her it’s a good thing. Diane finally explodes and confesses why she can’t just write the Ivy Tran series — what was all her damage for if not to write a serious book of essays?
Princess Carolyn, ever the caretaker, gently suggests that she can incorporate that into these fun, middle-grade books, too, and be happy while she does it. It’s a fascinating meditation on creatives, especially someone like Diane who takes herself so seriously and pictures writing only one kind of thing.
But sometimes, as with BoJack’s teaching gig, it turns out that what makes you happiest isn’t what you expected at all.
Next. BoJack Horseman season 6 episode 9 review: Professor Horseman. dark