By Jen Ruppert
BoJack Horseman is not a good person. He is rude. He is decadent. He is jaded. Also, he is, well, a horse. But there is still a shred of goodness in his heart. Never is this more evident than during the show’s “Fish Out of Water” episode (S3:E4).
It starts with BoJack plunging deep into the ocean on a 20K Leagues Subliner to attend the Pacific Ocean Film Festival where his movie Secretariat will be screened. A hurried pre-submersion conversation with his publicist reveals how his boorish behavior has made him unwelcome at prestigious film festivals on land like Sundance and Cannes. And we regular viewers are not surprised. It is classic BoJack to irk the French by making negative remarks about Sartre, and anger Robert Redford by telling him the Horse Whisperer was offensive because “real horses don’t just do whatever someone says.” He even tries to bail out before the submarine descends but is tased back into submission by an electric eel.
Upon arriving at Free Willy International Seaport, BoJack seems humbled by the alien environment. His horse head encased in a bubble, he awkwardly seeks his driver who is instructed to look for someone “chubby with a sport coat.” He checks into a room at the Rinse Carlton with an underwater version of Picasso’s Figure at the Seaside hanging above his bed, and tries to take a nip from his flask, forgetting his head bubble makes that impossible.
Venturing out, he sees an old colleague he wronged and tries to hide from her. A school of fish forces him onto a bus where he falls asleep, and upon waking, is compelled to help a male seahorse deliver his babies. But one newborn gets left behind. And despite his best efforts to leave it for dead, BoJack finds himself striving to reunite the little guy with his dad.
Their journey is transformative. They see a weird ad with Mr. Peanutbutter hawking seahorse milk. They get chased by the bodega shark. They fall off the Continental Shelf. They bounce around on bioluminescent creatures. They are nearly shredded by a propellor at the freshwater taffy factory. They get into a slow-speed chase with security barracuda. Despite the danger — or maybe because he endures it to help someone else — BoJack feels joy for the first time in his life.
BoJack eventually achieves his goal of reuniting the baby with his father. The land horse who suffered a tragic childhood redeems himself by saving the seahorse from a worse fate. BoJack delved deeply into the sea, and found his humanity.