Our favorite depressed, alcoholic talking horse is coming back! The fourth season of “BoJack Horseman” finally has a release date, namely September 8 — a mere five days after “Twin Peaks: The Return” is over, which should help with your post-Lynchian despair. It’s one of the few shows we’re happy Netflix dumps all at once; there’s little we enjoy more than our annual plunge into the sadness and failure and self-destruction of a sentient equine whose attempts to improve his life always make it worse. Our sides hurt from laughing and crying.
In its initial handful of episodes, which bowed in 2014, “BoJack Horseman” looked like yet another gag-heavy toon — “Family Guy” but with animals hob-nobbing with humans. Around the fourth episode — the one centered around rock operas — we had an epiphany: Not only was this far, far loopier and weirder, it was also all-caps dark. Our hero (voiced by Will Arnett) wasn’t just another loser, whose cheesy ’80s family sitcom days were far behind him. He was a tragic figure because he wasn’t that special or talented. He endured a vicious circle of self-improvement he could never keep up. Every time he made some advances, he backslid into something far worse than which caused him to seek help in the first place.
The second season was somehow darker; the third was darker still. We’re not sure how bleak-o-rama it can get than last year’s penultimate episode, which saw the death of a key supporting character, for which BoJack was partially responsible. But we’ve thought that before. And no doubt the show will keep up its tricky balancing act, which is half-downer, half-hilarious, never letting a grim plot twist get in the way of a bizarro gag. (Or an entire episode that showed how weird 2007 was.) In other words, we’re fully expecting another whinny-er! [Drinks an entire bottle of cheap scotch, wakes up two days later mistakenly thinking we’ve befriend John Stamos]
Follow Matt Prigge on Twitter @mattprigge
