The newest season of everyone’s favorite alcoholic horse is out, and his mid-life crisis is at its worst. In this season, we delve into questions of morality, and the show even speaks on contemporary political issues and movements. Several episodes of this show are dedicated to talking about the MeToo movement, feminism, and celebrities being judged on their past.

 

In one episode the show portrays the hypocritical characteristic of Hollywood. In one of the episodes a celebrity named Vance Wagner who has a past of attempted sexual assault of a female cop, anti-Semitism, and homicidal threats towards his family. Although these things would have ended the career a normal person, the episode goes out of its way to demonstrate how easy it is to forgive celebrities. The show even holds an entire Hollywood event called “the Forgivees”. In another episode a fictional character is fired as a C.E.O for sexual allegations, this was the end of his career, but seconds after leaving his office he is given a job at a major business. This episode also demonstrates the hypocritical moral stance of the business world when is comes to seeking justice.

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This moment in season five calls out Hollywood’s culture of denouncing and shaming people for awful actions only to accept them back into society after they apologize for it years later. What the show asks us as the audience is a question simple in frame but complex in seeking an answer for it. Should we forgive people after they done something morally wrong or should we permanently punish them?

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The season also explores this hypocrisy of morality in Bojack. Bojack is told by his agent that he must help clear Vance’s name, but when Bojack goes on a talk show to clear Vance’s name, Bojack does the opposite and he denounces Vance and claims to be a male feminist who cares for the well being of women. The audience beings to cheer and support Bojack for his stance for women’s issues, but the hypocrisy is revealed to the viewer when Bojack admits off camera that he doesn’t know or care for women’s issues, and that he is simply using the title of feminist to gain popular support. Later when Bojack commits an immoral act that becomes publicized, the show provides a new case study of morals. Even though someone can seem moral and just, they are no less susceptible to immorality than those who have a bad reputation.

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At the end of the season, the audience is left with a plethora of moral questions. How long do we punish someone for a moral injustice, and do they deserve to be forgiven, if ever? What makes a person bad or good? What’s worse, a person who is immoral publicly or one that hides their awful nature with a just figure? Are we right to forgive a person’s behavior because we know them? All of these questions are left unanswered. It is a severe under statement to say that this season of Bojack Horseman opens the door to a philosophical discussion on ethics, and yet, the show provides a perspective on how certain characters see morality. One character, Diane, after years of exposing the immorality of Hollywood’s society, concludes; people are not bad or good, but rather their actions are, and we should judge them for their efforts of changing their natural behavior. If they’ve done bad things, but recognize that, and seek change, then they deserve that change, but never forgive their prior actions. But, if they continue down their path of immorality, then we must accept that they are a lost cause, and that giving these people a second chance is hopeless.