This whole time, most of us never thought about the idea of how Bojack covered his tracks during the Sarah Lynn death. We just figured she died, not his fault, she wanted to do drugs anyway right?
He literally let her overdose without medical help and die because he wanted to avoid bad press. I mean seriously, if he got caught he’s a celebrity what would even happen to him? Jail for a little bit? In the show he already has been there prior to Sarah Lynn’s death due to cocaine possession and it’s not like he seemed too fazed by it.
Yes yes Sarah Lynn is an irresponsible addict for wanting to realize. But blaming a borderline suicidal addict for wanting to relapse when someone literally encouraged said struggling addict to do drugs again is unbelievable. Imagine seeing someone pass out on drugs literally YOU did with them and prioritizing you not looking bad INSTEAD OF TRYING TO HELP THEM GET MEDICAL ATTENTION AND LIVE??? If he was in a state of mind smart enough to think to leave and then call himself from her phone, he was smart enough to know how awful it was and that she could’ve potentially lived.
But that’s what he panicked about. The police finding him. Not the girl he’s known for 30 years passing out off of a bender he encouraged and getting her medical help as quickly as possible.
He verbally abused her her whole childhood to feel powerful… refused to ever be a real friend to her after the show ended and instead wallowed in his own self pity… was nice to her for a few days when she stabbed herself then later on helps destroy the girl’s health and sobriety for his pleasure bc boo hoo he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar and needs a druggie buddy.
Then leaves her to die from her overdose so that he, an incredibly rich celebrity with a good lawyer and knowing Sarah Lynn probably wouldn’t even be the type to sue or get revenge on him, doesn’t have to deal with legalities.
And the worst part is that Bojack spends so much of his bender with Sarah Lynn whining about how guilty he feels from Penny. “I ruined a young girl’s life”. Then so easily and effortlessly is willing to do it again except in a much worse way.
I cannot watch the series the same way anymore. Every time he wallows and feels sorry for himself it feels so gross knowing he was willing to let someone who felt so close to him literally pass out and die and felt absolutely zero sense of urgency by waiting 17 minutes to call help. All so Bojack gets out scot-free. Oh well if another human being that never did you wrong and grew up with you dies for it right.
The show is so incredibly well done. What an incredible twist. I no longer see it as a self loathing tortured relatable sad horse and now truly see it now as a portrait of a twisted man who rarely ever chose to rise above those around him and instead made everything about himself, and how even with rehab, good friends, therapy and a great new job he craves publicity so much that it backfires and the world finds out everything he’s really done. He has done nothing good that balances out his horrible actions. The show teaches us to not applaud the bare minimum from a messed up human being just because they’re messed up. I’m so glad the second interview happened and him trying to play the “I’m an addict. I’m powerless” finally didn’t work anymore.
Anyone who thinks they are a perfect human is delusional. Grow up
I never liked Bojack. from the beginning I found him to be weird (in a bad way) and the more I learned about him the more I got disgusted. he’s caused a lot of harm, I kept watching because I loved the complexities of the characters but bojack was never someone I could really empathize with
I hate to say that I don’t hate him
Same. I love him as a character but damn.
It’s more that I started hating the writers, because it was dishonest storytelling.
A drug addict high on drugs sees another drug addict dead and you think they will act rational?
I feel like everyone knows that people can survive overdoses? If not everyone then esp a drug addict? And he was rational to think about police checking phone logs and to call himself from another person’s phone to make it seem like he drove there so that’s not really an excuse here at all.
Reset the counter
I can’t bring myself to fully hate Bojack. But man there are very few characters I have this many complicated feelings about. Throughout the show I did feel bad for him because I did understand that he had problems and understood why he acted the way he did. But that doesn’t make his actions or their consequences not his responsibility.
I think I feel the same way a lot of the side characters seemed to feel about him at the end of the show. Such as Princess Caroline. Where she clearly seems to somewhat respect him as a friend. But also realizes that regardless of how she feels about him he’s irresponsible and toxic and she needs to somewhat distance herself from him to keep he own life and career in tact.
For me I feel bad for Bojack and understand that there is some desire to be good somewhere in him but it’s buried under toxic attitudes and behaviours that cause him to keep hurting people around him. It’s something he needs to change about himself. At the same time I feel furious at him for all the terrible decisions he’s made and relationships, lives and careers he’s ruined.
While I may still want to see Bojack get better I still find many of his actions despicable and certainly don’t blame characters who cut him out of their life completely. And yeah. What happened with Shara Lin was maybe the most mad I’ve been learning about something Bojack did in the entire series. It was so awful.
Think it’s a huge credit to this show that I can have so many complicated feelings towards a fictional character like this. Though I certainly can’t blame anyone who says they hate him completely as a character either.
I think I would’ve felt differently about him if he was never given the chance to change. But he literally had a new life, new job, went to rehab, therapy, his friends all supported him the whole time, and he still wanted to do another interview about a girl he let die because he… “likes being part of the conversation again”? On top of that by the end of the interview he reburns another bridge by calling Sharona publicly a “drunk you can’t trust” after she forgave him and what makes me sick is that after all that “change” he starts off his second interview giggling about Sarah Lynn. It’s a cute little publicity boost to him at that point because, he had no problem breaking down about it a week ago when it meant that his name would get dragged but, now that he was publicly in the clear he has no problem laughing saying “Ahahaha. Here we go again. Another question about Sarah Lynn.” that part was so disgusting to me.
Throughout the show I did feel bad for him because I did understand that he had problems and understood why he acted the way he did. But that doesn’t make his actions or their consequences not his responsibility.
The prevailing thought I had when seeing the things Bojack and even Beatrice would do throughout the series was “well that explains it…but that doesn’t excuse it”.
Like, yea, Bojack had a really shitty childhood. Many of those experiences ended up moulding him into the person he became. That explains his state of mind. It doesn’t excuse him for that behaviour though, especially considering how many people around him have laid it out in front of him in the simplest possible language and how many chances he’s had to fix it.
I absolutely agree that he is accountable even if we understand. And I think something the show was trying to show us was how systems of power can facilitate or even create a person like Bojack. In one of the episodes in rehab, he has a revelation about how because he’s rich and famous, he’s not made to face his behaviour (I forget the exact wording). And they bring this reality of Hollywoo and even capitalism up a lot (murder is legal for corporations remember). They really do a good job of showing how complicated morality is by telling this story if a man shaped by misfortune and abuse and then given power and prestige and put in situations that make him feel desperate and untouchable. And we sympathize and/or understand but are still asked to hold him accountable.
Yeah
So… I want to provide some context about something I am not sure many fans are aware of.
Biscuits Braxby reveals that Sarah Lynn wasn’t declared dead until she reached the hospital. However, I think a lot of fans believe this means Sarah was still alive and she could have been saved.
However, that’s not how being declared dead works. Even if a person is 100% dead, not-coming-back-no-matter-what, they’re not declared dead until they’re brought to a hospital and examined by a qualified medical professional.
Bojack delayed because he believed Sarah Lynn was dead— and it’s possible, or maybe even likely, that he was right.
Should he have called anyway? Yep. He should’ve realized it’s hard to tell with an overdosed person and she could still be saved. Is it also possible she was 100% dead and the timing of the call was meaningless? Yep. It’s entirely possible he was right and she was dead.
I think that ambiguity makes it muddier.
Either way, though, it was a horrible thing to do.
there is definitely a lot of ambiguity but as someone who’s overdosed before there is a limbo-like stage some people go into. once when I was on the verge of something very bad, I could hear the people around me but genuinely couldn’t make myself move. she could have been completely dead or something like that
I believe the sentence Braxby says is “But… she wasn’t actually dead yet, she died at the hospital” So… she was alive before reaching the hospital
I agree that’s what Biscuits believes— but personally, I believe Biscuits was mistaken, because there’s no way for her to know that. The only thing Biscuits could know is when and where Sarah Lynn was declared dead.
Then again: Maybe Biscuits spoke to one of the EMTs and they confirmed Sarah Lynn still showed signs of life when they were transporting her to the hospital.
people get declared dead on arrival all the time, which is different than “dying at the hospital.” that would likely be public information, too.
I feel like the show’s creators are too thoughtful to just mix that up.
Some EMTs can declare death officially and some can’t, depends on the jurisdiction. It’s wild but there must be official, bureaucratic legal type reasons for that. Or a mix of legal and medical reasons
That’s interesting, didn’t know that. I was going off of Biscuit saying “You delayed to call the paramedics that could’ve saved her life” to mean that there was a chance for her
You’re definitely right that there could be some level of ambiguity about whether she was actually dead at the scene or not, since yea, you can’t declare someone dead until they’ve been evaluated for that at the hospital. You can still be “alive” without a pulse.
I don’t personally think it was too unreasonable for Bojack to have waited the 17 minutes on account of how inebriated he was. We’ve seen multiple times throughout the show and even throughout that very episode that Bojack has very little grasp of how time passes during his drug benders, so to him the 17 minutes could’ve felt like 2 or 3.
I will hold it against him that his priority was covering his tracks by using Sarah Lynn’s phone to call his own though. That’s not cool even if your time perception is warped.
Agree with this.
i said this the other day in a post about my initial thoughts on “thats too much man”, not having seen the episode where he’s interviewed about her death yet. he was having a blackout episode during the entire bender. blackouts dont make you move automatically like a robot, they just stop you from being able to remember most or all of what happened. his sense of time was very obviously distorted and interrupted, so the 17 minutes could have felt way different to him than it would to someone completely sober
I wouldn’t say I liked him before, but I did feel bad for him sometimes. After the 17 minutes were revealed I really felt like he deserved all the bad things that happened to him.
No. I pitied Bojack the whole show and this was just another step.
You can’t hate someone for their actions when they were literally on a months long bender. Should he have done better? Of course. Should we have expected better of him knowing who he was and what he was doing? Nope.
I actually felt sorry for him because he was moving toward a confession when officer meow meow fuzzyface cut him off.
Bojack isn’t real, Bojack can’t hurt you.
No. He was high like her, and he also thought she was dead. He was likely in shock and feeling guilty and just trying to process what happened while on heroin. Its really hard to do ANYTHING on heroin, much less make good decisions and effectively help. He was traumatized by the event, despite being at fault. Part of him waiting wasn’t just saving face, it was him deciding what to do/how to handle the situation. In the show, under ANY sort of pressure, Bojack has a panic attack/breakdown, which is probably what he did immediately. Also, his reasons for actually saving face may not have been just about his career. He relies on validation from others to literally stay alive, he can’t do it himself. He’d probably succumb to his depression if everyone started hating him, so him pretending he wasn’t there was could have been self preservation. That’s just speculation though. Either way, it just makes me feel horribly bad for Bojack, not hate him. It makes me want him to get better and go back to therapy because of the unimaginable pain he must have been feeling through that ordeal. Unbroken people don’t do things like that. And again, it’s not reflective of his true intentions because heroin is so debilitating. It may have taken him 17 minutes to stop panicking and get to his car
I wouldn’t say hated, just more disappointed
I dont so much hate as feel like a weight has been dropped in my stomach when I heard that. To compare, it’s like finding out your friend, who was a jerk but you see he’s hurting and wants to change, had killed his girlfriend in a fit of rage. You didn’t think he’d do such a thing, but thinking back you realised the signs were all there, and you feel a bit sick that you stood up for him. There is betrayal, but mostly you feel this sense of pity that he would never recover from that and that he deserved it.