I’ve seen some fans here write that they think it’s “woke” exaggeration that Penny is still not okay 3 years later and links her panic attacks to her experience with BoJack.

I’d like to explain what Penny’s “problem” was to people who think it’s not “traumatic enough”:

1)She had a crush on a teenage boy from her class for a long time. This can get pretty intense and consume all your focus and attention when you are a teenager.

2)She was hoping to go to the dance with this boy but got disappointed. This alone is a pretty sad memory. Many people happily and luckily get over it with time, but those who experience more rejection do come back to it.

  1. a grown up family friend staying at her house offered to go to the dance with her as her date which, when talking about it later with more people and a therapist, might start sounding gross. Even if it doesn’t,it was a turmoil of emotions: The grown up family friend promised this will make her seem desireable in the eyes of the boy she likes, once he sees her having fun.

  2. her underage friend ended up in a hospital because of this very same grown up man, the friend of her mother, a man who actively offered her friend more and different alcohol.

  3. looking back at the memory, it feels really gross to realize that this grown up man actually let the friend with another underage teen alone in front of a hospital. The mix of fear, guilt,shame and stress for Pete Repeat in that situation can become very real to Penny when she talks about the situation with an adult months/years later.

  4. Penny’s emotions that were 100% directed to her teenage crush in the morning, got all wild by the end of the day and she became interested in this grown up family friend, missing completely that what he did to her friend at the hospital was wrong - realizing this later cancause an avalanche of guilt and shame.

  5. She tried to kiss the friend of her mother. At first, the grown man rejected her, as he should, which made her cry because of rejection, sadness, shame, confusion.
    It might make her feel extremely ashamed to remember how she tried to offer herself to him, and she brought up the fact that she knows how to use a condom, etc.

  6. She chose to offer herself to him again, later, after crying for some time alone. This time he accepted.
    He let her in his room.
    He let her on his bed.
    He touched her and let her touch him.
    They ended up on his bed in his room, behind closed doors, undressing each other.

  7. Her own mother caught them in that position. And told her to leave. Penny left crying.

So the fear of her angry mom,the guilt and shame of offering herself to this grown family friend,
the uncertainty of whether or not it was even right thing to do on her part,
the realization that this very morning she was still into her teenage classmate,
the later shock of the thought of what a good responsible grown up would do about her drunk friend,
the thought of what kind of man was she on the bed with?
What would have happened if her mother didn’t walk in?
Why did he let her touch him?
Why did he start to undress her/let her undress him?
What kind of family friend in his 50s does that?
Why didn’t he lock himself alone in there and stay away from her like a responsible adult?

…All this mixed together in a mind not fully developed yet, ridden with hormones, not 18 yet,

that is more than enough to give you anxiety,very unpleasant memories mixed with all kinds of shame and fear,and even panic attacks.

Being a teenager sucks.

  • derederellama@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    i went out with a 40 year old when i was 18. though perfectly legal, it definitely feels wrong on a freudian level. luckily, i was smart enough not to sleep with him and i ended up dumping him a few months in. situations like that are pretty awful to think about in retrospect. the red flags won’t necessarily occur to a teenager while they’re faced with it, but once you’re grown you start to wonder why the hell that person would even pursue you.

  • Stellaaahhhh@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Add to all that the realization that this adult man did all this, not just to take advantage of your youth and inexperience, but because he actually wanted to get with you mom but she rejected him. And you look almost identical to her when she was your age.

  • hyperjengirl@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    People really need to actually rewatch that episode before they start claiming Penny was totally mature enough to know what she was doing. She was already in an emotionally unstable position, possibly predisposed to anxiety, and her understanding of relationships was naive. And there’s just so much that happened that night that gets overlooked, namely the Maddy incident that you mentioned.

    I’ve had anxious feelings about things that happened to me years prior that were far less severe than what Penny went through, it makes total sense. Do people think you can’t be traumatized unless you were actively raped? That even an emotionally charged, morally dubious, but technically legal situation where nothing happened can’t leave her traumatized That’s an abysmal mindset.

  • isthatabingo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    As someone with PTSD, it is a chronic condition. Symptoms can go into remission and we can feel “normal” for extended periods of time, but there are always new situations that may trigger our memories and cause flashbacks as well as physical symptoms (racing heart, trembling, etc.). Very disheartening to hear some fans think the show’s depiction of Penny is simply “woke” lip service.

  • Aggressive_Sky8492@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Agree with everything you said OP.

    I also think another element is that it happened on prom. Because prom is such a symbolic and pivotal part of the transition from school kid to adult. It’s the las time you see a lot of the kids you know from school, you’re dressed up and get to feel special and beautiful, and it’s a moment many look back on for a long time. It’s meant to be a happy memory, but for her it’s very likely ruined or at least overshadowed by everything that happened. So not only was it a traumatic experience, it also tarnished her experience and memory of her prom, which is now a bad memory. It’s also a “trigger” that gets brought up relatively often in culture, so it’s likely she thinks of it more often than if the stuff with Bojack had happened on a random non-momentous night. He ruined her prom. And yes I get prom isn’t a big deal for everyone, but it seemed like for Penny it was beforehand.

  • SiameseGunKiss@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    She probably also feels a lot of confusion and anger towards her parents for allowing him to have essentially boundary-less access to her in the first place, which adds a new layer to the trauma of the situation. Her parents never should’ve allowed Bojack to be her prom date.

    It’s very disorienting and destabilizing to look back on something and realize how messed up it was, then realize that the primary adults in your life ultimately failed at their most important job - keeping you safe.

  • Threedo9@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Who unironically uses the word “Woke” as an insult and also watches Bojack Horseman? I did not think there was crossover between those two groups of people.

  • ClayBunny@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Dude I am stressed about even watching that episode 2 years later, what must be the experience for someone who lived it.

  • SignificantTap5579@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    It can be a bit hard to process when watching ‘That’s too much, man’ because Bojack is really trying to not see her but keeps skipping time to show him there. The audience is naturally more cautious for him not doing something stupid, then of what Penny was reacting to.

  • No-Interaction3778@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    To support your point, and negate any and all people who blame Penny (THE CHILD), a few things; -Bojack, the ADULT, replicated a night out he’d had with Charlotte back when he was interested in her, with her own daughter. Ofc penny couldnt know that, but the intention behind that was very clear on Bojack’s end. He even admits it (that he tried to “sleep with the daughter” because the “mom said no”) a few times throughout the series. (Though, he is an unreliable narrator since he flips his opinions of himself and the hurt hes caused. but its worth noting his guilt is (imo) the realest, truest part of himself that hes willing to reflect on, so thats something.)

    -a common phrase victims of child grooming say what penny said that night before offering herself to him; “everyone else treats me like a kid. Youre the first adult to treat me like… well, a person!”

    Its nauseating when people downplay or skip over this or blame penny for something a 50 year old purposefully did. Not to mention, he went to talk to charlotte right after. if he reaaalllyy wanted to close the door on penny all the way, hed tell her parent. At least thats what id do to nip that in the bud right then and there. There are so many connections of the symbolism and dialogue that show this is Bojacks fault due to his own selfish, predatory nature towards women. Out of all the grey areas in the show, this is not one.