I finished bojack a few nights ago and while it did crush me it’s a lot more satisfying of a ending then people would give it credit for, I think people are wrong to assume it’s subversive because it doesn’t give closure, because for the first time in his life bojack looks at peace truly. And I’ll never understand people who think he should of died, what message would the show be sending if bojack took the easy way out and got to kill himself, he’s gotta live with the consequences with his actions and for the first time he fully accepts responsibility, I don’t think people understand that if he was going to die it was on HIS terms, he was going to kill himself and be martyred for it, have it hang around every single person who ever cared about him on their head, but the show said “no he needs to take responsibility and change”. Literally the last convo in the show is about horrible Diane felt after she listened to that voice-mail, and it harkens back to bojack talking about his near death experience at his moms funeral, “won’t they be sorry” was his first thought. Him dying is the worst possible ending for the show. But thats just how I feel
I love the message is that you can always change and try again, but the consequences of your actions will be there.
In Bojack’s case: years of his refusal to change caused a lot of pain and burden to not only himself, but also the people around him. In the end we see that he lost the close friendship of Todd, PC, and most importantly, Diane. Unfortunately it is true that people are resistant to change until they’ve hit rock bottom enough: I think losing and hurting Diane was the biggest rock bottom for him. I love how the final scene was their last conversation, but it was peaceful and calm.
We don’t know what Bojack will do after the end scene, but we see that life will be different because he won’t have the people that once cared about him that he had hurt along the way to getting here.