As a child I was groomed by a man in my village and I see a lot of similarities between the way bj and my groomer acted. Do you guys think bojack intended to do something with penny for what ever reason and groomed her? ( reminds her of Charlotte at an early age/ makes it feel like he’s back in his youth?) or was it an opportunity taken impulsively?
I think that up to the incident in the boat, Bojack had no intention of sleeping with Penny, he was just a mentally and emotionally stunted middle aged man connecting with someone much younger. His main reason to be in New Mexico was to basically seduce Charlotte, which while scummy, isn’t nearly as vile as grooming a teenager.
In fact, when Penny first attempts to sleep with Bojack, he rejects her, because of the obvious age difference. If Bojack were a pedo or a sexual predator, he would have had sex with her right then and there and justified it with “but she came to me”.
It’s only after being rejected by Charlotte and on his depressed and apathetic state, that he let his moral standards waver for a moment and accepted sleeping with Penny, since in his mind she was probably “the closest thing to Charlotte herself”.
I think that even if Charlotte hadn’t found out, Bojack would have still felt like shit for that action. He is not a sexual predator, at least not in the “maliciously looking for victims to exploit” kind of way. He is just a selfish person who has a tendency to disregard the wellbeing of others when he is on a bad place emotionally speaking.