Yep spot on. I guess people tend too much to binary thinking: “Either Bojack changed completely or he didn’t at all”.

And… That’s not how people work.

People become better or worse versions of themselves, and even when becoming better, they can relapse or regress, and even when becoming worse, they can have an epiphany and change their ways.

Bojack’s arc throughout the show is of self betterment, with all the stumbles and falls that it can entail. I think we can say for certain that he is on a far better place than at the beginning of the show:

• He respects and appreciates his remaining friendships more, unlike how he took them for granted before.

• He respects Diane and Hollyhock’s decision to cut him off, unlike how he felt entitled to Herb’s forgiveness before.

• He managed to move on from the ghosts of his abusive parents, making peace with the fact that even if they were unrepentantly miserable and bitter people that filled him with self hatred, that doesn’t mean Bojack is “broken”. I think he does finally realize that what Beatrice told him in season 2 about him being born broken and never getting to be happy was just bullshit.

• He realizes that he is in control of his life. Not the alcohol, not the drugs, not the shitty things that happened to him in his career or when he was a kid. He is in control. And knowing and internalizing that, can be freeing.

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.

Bojack mentions both of them in passing.

I’m not saying Beatrice is undeserving of any empathy, I guess I’m just frustrated at the amount of woobification and defense her character gets by the fans, whereas there’s a new post each week about how Bojack is evil and if you like him you are a bad person.

Yeah, we don’t. Let’s leave the subject here.

Bojack and Beatrice have both done awful things that no person can morally come back from, in my opinion. It’s not a competition and there is no argument either way. You feel trying to drown somebody to death is worse than trying to choke someone to death. That’s fine. We disagree. To me it’s a toss of the coin.

Bojack was on drugs when he tried to choke Gina. Beatrice wasn’t under any substance that clouded her judgement.

Plus I’d say trying to murder your child (that you had already abused for years prior) is worse than trying to murder your coworker/ex.

Both of them do not have true malice in their hearts. As seen in multiple flashbacks, Beatrice and Bojack were both once innocent children who were abused.

“I’m punishing you for being alive” Beatrice after forcing Bojack to painfully smoke a cigarette.

“Uh I guess nobody wants you” Beatrice after Bojack narrowly avoided being molested by a pedo.

“I was beautiful before I got pregnant. You ruined me Bojack” Beatrice to Bojack out of nowhere.

Suuuuuure, Beatrice has “nO tRuE mAlIcE” in her heart. That was just her going through a phase or something.

Bojack was a fuckup that would often hurt the people around him out of carelessness, apathy or weakness of character. Beatrice was a sadistic person full of bitterness for how her life turned out (which was partially her own fault). They are not the same.

Beatrice tried to drown Bojack and to get him sexually assaulted. She is a sadistic villain that tortured her own son for decades out of spite and hatred. She is not as deserving of empathy as Bojack. Her having an asshole of a father doesn’t erase the vile shit she did to her own son.

Also funny that you talk about empathy when in the same breath you state that Bojack should drop dead.

The answer is in your very post. Bojack was never sincerely told “I love you” during his formative years. On the contrary, Butterscotch and specially Beatrice basically taught him to hate himself.

Add that to all of Bojack’s friendships and romances either falling apart or being dysfunctional, and the result is that Bojack doesn’t know how to properly “love” someone, and neither does he know how to allow others to love him.

Deep down he doesn’t think he is worthy of love thanks to his parents, and subconsciously self sabotages in order to fulfill that idea on a self fulfilling prophecy kind of way.

Yeah, the asshole went from “I’m punishing you for being alive/you ruined me” to “you were born broken, you’ll never be whole”.

The sad and darkly funny thing is, while the former statements were done with more malice, the latter was arguably the most damaging and hurtful towards Bojack.

Beatrice is poison even when she doesn’t completely mean to.

On one hand, this is probably the closest thing to an apology or an attempt to make amends that Beatrice makes.

On the other however, it’s such a disastrous, half hearted, emotionally damaging and lacking of accountability attempt that I don’t know if it should even count as an apology.

It’s not even a “I’m sorry, I feel bad for what I did to you” like Bojack did with Herb. Of course, a mere apology after decades of abuse wouldn’t have entitled Beatrice to Bojack’s forgiveness, just like decades of abandonment wouldn’t entitle Bojack to forgiveness from Herb after his apology.

But still, what Beatrice does here is not even that. It’s less than an apology, it’s sort of a “I’m sorry you feel that way” kind of statement, putting the blame on the other person for being hurt for your own actions.

I’d like to think that reading her son’s book in which he expresses what a shitty and miserable excuse of a mother she was, Beatrice felt some sort of cushioned, muffled wave of remorse (I know expecting true guilt from someone like her is too much to ask) which motivated her to even call Bojack in the first place.

But this call also reinforces an incredibly toxic, depressing and self defeating mindset Bojack already had and from which he would greatly struggle to get rid of until the finale: That he is poison, a piece of shit, always was and always would be.

So yeah… Fuck Beatrice. She didn’t deserve what Joseph did to her, but Bojack didn’t deserve anything of what she did to him. She’s probably rotting in the same hell Butterscotch and Joseph are. Let’s hope that the poison of those three people isn’t strong enough to drag Bojack with them.