One of the great things television can do is provide depth and perspective for characters that were previously villainized or constrained to the sidelines. It can be as simple as a bathtub confession, a flashback to a poolside murder, or in the case of Season 4 of Netflix’s BoJack Horseman, a deep dive into the (literally) demented mind of the titular character’s maligned mother.

“You take something you thought you knew and then discover there’s so much more to it,” Corbin Creamerman says to Beatrice Horseman in “Time’s Arrow”. He’s talking about his love for food chemistry, but it also serves as a mission statement for the season.

Throughout the fourth instalment of the Netflix series, we relive the haunted memories of Beatrice Sugerman, weaving through her troubled adolescence, discouraging life as a young adult and subsequent marriage to BoJack’s father Butterscotch. In a show that’s as inherently silly as BoJack, we see more bad things happen to horses than arguably any show, save Game of Thrones.

During the season, family history is a weight for the characters to bear as heavy as a 1200 pound horse. While BoJack, Beatrice and newcomer Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack all try to put their best hooves forward, the mistakes of their parents and polluted genes prove to be hurdles for the characters. While some are lucky enough to have loyalty and royalty in their DNA, the Horsemen have inherited mental health issues.

Whether BoJack is doomed to be depressed forever has loomed over the character since the second season. In a moment that first hinted to neighsayers there may be more depth to Beatrice Horseman, she gives BoJack some profound parental wisdom.

“You must think I’m a real monster. I don’t want to fight you BoJack, I just want to tell you I know,” Beatrice tells BoJack over the phone. “I know you want to be happy but you won’t be and I’m sorry. It’s not just you, you know. Your father and I…we, well…you come by it honestly; the ugliness inside you. You were born broken, that’s your birthright and now you can fill your life with projects and your books and your movies and your little girlfriends but that won’t make you whole. You’re Bojack Horseman. There’s no cure for that.”

It’s likely the most honest moment BoJack has had with his mother, and an idea he carries with him as he confronts parenthood with Hollyhock. BoJack sees Hollyhock taking after some of his worst tendencies, and Hollyhock even reveals to BoJack she has the same nagging internal battles that linger with BoJack in “Piece of Sh*t”. It leads BoJack to give his “daughter” some similar parental advice to what he received from Beatrice.

 

 

“I know I just met you, but if you do have any of the old Horseman gunk bouncing around in that brain of yours, I gotta tell you right now you should give up on looking for enough because it will never be enough,” BoJack tells her.

Despite his fears that he poisoned Hollyhock with his tainted blood, BoJack comes to the realization that growing up with a loving and supportive family, something neither BoJack or Beatrice experienced, may have saved her from following in their footsteps. When Hollyhock ends up in the hospital in the season’s tenth episode, BoJack tells the nurse about all of the things he realizes are great about her.

It’s revealed later in the season that Hollyhock’s supportive upbringing is due to a choice made by BoJack’s mother. In the penultimate episode, “Time’s Arrow”, both Beatrice and BoJack are trying to redeem the mistakes Beatrice made in parenthood. For Beatrice, she sees the housemaid Henrietta in the same position she was in when her life changed irreparably. With high hopes for her future and impregnated by Butterscotch, Henrietta was on track to suffer the same fate as Beatrice.

“You think you want this but you don’t. Not like this,” Beatrice tells Henrietta in a dementia-ridden flashback. “Don’t throw away your dreams for this child. Don’t let that man poison your life the way he did mine. You are going to finish your schooling and become a nurse. You’ll meet a man, a good man, and you’ll have a family, but please believe me, you don’t want this.”

In helping Henrietta, Beatrice saves a young woman from giving up her dreams and allows Hollyhock to grow up in the loving, supportive environment she was never able to provide for her own son.

All this happens as Beatrice is unknowingly heading towards the lowest moment in her life. She’s alone, staring at a dumpster in a ragged nursing home, trapped in her worst memories.

But BoJack’s comforting words at the end of the episode show growth for the character that seemed out of reach in previous seasons. In season 4’s “Ruthie”, BoJack discredits Princess Carolyn’s great-granddaughter fantasy that gets her through her worst days.

“But it’s…fake,” BoJack tells his former agent.

But in one of the most powerful scenes of the season, BoJack provides his mother with a fantasy of her own.

 

 

BoJack gives his mother the love and support she never gave him by turning a ragged room in a nursing home into a lake house in Michigan, where she is surrounded by family long-gone.

The scene BoJack is describing is reminiscent of the drug-fueled hallucination he had late in season one, where he lives happily at a lake house in Maine with a family of his own and away from the ugliness of Hollywood. Despite their resent for each other, both BoJack and his mother still yearn for the loving family they missed out on as children.

The scene would not be as powerful without the shared familial troubles the show has underlined through season four and the added depth to Bojack’s mother. But the last scene of “Time’s Arrow” provided both BoJack and Beatrice with hope for a better family life, which could give the titular character the greater purpose he’s searching for as BoJack Horseman gallops into season five.