Bojack Horseman: Understanding Grief and Trauma

The Old Sugarman Place is a heartbreaking stop in Bojack Horseman's journey, and it's also my favorite episode of the series. This story comes on the heels of Sarah Lynn's untimely death, at a point where the audience and Bojack are both grieving, and fittingly, grief is what's explored so thoroughly in this episode. Primarily through the eyes of Bojack, Honey Sugarman, and Eddie the Dragonfly, we take an in-depth look at the many ways death and grief can break us, and the way that improperly dealing with that grief can have major long-term effects on us and those we love. The Old Sugarman Place begins where season 3 finished, with Bojack watching a herd of wild horses run through the desert. He gets a call from Diane that he sends to voicemail before a beautiful Michelle Branch cover of America's A Horse With No Name begins playing. This song is fitting for a few reasons. One is obviously the horse connection, but I think even the name of the song is representative of Bojack's mental state. At this point in the series, Bojack doesn't want to have a name. He doesn't want to be Bojack. he continues to deny being BoJack throughout the episode by continuously ignoring Diane's calls, literally denying his identity to those he meets, and even giving a fake name to his neighbor Eddie. You told me that's what your name was. Hambone fake naming. The lyrics also say, The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz, which many people attribute to BoJack meeting Eddie in Michigan. But most interesting is the meaning behind the song. Writer Dewey Bunnell has said that a horse with no name is a metaphor for a vehicle to get away from life's confusion into a quiet, peaceful place. This is obviously directly representative of what Bojack is doing in the old Sugarman place, as he retreats to his grandparents old lake house in Michigan, running away from the grim reality of his life back in Los Angeles. One of the most brilliant things about this episode is that its two storylines actually take place around 70 years apart. In 1944, Bojack's mother, uncle, and grandparents spend their summer vacation at the lake house in Harper's Landing. In 2016, Bojack arrives at the same lake house, mourning the death of Sarah Lynn. The episode brilliantly showcases these two storylines simultaneously as they share a location, and we get some vital context for some of the traumas that plagued Bojack's family for generations. Despite Joseph Sugarman being incredibly problematic, the Sugarmans are an incredibly happy family. They laugh together, Honey and Cracker Jack duet, I Will Always Think of You. Honey is so lively and upbeat. Look at me! I'm a marching arrow! Of course, there are a couple pieces of haunting foreshadowing in this scene as well, alluding to Honey's ultimate fate at the end of the episode. First is that Joseph cuts off Honey and Cracker Jack's duet, citing that Time's arrow doesn't stand still or reverse, it marches forward. The song's lyrics are specifically about remembering the times that have passed and cherishing the memories of those you love. Joseph cuts off this sentiment at the piano, just like he literally cuts off Honey's ability to cherish the memories of those she's lost later in the episode. Honey was never given any real opportunity to deal with her pain and trauma, and of course there's this even scarier piece of foreshadowing right here. But I've got half a mind to kiss you with that smart mouth. Well, that half you can keep. Back in 2016, we see that Bojack is attempting to fix up parts of the Sugarman Lake house, but he's only tackling small aspects of the house's dilapidated state. Every time he fixes one small thing, something else collapses and breaks even further. This is representative of how Bojack is coping with his own grief. The truth is that foundationally, Bojack is broken, just like the old Sugarman place. But Bojack has neither the tools nor knowledge of how to fix that foundation. The little tasks Bojack gives himself are small distractions from the larger issues, and none of them solve the real problems at hand. Bojack spends months living in the dilapidated home before attempting to properly fix up the place. In a brilliantly blocked scene, we see Bojack forcing himself to watch the miniseries about Sarah Lynn's death, while in the background, we see the echoes of his family mourn the death of Cracker Jack. Honey, Joseph, and Beatrice return to the lake house to find Cracker Jack's childhood blankie, as Honey laments the loss of her son. The dialogue in the Sarah Lynn miniseries perfectly parallels the dialogue between Joseph and Honey. In the miniseries, Bojack says,"'She's dead?'As Joseph says,"'He's gone.'"Honey says,"'Oh, Joseph, I failed him.'"As Bojack says,"'Oh, Doc, I let her down.'" The Doctor says this was bound to happen, that's just show business, as Joseph says, that's just war, honey. It is a heartbreaking parallel. This is when we really get to know Eddie, the Sugarman's neighbor in Harper's Landing. He continues to fix Bojack's door despite Bojack stubbornly breaking it back off again, and he frustratedly asks Bojack this question when he sees the state of the Sugarman place. Do you even know how to- Anything. This obviously is in reference to how worn down the house is, but also applies to Bojack's inability to cope with his own grief. Ironically, something that Eddie struggles with as well. Bojack agrees to let Eddie help him, and the two spend the winter and spring fixing up the house. In their time spent together, we get a little bit of insight into Eddie. I don't fly. We also get more insight into Joseph Sugarman's toxic nature, and his inability to help his wife through the grieving process. As a modern American man, I am woefully unprepared to manage a woman's emotions. I was never taught, and I will not learn. This tragically leaves Beatrice to try and pick up the piece. pieces, something she's hardly equipped to do at age seven. And through all of this, Beatrice herself is never truly able to grieve. She lost her big brother, too. With her family woefully incapable of being a pillar of strength in her life, and her mother incapacitated by grief herself, Beatrice tries her best to remain strong through these events. This must have been truly traumatic. After Eddie and Bojack finish the house, Bojack isn't quite ready to move on. he finds one last thing for them to fix, the missing weather vane from atop the house. This is when we get more insight into Eddie's life. He recognizes the weather vane and retreats to watch a videotape of his own anniversary. We see that his wife Lorraine's belongings are still strewn about the room as though she still lives there, an indication of his inability to move on. We also see that when he was with Lorraine, he did fly. Bojack picks up on this. The two go to retrieve the weather vane after this. Next, we see Honey and Beatrice watching the fireworks that mark the end of World War II, and the two decide to go into town and celebrate. ending up in the same location where Bojack and Eddie are trying to heist the weathervane. The next sequence is my favorite in all of Bojack Horseman. Across time, Eddie and Honey duet I Will Always Think of You. The song is beautiful and tragic, and the lyrics paint a picture of loss and grief that applies directly to both Honey and Eddie. Some of these lyrics include, I will always think of you, I see your face when each day is through and days go past, but memories, they last. Trying to restart, but thoughts of you haunt my heart. I don't want to be alone now, just biding my time. I need somebody dearly, and darling, you'd be sublime. It is clear how much pain and grief the two of them are in, and it really illustrates how difficult it is for them to move on. I'll take flight. Maybe tomorrow, not tonight. They want to move on. They want to move past their grief, but they can't. Maybe tomorrow, not tonight. One of the most interesting things about this sequence is that while the two of them are singing this duet across time, in their own time, they're just singing alone. You can particularly tell in 1945 that the folks listening to Honey are a bit concerned, including Beatrice. For long stretches of the song, she would be harmonizing without any actual accompaniment, or even a piano. This, of course, leads to Honey going a bit off of the deep end, drinking quickly, kissing Cracker Jack's friend Sal, crying out in pain. Instead of driving home drunk, Honey asks Beatrice to drive them home at only age seven, resulting in the two of them crashing into a gas station, another traumatic event for Beatrice's childhood. Eddie and Bojack escape with the weather vane and bond for a moment as they place it on the house. Bojack then jumps off the house in an attempt to make Eddie fly, thinking he's helping Eddie overcome the trauma. We learn that Eddie's refusal to fly stems from the fact that his wife was killed by an airplane engine, and that it was his fault. He insisted they fly higher despite her protests and she was killed. He blames himself. The two of them plummet into the lake and Bojack chooses to save Eddie, who wails in agony, claiming he doesn't want to live anymore. Bojack walks away shaken and proceeds to call Diane. And it doesn't take long for Bojack to start feeling like his old self. Oh my god, let me guess. The web series is about how funny he and his friends are, just like hanging out. Back in 1945, Honey's careless actions infuriate Joseph, and Honey begs him to take her pain away. Like Eddie, she agonizes over the pain that won't subside. She doesn't know how to overcome her grief. Through Joseph's anger and Beatrice's helpless defense of her mother, Honey admits she doesn't know how to be better, but she wants to be. And tragically, Joseph has a solution. The end of the episode reveals that Bojack is ready to head back to Los Angeles after about eight months in Harper's Landing. But that's not the only reveal. We of course learn the tragic outcome of Honey Sugarman's plea for relief. She has been lobotomized. Incapable of dealing with emotion, Joseph opted for brain damage. A truly devastating end. Beatrice meets her new mother, and we see that Bojack is ready to tear down the old Sugarman place. He's done living in the past and ready to move on. But what does this mean for Bojack? What was the point of this exercise in pain? grief, and tragedy. Well, let's explore that grief in depth. As I mentioned earlier, the Old Sugarman place is framed around the various ways these characters grieve after major deaths in their lives. Bojack loses Sarah Lynn, Honey loses Crackerjack, Eddie loses Lorraine. All of them move through the different stages of grief at their own pace. You may have heard of the 5 stages of grief, but we're going to look at an updated model that features 7 stages. Obviously, the stages of grief aren't a rule, but I think they're a useful tool for us to explore these characters. Stage 1 is Shock and Denial. Stage 2 is Pain and Guilt. Stage 3 is Anger and Bargaining. Stage 4 is Depression. Stage 5 is the Upward Turn. Stage 6 is Reconstruction and Working Through. And the final stage is Acceptance and Hope. When the episode begins, Bojack seems to be moving through the first couple of stages. His travel across the country comes across as numb, in a state of disbelief. He seems to be introspective, and knowing what we learned in Season 6, that Bojack waited 17 minutes before calling the ambulance when Sarah Lynn overdosed, he was likely feeling intense pain and guilt for what he did. We don't see much in terms of bargaining from Bojack, but shortly after he arrives in Harper's Landing, we do see anger. He lashes out at his neighbor Eddie, who's only trying to help him. Hey, what's your name? Eddie! Eddie? Why don't you mind your goddamn business? Next, the seasons change from summer to fall and fall to winter. This is stage four, Bojack's depression period. He even forces himself to watch the miniseries about Sarah Lynn's death, reliving the events he experienced. But next comes the ever-important stage five. After Eddie fixes Bojack's door and offers to help him fix up the house, we see Bojack's upward turn. He's calmed down and he's willing to work on something new rather than wallow in his depression. Brilliantly, Bojack's reconstruction phase is showcased through literal reconstruction of the old family lake house. But when they finally complete their work on the house, Bojack isn't quite ready to move on to acceptance. He quickly finds one final thing to fix on the house. Simultaneously, we see Honey work through some of the same stages in the 1940s. First, she is desperately searching for Cracker Jack's blanket, claiming that he needs it. This is shock and denial. Next comes pain and guilt. Honey blames herself for Cracker Jack's death. I never should have let him go. Unfortunately, Honey seems to sit in the stage for quite a while. After her dangerous fit of mania that nearly killed herself and Beatrice, we see her enter the third stage, anger and bargaining. Specifically, the bargaining aspect. She desperately seeks relief from her pain. Literally any answer, anything to take that pain away. I can't be with people and I can't be alone. I don't know how to be better, Joseph. Please fix me. I want to be better. Similarly, we see Eddie stuck in a singular stage of grief for a long period of time. We learn how his wife Lorraine dies, and he blames himself. He likely moved through the first two stages before we met him, but the entire time we see Eddie, he seems to be stuck in anger and bargaining. I don't fly. And the truth is that his refusal to fly is itself a type of bargaining. His guilt has changed his behavior, some type of a deal with a higher power. If he doesn't fly anymore, he is doing right by Lorraine. It grants him relief in his own mind. I haven't flown since Lorraine died, and now you ruined it. Following this, Eddie seems to fall into a deep depression. He cries that he no longer wants to live and agonizes at the lakeside. When we leave Eddie, it seems he may have hit his upward turn. He's no longer showcasing the immense anger and guilt, he's just confused as to why Bojack is tearing down the old Sugarman place. Unfortunately, Honey Sugarman wasn't granted the same opportunity. Because of the lobotomy, Honey was never able to move past the anger and bargaining stage. And while Bojack moves through most of these stages of grief, the question is whether or not he actually accepted what happened and truly moved on. After seeing Eddie's agony, it's clear that Bojack realized he does not want to wallow in pain in the same way that Eddie has for all these years. You think I just want to mope around in a shrine to the past getting off of my own guilt while the rest of my life passes me by? But what Bojack experiences later in the series draws into question whether or not he truly dealt with the trauma of Sarah Lynn's death. In this episode, the renovation of the old Sugarman Place represents the reconstruction and working through phase of Bojack's grief. But in the end, Bojack literally tears the house down. Did he metaphorically tear down the progress he made in coping with the loss of Sarah Lynn? The aftermath of the old Sugarman place lingers throughout the series. In season 6, Bojack still showcases a lot of lingering guilt in regard to Sarah Lynn's death. It haunts him throughout the first half of the season. To me, this indicates that Bojack never truly made it through that cycle of grief. He never really accepted the truth of what happened, and it's probably one of the reasons we see him relapse so hard in season 5. It isn't until Bojack leaves rehab that we see him hopeful. But even more tragically, the events of Honey Sugarman's lobotomy truly begin to unravel Bojack's livelihood even before his life started. Honey and Beatrice's final scene together is truly haunting. We see there are lingering feelings and memories left in Honey. She absentmindedly hits a piano key, the first in I Will Always Think of You, but is incapable of playing anymore. She barely remembers Beatrice at all. Beatrice is traumatized at the sight of what has been done to her mother, and we get the depressing context as to why Beatrice was so cold to Bojack. Beatrice, promise me you'll never love anyone as much as I loved Crackerjack. Absolutely devastating. The cycles of abuse and toxicity in Bojack's family run deep. Beatrice internalized this so deeply that Bojack never felt even an ounce of love from his mother his entire life. Instead, she chastised him, only giving him attention when he would perform the lollipop song. That type of attention from his mother led Bojack to seek it other places, through comedy, He became a jester, which led to his stand-up career. His stand-up career led to Horsin'Around, where he met Sarah Lynn. He pushed that same craving for attention from an audience onto Sarah Lynn when she was a child, and she also internalized it. She didn't stop dancing her whole career, even though she truly wanted to be an architect. And the pain and pressure of being a superstar for her entire life led to terrible coping mechanisms just like BoJack, and they enabled each other until it was too late. The Old Sugarman Place is about properly dealing with grief. but it's also about cycles of abuse. If Joseph Sugarman hadn't been so inept, so unequipped to help Honey deal with the pain and grief of the loss of her son, would anyone's life have turned out this way? Well, there's also the truth that there's a good chance Bojack never would have been born if things had gone differently. But there's also the chance that Beatrice wouldn't have perpetuated these same cycles of abuse. She would have grown up with a mother who loved her instead of a mindless husk and a demanding, unempathetic father. Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences outlive us all.

He gets a call from Diane that he sends to voicemail before a beautiful Michelle Branch cover of America's A Horse With No Name begins playing. This song is fitting for a few reasons. One is obviously the horse connection, but I think even the name of the song is representative of Bojack's mental state. At this point in the series, Bojack doesn't want to have a name. He doesn't want to be Bojack.

he continues to deny being BoJack throughout the episode by continuously ignoring Diane's calls, literally denying his identity to those he meets, and even giving a fake name to his neighbor Eddie. You told me that's what your name was. Hambone fake naming.

The lyrics also say, The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz, which many people attribute to BoJack meeting Eddie in Michigan. But most interesting is the meaning behind the song. Writer Dewey Bunnell has said that a horse with no name is a metaphor for a vehicle to get away from life's confusion into a quiet, peaceful place.

This is obviously directly representative of what Bojack is doing in the old Sugarman place, as he retreats to his grandparents old lake house in Michigan, running away from the grim reality of his life back in Los Angeles. One of the most brilliant things about this episode is that its two storylines actually take place around 70 years apart. In 1944, Bojack's mother, uncle, and grandparents spend their summer vacation at the lake house in Harper's Landing.

In 2016, Bojack arrives at the same lake house, mourning the death of Sarah Lynn. The episode brilliantly showcases these two storylines simultaneously as they share a location, and we get some vital context for some of the traumas that plagued Bojack's family for generations. Despite Joseph Sugarman being incredibly problematic, the Sugarmans are an incredibly happy family.

They laugh together, Honey and Cracker Jack duet, I Will Always Think of You. Honey is so lively and upbeat. Look at me! I'm a marching arrow! Of course, there are a couple pieces of haunting foreshadowing in this scene as well, alluding to Honey's ultimate fate at the end of the episode.

First is that Joseph cuts off Honey and Cracker Jack's duet, citing that Time's arrow doesn't stand still or reverse, it marches forward. The song's lyrics are specifically about remembering the times that have passed and cherishing the memories of those you love. Joseph cuts off this sentiment at the piano, just like he literally cuts off Honey's ability to cherish the memories of those she's lost later in the episode. Honey was never given any real opportunity to deal with her pain and trauma, and of course there's this even scarier piece of foreshadowing right here. But I've got half a mind to kiss you with that smart mouth.

Well, that half you can keep. Back in 2016, we see that Bojack is attempting to fix up parts of the Sugarman Lake house, but he's only tackling small aspects of the house's dilapidated state. Every time he fixes one small thing, something else collapses and breaks even further. This is representative of how Bojack is coping with his own grief.

The truth is that foundationally, Bojack is broken, just like the old Sugarman place. But Bojack has neither the tools nor knowledge of how to fix that foundation. The little tasks Bojack gives himself are small distractions from the larger issues, and none of them solve the real problems at hand. Bojack spends months living in the dilapidated home before attempting to properly fix up the place. In a brilliantly blocked scene, we see Bojack forcing himself to watch the miniseries about Sarah Lynn's death, while in the background, we see the echoes of his family mourn the death of Cracker Jack.

Honey, Joseph, and Beatrice return to the lake house to find Cracker Jack's childhood blankie, as Honey laments the loss of her son. The dialogue in the Sarah Lynn miniseries perfectly parallels the dialogue between Joseph and Honey. In the miniseries, Bojack says,"'She's dead?'As Joseph says,"'He's gone.'"Honey says,"'Oh, Joseph, I failed him.'"As Bojack says,"'Oh, Doc, I let her down.'" The Doctor says this was bound to happen, that's just show business, as Joseph says, that's just war, honey. It is a heartbreaking parallel. This is when we really get to know Eddie, the Sugarman's neighbor in Harper's Landing. He continues to fix Bojack's door despite Bojack stubbornly breaking it back off again, and he frustratedly asks Bojack this question when he sees the state of the Sugarman place. Do you even know how to- Anything. This obviously is in reference to how worn down the house is, but also applies to Bojack's inability to cope with his own grief. Ironically, something that Eddie struggles with as well. Bojack agrees to let Eddie help him, and the two spend the winter and spring fixing up the house. In their time spent together, we get a little bit of insight into Eddie. I don't fly. We also get more insight into Joseph Sugarman's toxic nature, and his inability to help his wife through the grieving process. As a modern American man, I am woefully unprepared to manage a woman's emotions. I was never taught, and I will not learn. This tragically leaves Beatrice to try and pick up the piece. pieces, something she's hardly equipped to do at age seven. And through all of this, Beatrice herself is never truly able to grieve. She lost her big brother, too. With her family woefully incapable of being a pillar of strength in her life, and her mother incapacitated by grief herself, Beatrice tries her best to remain strong through these events. This must have been truly traumatic. After Eddie and Bojack finish the house, Bojack isn't quite ready to move on. he finds one last thing for them to fix, the missing weather vane from atop the house. This is when we get more insight into Eddie's life. He recognizes the weather vane and retreats to watch a videotape of his own anniversary. We see that his wife Lorraine's belongings are still strewn about the room as though she still lives there, an indication of his inability to move on. We also see that when he was with Lorraine, he did fly. Bojack picks up on this. The two go to retrieve the weather vane after this. Next, we see Honey and Beatrice watching the fireworks that mark the end of World War II, and the two decide to go into town and celebrate. ending up in the same location where Bojack and Eddie are trying to heist the weathervane. The next sequence is my favorite in all of Bojack Horseman. Across time, Eddie and Honey duet I Will Always Think of You. The song is beautiful and tragic, and the lyrics paint a picture of loss and grief that applies directly to both Honey and Eddie. Some of these lyrics include, I will always think of you, I see your face when each day is through and days go past, but memories, they last. Trying to restart, but thoughts of you haunt my heart. I don't want to be alone now, just biding my time. I need somebody dearly, and darling, you'd be sublime. It is clear how much pain and grief the two of them are in, and it really illustrates how difficult it is for them to move on. I'll take flight. Maybe tomorrow, not tonight. They want to move on. They want to move past their grief, but they can't. Maybe tomorrow, not tonight. One of the most interesting things about this sequence is that while the two of them are singing this duet across time, in their own time, they're just singing alone. You can particularly tell in 1945 that the folks listening to Honey are a bit concerned, including Beatrice. For long stretches of the song, she would be harmonizing without any actual accompaniment, or even a piano. This, of course, leads to Honey going a bit off of the deep end, drinking quickly, kissing Cracker Jack's friend Sal, crying out in pain. Instead of driving home drunk, Honey asks Beatrice to drive them home at only age seven, resulting in the two of them crashing into a gas station, another traumatic event for Beatrice's childhood. Eddie and Bojack escape with the weather vane and bond for a moment as they place it on the house. Bojack then jumps off the house in an attempt to make Eddie fly, thinking he's helping Eddie overcome the trauma. We learn that Eddie's refusal to fly stems from the fact that his wife was killed by an airplane engine, and that it was his fault. He insisted they fly higher despite her protests and she was killed. He blames himself. The two of them plummet into the lake and Bojack chooses to save Eddie, who wails in agony, claiming he doesn't want to live anymore. Bojack walks away shaken and proceeds to call Diane. And it doesn't take long for Bojack to start feeling like his old self. Oh my god, let me guess. The web series is about how funny he and his friends are, just like hanging out. Back in 1945, Honey's careless actions infuriate Joseph, and Honey begs him to take her pain away. Like Eddie, she agonizes over the pain that won't subside. She doesn't know how to overcome her grief. Through Joseph's anger and Beatrice's helpless defense of her mother, Honey admits she doesn't know how to be better, but she wants to be. And tragically, Joseph has a solution. The end of the episode reveals that Bojack is ready to head back to Los Angeles after about eight months in Harper's Landing. But that's not the only reveal. We of course learn the tragic outcome of Honey Sugarman's plea for relief. She has been lobotomized. Incapable of dealing with emotion, Joseph opted for brain damage. A truly devastating end. Beatrice meets her new mother, and we see that Bojack is ready to tear down the old Sugarman place. He's done living in the past and ready to move on. But what does this mean for Bojack? What was the point of this exercise in pain? grief, and tragedy. Well, let's explore that grief in depth. As I mentioned earlier, the Old Sugarman place is framed around the various ways these characters grieve after major deaths in their lives. Bojack loses Sarah Lynn, Honey loses Crackerjack, Eddie loses Lorraine. All of them move through the different stages of grief at their own pace. You may have heard of the 5 stages of grief, but we're going to look at an updated model that features 7 stages. Obviously, the stages of grief aren't a rule, but I think they're a useful tool for us to explore these characters. Stage 1 is Shock and Denial. Stage 2 is Pain and Guilt. Stage 3 is Anger and Bargaining. Stage 4 is Depression. Stage 5 is the Upward Turn. Stage 6 is Reconstruction and Working Through. And the final stage is Acceptance and Hope. When the episode begins, Bojack seems to be moving through the first couple of stages. His travel across the country comes across as numb, in a state of disbelief. He seems to be introspective, and knowing what we learned in Season 6, that Bojack waited 17 minutes before calling the ambulance when Sarah Lynn overdosed, he was likely feeling intense pain and guilt for what he did. We don't see much in terms of bargaining from Bojack, but shortly after he arrives in Harper's Landing, we do see anger. He lashes out at his neighbor Eddie, who's only trying to help him. Hey, what's your name? Eddie! Eddie? Why don't you mind your goddamn business? Next, the seasons change from summer to fall and fall to winter. This is stage four, Bojack's depression period. He even forces himself to watch the miniseries about Sarah Lynn's death, reliving the events he experienced. But next comes the ever-important stage five. After Eddie fixes Bojack's door and offers to help him fix up the house, we see Bojack's upward turn. He's calmed down and he's willing to work on something new rather than wallow in his depression. Brilliantly, Bojack's reconstruction phase is showcased through literal reconstruction of the old family lake house. But when they finally complete their work on the house, Bojack isn't quite ready to move on to acceptance. He quickly finds one final thing to fix on the house. Simultaneously, we see Honey work through some of the same stages in the 1940s. First, she is desperately searching for Cracker Jack's blanket, claiming that he needs it. This is shock and denial. Next comes pain and guilt. Honey blames herself for Cracker Jack's death. I never should have let him go. Unfortunately, Honey seems to sit in the stage for quite a while. After her dangerous fit of mania that nearly killed herself and Beatrice, we see her enter the third stage, anger and bargaining. Specifically, the bargaining aspect. She desperately seeks relief from her pain. Literally any answer, anything to take that pain away. I can't be with people and I can't be alone. I don't know how to be better, Joseph. Please fix me. I want to be better. Similarly, we see Eddie stuck in a singular stage of grief for a long period of time. We learn how his wife Lorraine dies, and he blames himself. He likely moved through the first two stages before we met him, but the entire time we see Eddie, he seems to be stuck in anger and bargaining. I don't fly. And the truth is that his refusal to fly is itself a type of bargaining. His guilt has changed his behavior, some type of a deal with a higher power. If he doesn't fly anymore, he is doing right by Lorraine. It grants him relief in his own mind. I haven't flown since Lorraine died, and now you ruined it. Following this, Eddie seems to fall into a deep depression. He cries that he no longer wants to live and agonizes at the lakeside. When we leave Eddie, it seems he may have hit his upward turn. He's no longer showcasing the immense anger and guilt, he's just confused as to why Bojack is tearing down the old Sugarman place. Unfortunately, Honey Sugarman wasn't granted the same opportunity. Because of the lobotomy, Honey was never able to move past the anger and bargaining stage. And while Bojack moves through most of these stages of grief, the question is whether or not he actually accepted what happened and truly moved on. After seeing Eddie's agony, it's clear that Bojack realized he does not want to wallow in pain in the same way that Eddie has for all these years. You think I just want to mope around in a shrine to the past getting off of my own guilt while the rest of my life passes me by? But what Bojack experiences later in the series draws into question whether or not he truly dealt with the trauma of Sarah Lynn's death. In this episode, the renovation of the old Sugarman Place represents the reconstruction and working through phase of Bojack's grief. But in the end, Bojack literally tears the house down. Did he metaphorically tear down the progress he made in coping with the loss of Sarah Lynn? The aftermath of the old Sugarman place lingers throughout the series. In season 6, Bojack still showcases a lot of lingering guilt in regard to Sarah Lynn's death. It haunts him throughout the first half of the season. To me, this indicates that Bojack never truly made it through that cycle of grief. He never really accepted the truth of what happened, and it's probably one of the reasons we see him relapse so hard in season 5. It isn't until Bojack leaves rehab that we see him hopeful. But even more tragically, the events of Honey Sugarman's lobotomy truly begin to unravel Bojack's livelihood even before his life started. Honey and Beatrice's final scene together is truly haunting. We see there are lingering feelings and memories left in Honey. She absentmindedly hits a piano key, the first in I Will Always Think of You, but is incapable of playing anymore. She barely remembers Beatrice at all. Beatrice is traumatized at the sight of what has been done to her mother, and we get the depressing context as to why Beatrice was so cold to Bojack. Beatrice, promise me you'll never love anyone as much as I loved Crackerjack. Absolutely devastating. The cycles of abuse and toxicity in Bojack's family run deep. Beatrice internalized this so deeply that Bojack never felt even an ounce of love from his mother his entire life. Instead, she chastised him, only giving him attention when he would perform the lollipop song. That type of attention from his mother led Bojack to seek it other places, through comedy, He became a jester, which led to his stand-up career. His stand-up career led to Horsin'Around, where he met Sarah Lynn. He pushed that same craving for attention from an audience onto Sarah Lynn when she was a child, and she also internalized it. She didn't stop dancing her whole career, even though she truly wanted to be an architect. And the pain and pressure of being a superstar for her entire life led to terrible coping mechanisms just like BoJack, and they enabled each other until it was too late. The Old Sugarman Place is about properly dealing with grief. but it's also about cycles of abuse. If Joseph Sugarman hadn't been so inept, so unequipped to help Honey deal with the pain and grief of the loss of her son, would anyone's life have turned out this way? Well, there's also the truth that there's a good chance Bojack never would have been born if things had gone differently. But there's also the chance that Beatrice wouldn't have perpetuated these same cycles of abuse. She would have grown up with a mother who loved her instead of a mindless husk and a demanding, unempathetic father. Actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences outlive us all.

Transcript for:Bojack Horseman: Understanding Grief and Trauma

Transcript for:
Bojack Horseman: Understanding Grief and Trauma