This
week I'm featuring TV episodes that have been nominated for 2021 WGA
awards, and in particular the things they do in their openings.
Written by Nick Adams, BOJACK 612 is just a couple episodes short of the series finale, and a huge episode in the run. After six seasons of bad behavior and half- (and eventually more than half-) hearted attempts to change, he's finally going to be confronted with every single awful thing we’ve seen him do, and on national television.
And, as with everything to do with BoJack, the catastrophe of that confrontation will be his own doing. Rule One of BoJack: He always destroys himself.
The Set Up
The episode itself lays out as two interviews: the first where he says all the right things, i.e. the things he says at the end of every season about what a piece of garbage he is and how bad he feels.
The second interview comes after he sees how successful he’s been at detaching himself from the horrible things he’s done with his tried and trough BoJack Sad Horse Song and Dance, and rides that ego train to disaster.
(It’s interesting to rewatch the episode in light of the ongoing revelations from FKA Twigs about the abuse she suffered from Shia LaBeouf. He’s gone to the press and apologized, saying he’d been “abusive to himself and everyone around” him. Twigs’ response is exactly what BOJACK is aiming at: “It just reminds me of some of the gaslighting that I experienced when I was with him. The sort of taking the blame, but not all of it, and then denying it.”)
So the episode is about artifice and the lies revealed when a light is shone on it.
Opening Sequence
We begin with Paige Sinclair (wearing Katherine Hepburn's wedding dress from PHILADELPHIA STORY), the reporter who has been gathering all of the dirt on BoJack for some time, furious that someone else is going to get the exclusive.
It’s been clear for a while that Paige is the ticking time bomb on BoJack’s history, so it makes sense we’d see her here. But she’s also a character with a radically artificial voice. Though the series is set in present-day Hollywood, Paige speaks in the rat-a-tat-tat, absurdly rococo style of His Gal Friday, both her insanely alliterative 40s journalism word choice and her vocal tonality lacking in any sense of realism.
That difference always makes her fun to watch. But it also speaks to that broader story about artifice. The sequence even ends with Paige getting called out, just as BoJack will. As she winds down a final breathlessly ridiculous sentence filled with word play, parallel phrasing and internal rhyme, Paige turns to her sister. “Why do you talk like that?” her sister wonders. “We’re from Fresno." Smash cut into credits.
There's a "prepping the audience emotionally" dynamic to all this as well. When a show introduces a character that speaks in a radically different way than everyone else, it changes the way we watch. Their voice jars us out of the lullaby Go with the Flow State that television usually tries to slide us into. We become more aware of ourselves as watching a TV show, and of the characters as characters, to be watched and evaluated, rather than simply accepted.
Which is exactly where the show wants us. As messed up as BoJack is, he’s still the guy we identify with. Will Arnett and the writers have mastered that tone of humble self-hatred that makes you empathize. By starting with Paige, Adams primes us to not be so easily seduced.
Takeaways
The main thing I take from that opening is the idea of Nothing Wasted. Every line of a script is real estate, and it can all be used to serve the story. I might not see how in the first draft or the third. But that last polish, that's what you're looking for.
Also, Great Stuff Doesn't Need to be Obvious. At Disneyland, every detail of the space in every single ride/adventure/animatronic nightmare zone (Pirates' Johnny Depp is literally the stuff of my nightmares) has been designed to create a fully immersive experience. When you walk into the Haunted Mansion, they want you to feel like you're in a Haunted Mansion.
But that doesn't mean you're supposed to notice everything. In fact the idea is that the illusion is so complete that you don't need to bother. You just know it to be true.
A script is the same way. I don't have to call attention to the fact that the opening sets up the whole story for it to do so and to do it well. In fact not calling attention to it makes the second and third viewing much cooler.
TOMORROW: Robot Comedians and RAISED BY WOLVES.
