S1E3_ Part B: Character Design & Structuring | 1/2 - "The Alchemy of Rounded Characters"_UNFILTERED

SHOW NOTE

 

Here's a brilliant question: "How does a cartoon horse become the face of human trauma?"

 

 Content Warning! 

This episode contains discussions of childhood trauma, abuse, addiction, and other mature themes. Listener discretion is advised.

 

Recap

In our last episode, we cracked the code on making characters unforgettable—unique looks, career-driven identities, and killer introductions by studying the blueprint of bojack's character desgin on a superficially apparent level.

 

INTRO

Today, we're going deeper to ask the harder question: how does a two-dimensional anthropomorphic cartoon become a cultural icon for human trauma? This is where we move from characters people remember to characters people feel. Welcome to Part Two of the Character Design Saga, where we explore what separates a memorable character from a truly rounded one. Spoiler alert: it's messy, uncomfortable, and absolutely brilliant.

 

PART A - Being Born BoJack Horseman

What does it mean to be born BoJack Horseman? Imagine opening your eyes for the first time and learning that crying makes your mother angry—that your very existence is blamed for her misery. Meet Beatrice, the ice-cold heiress who teaches you to hate yourself, and Butterscotch, the failed novelist father who makes you believe you're the reason he can't finish his masterpiece. At six years old, you're already the scapegoat for every parental fight, learning that survival means staying quiet and swallowing your pain.

Your only light in this darkness? Secretariat, a TV racehorse who becomes the father figure you desperately need. At nine, you write him a letter asking the question that will haunt you forever: "How do you not be sad?" His answer becomes your life philosophy: "Keep running forward. Don't ever look behind you." It sounds like solid advice—until Secretariat jumps off a bridge, proving that even he couldn't outrun his demons.

Fast forward to your fifties. You've escaped to LA, achieved Hollywood fame, and tried to fill the void with sex, alcohol, and validation. Nothing works. When you finally land your dream role playing Secretariat in a biopic, you can't cry on camera—horsemen don't cry, remember? Then your mother calls with words that shatter you completely: "You were born broken, and that's your birthright. You're BoJack Horseman, and there is no cure for that." Something inside you breaks irreparably, and for the first time, the tears flow.

This is BoJack Horseman: a character so broken he becomes the poster child for childhood trauma, yet somehow still has a heart that wants to change. This is what it means to be truly complex.

 

PART B - Introduction to the Rounded Character

When asked to name the simplest character in fiction, the answer is obvious: Luffy from One Piece. His mindset is beautifully straightforward—if Luffy met BoJack, he'd slap him on the back and say, "I don't care about your trauma. What you did was wrong. Don't hurt my friends." Luffy knows what's good and pursues it without debate. That's what makes him simple.

But here's the thing: simple doesn't mean shallow. In literature, characters fall into categories—round or flat, dynamic or static. Round characters are complex and multifaceted with depth and range. Flat characters are one-dimensional, often existing for a single purpose. Dynamic characters change throughout the story, while static characters remain essentially the same.

Luffy is static (his core never changes) but rounded (we see his anger, joy, fear, and fierce loyalty). Saitama from One Punch Man is flat and static, existing primarily for comedy. High school bullies who suddenly turn good are flat but dynamic—they change without much depth. Dumbledore is rounded but static—complex backstory, but fundamentally unchanged. And then there's BoJack: rounded AND dynamic, the gold standard that most writers chase.

For a character to be truly rounded, they need five key attributes: Complexity, Depth, Development, Transformation, and Relatability. In this episode, we're diving deep into the first element—Complexity—and exploring what makes BoJack one of the most complex characters ever written.

 

PART C - Complexity as a Tool in Crafting Rounded Characters - The BJ Case Study

Here's where BoJack gets fascinating. In flashbacks, we see a cheerful sitcom star from the '80s—friendly, likable, the kind of person you'd want to spend time with. Cut to present day, and we meet a gloomy, washed-up celebrity who can't stand himself. These are the same person. The horse hates the reality of himself, so he buries himself in the fictional version he prefers.

There's this moment in the first episode where BoJack is rewatching his old show, laughing at a joke: "Neigh way, Jose!" He's proud because "neigh" means no, but it's also what horses say. It's one of the few times he doesn't hate being a horse. This is the first clue to BoJack's complexity—he's a living paradox. He's a horse who hates horses, including himself. Yet occasionally, he embraces his horse identity just enough to remind us how conflicted he truly is.

Despite being a horse, BoJack's experiences are so deeply human that you forget what he looks like. He becomes a blank canvas for human trauma, a projection of your own struggles. When his mother tells him as a child, "You ruined me by being born," that's not a horse problem—that's a human wound. This is complexity at its finest: physical appearance contradicting behavioral reality.

The Takeaway: Want to create complexity? Make your character's physical attributes contradict their behavior. A beautiful woman with an ugly personality. A shy fox who's secretly cunning. A mermaid who wants to be human. A god who doesn't know he's a god. The contrast is addictive—our brains love that tension.

The Moral Gray Zone

BoJack isn't good. But after watching his entire story, you can't simply call him bad either. He's flawed, problematic, the kind of person you'd avoid on his worst days—but the show never presents him as evil. This is moral complexity at its peak, the formula for anti-villains: bad guys who do terrible things, yet you can't quite hate them because you see glimpses of goodness.

Take the Sarah Lynn tragedy. She's a former child star spiraling into addiction, and BoJack tries to help by letting her crash at his place. But BoJack has addiction problems too. How can someone who doesn't understand sobriety help someone who's not sober? He becomes an unconscious enabler, eventually initiating a bender that leads to her death. He thought he was helping. He didn't want her to die. But his lack of self-awareness made him a perpetrator.

Before you label him evil, the show asks: Could BoJack be you? Have you ever invited a friend into a harmful activity because you needed a partner in your vice? Have you ever felt guilt but twisted the narrative to make yourself the victim, saying "I didn't force you" while forgetting that they looked up to you, trusted you, wanted to be there for you?

Then there's the Penny situation—the most controversial episode in the series. BoJack befriends his longtime crush's seventeen-year-old daughter during a two-month stay. He takes her to prom. She develops feelings. He refuses multiple times. But he leaves his door open. She sneaks in. They're caught in a compromising position. Later, BoJack admits he's not sure he would've stopped if they weren't caught.

People debate this endlessly: Is he entirely to blame? He's the adult. He should've stood his ground. But she insisted, argued she was legally an adult, begged him. Why did he leave his door open? The show doesn't give you an easy answer. It gives you complexity—the kind that makes you uncomfortable because it forces you to examine your own capacity for harm.

In both cases—Sarah Lynn and Penny—BoJack feels guilt and shame. But what's missing is remorse. And that's where the show gets really interesting.

Inside the Mind of a "Stupid Piece of Shit"

Internal conflict is how writers show us what characters are thinking, and BoJack Horseman has entire episodes dedicated to BoJack's internal monologue. Season four, episode six—"Stupid Piece of Shit"—is a masterclass. We spend a day inside BoJack's head as he wakes up calling himself a stupid piece of shit, continues his day insulting himself, harms people around him, then berates himself for hurting others, which causes him to harm more people, which makes him insult himself more. It's a vicious cycle: hurt people hurt people.

He believes he can't change, so he accepts his self-destructive ways, using them as an excuse not to own up to the pain he causes others. It detaches him from accountability. You, as the viewer, are privy to these dark thoughts—the kind we all have during our worst moments when we think, "God, I'm such a terrible person." You relate to that spiral. You empathize with the difficulty of those negative thoughts.

But here's the genius: you understand him better, yet you still can't excuse him. You see where the hate is coming from, you understand the cycle, but you still recognize what a stupid piece of shit he is to others. This is the power of internal conflict in complex characters—it creates empathy without excusing behavior. You judge from a place of understanding rather than ignorance.

The Reality of Human Consequences

Here's where BoJack Horseman diverges from typical storytelling. In classic narratives, the character makes a final sacrifice, does one good deed, and boom—happily ever after, all sins forgiven. But that's not how BoJack works. At the end of the series, BoJack doesn't simply become a good person. He's given opportunities to do what's right, and sometimes he takes them. But the show never lets him—or us—forget the damage he's caused.

There's a woman he strangled on stage while high on meth. He wasn't in control, didn't mean to, and later tries to make amends. As the audience, you think, "At least he's trying. What else can he do?" But that woman now has PTSD. She's terrified of men getting close to her. She's an actress who has to do intimate scenes, but she can't without reliving the moment she thought she was going to die. This is her life now. This is her story. BoJack can change all he wants—she still has to live with what he did.

It's like parents who abuse their children for years, then ask for forgiveness when they're old and fragile. The parent might genuinely change, might be truly sorry, but that child still has to go to therapy. That child still carries the trauma long after the parent dies. The show doesn't give us closure because life doesn't give us closure. It gives us the uncomfortable truth: as long as we're alive, every day is a choice between doing good or doing bad. Sometimes those choices aren't even black and white.

The creators don't tell us if BoJack is redeemable. Some viewers think yes, some think no. The depth of context allows each person to reach their own conclusion. Is this a happily-ever-after or a work in progress? The answer is: it's inconclusive, just like real life.

 

Why This Matters

In essence, a complex character feels like a real person with a rich inner life and history that informs their actions. This complexity adds depth and nuance to the story, making characters compelling and memorable. BoJack Horseman doesn't give us easy answers about good and evil. Instead, it gives us streaks of gray, forcing us to sit with discomfort and examine our own moral frameworks.

That's the power of complexity in character design. It's not about making characters likable—it's about making them real. And sometimes, real is messy, uncomfortable, and impossible to categorize. That's what makes it unforgettable. 

 

OUTRO

Thanks for listening, Pagers. Next episode, we're diving into character depth—the second ingredient in creating rounded characters that resonate. We'll continue exploring BoJack Horseman and uncover how the show builds layers that teach us about our own lives.

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