Review: BoJack Horseman ”Christmas Special”

The best way to think about the Christmas Special for BoJack Horseman is that it really is a social commentary on other generic Christmas Specials that every TV show (animated or otherwise) seems to get into.

Of course, Horsin’ Around isn’t above any of it and is just as guilty as anyone for upping the cheese when it comes to holiday specials and even dips its toes into every one of the tropes that you see in sitcoms today that largely have been in place for the last 20 or so years. In this case, we see BoJack do everything he can to make Sarah Lynn’s holiday the best it possibly can be. Problem is, living in an orphanage has her down and she wants her dead parents back in time for the holidays.

BoJack tries every which way to make Sarah’s holidays a happy one, but on Christmas day we’ve got no signs of the parents, but an ominous letter left by ‘Santa’ leads us to believe a higher power indeed stopped by the facilities to help the little orphan girl to soften the blow.

Overall, a rather enjoyable episode of BoJack Horseman, as this was the first-time we really got to see the titular star’s TV sitcom family for longer than a couple of minutes which was usually the case in the original series (unless of course, you count Sarah growing up and visiting). Unfortunately, it meant less time with the show’s principal cast so show favorites like Mr. Peanutbutter, Carolyn, and Diane were absent however fans of Todd should know that there is a decent amount of the Aaron Paul-voiced character.

As the episode wears on the obvious star is BoJack. Not so much for his dialogue in his TV sitcom because he largely plays it safe but during the bits in between Horsin’ Around segments where even HE was like ‘What the fuck?’ with some of the shit he was saying back in the 90s. The TV sitcom was a rather good representation of what normal 90s sitcoms would feature such as the break-out ‘Urkel’ type character that comes over to sexually harass someone living in the house, or silly one-liners producers would come up with that would hopefully stick with kids everywhere ala the aforementioned’s ”Diiiiiid I doooo thaaaat?’

In any case, Netflix offered up a rather nice surprise before we call 2014 a year, and it’s one that BoJack fans should certainly check out. Hell, even people who were kind of turned off by the initial season should enjoy this one due to the fact that ‘Christmas Special’ offers up parodies of not just 90s TV sitcoms, but of the prototypical Christmas specials that anyone growing up watching TV the last 20 or so years should certainly respect.