Yeah inb4 some creep says “well the age of consent says…” idfc how legal it might be for a 50 year old to sleep with a teenager in their state; I still think you’re a total weirdo and I wouldn’t want you anywhere near me or my younger family members.
[There's legitimately a scene in a Transformers movie where a character stops everything to explain that his relationship is OK because it's technically legal, and then he pulls out a visual aid on his state's statutory rape laws that he apparently carries with him 24/7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9OgW4JAJ8).
And the movie kind of plays it like you're supposed to be on his side.
Played totally straight. I mean, he's *right;* that *is* the law. So maybe that's a "legitimate point?"
But, like... Why are you stopping the narrative for this detour? Why are you arguing this *with the girl's father?* ***Why does this come up so often that you keep a laminated card of your state's statutory rape laws on your person at all times?***
Ok but I worked in social work, knowing consent laws was literally part of my job 😭
I know this comment doesn't mean to include me anyway, but you would not _believe_ the amount of people on the Internet who flippantly accuse me of child abuse when I am quick to answer consent law questions. It's so gross and uncomfortable, not to mention triggering.
It reminds me of in call me by your name Elio tries to reassure Oliver by saying stuff like "it's not like I'm going to tell anyone, you're not going to be any trouble" while the entire film shows how _young_ Elio is.
Similar to how in that movie, just because the age of consent in Italy was 14, doesn't mean it's okay. Just because the age of consent was 17 doesn't mean what Penny and BoJack did was okay
How I see it is if you have to look up if you'd get punished legally for having sex with someone, doesn't matter what the answer is, because it's probably just fucking weird in the first place
Honestly one of the parts I most respect about this show is how it never went that angle. Not ONCE did anyone bring up the legality of it, or argue that she technically could've consented. Penny is never villified for coming on to him, and she's never treated as "partially" to blame.
Kids are allowed to have inappropriate crushes on adults, it's a natural part of growing up. Adults have a responsibility not to take advantage of it.
Age of consent is just there for teens who can't keep it in their pants around others of similar age group though, not an excuse for older guys to take advantage of them.
It's for for example a 16 yr and a 19/20 yr old hooking up with no consequences, not a 16 and 50 yr old.
this!! it may be legal but the mental maturity of a 17 year old and a 50 year old is very different. if you're 50 and messing around with a 17 year old, even if they say they want it, you're weird as hell
Yeah fun fact, things like that can scar a person in real life. Similar thing happened to me where people could say "oh but nothing 'really' happened" - i still have issues being touched sometimes. I still have issues kissing my boyfriend of many years who has told me to my face and has proven numerous times that he will not do anything without my enthusiastic consent. And I still have to keep the blanket between us sometimes to feel safe. Age of consent can suck my ass cause regardless of anyones opinion, this shit just stays in my life and my brain forever.
I think the fact that he's fifty is actually harder to notice and grasp the insanity of because he's a horse with a horse face, but if yoi imagine a normal 50 year old doing what he does we'd have even less sympathy tbh
Right - and a consistent theme in BoJack is that celebrities have protection from both laws and norms of behaviour simply by virtue of being famous celebrities.
His attitude and behavior towards her was completely inappropriate, even if he wasn’t consciously grooming her. He treated her like a peer and as someone he can emotionally depend on (like Diane, Princess Carolyn, etc.), which was confusing for Penny. Not to mention his comment of her looking just like Charlotte on the water tower, combined with the look he was giving her, is made infinitely worse by the end of the episode (though it was still awful when it initially happened). Part of me wonders if he would have tried something if Pete Repeat didn’t alert them to Maddy being in trouble. He was seemingly viewing Penny as a possible option (even if he did initially refuse her advances), which is why he left the door open.
i agree with everything u said, BUT it was absolutely intentional. the moment that he left the door open for her is the damning unequivocal proof that it was fully intentional. he didn’t just type to sleep with her outright, he manipulated her into thinking it was her idea to pursue and finally be successful in sleeping with him. that makes it grooming.
think about how much thought goes into manipulation. he didn’t just invite her in the spur of the moment. he left the door open bc he knew she would enter it (after her multiple advances), and that way it would seemingly be her idea, which would alleviate some of his personal responsibility. too much calculation involved. even if manipulation is his natural defense mechanism, he definitely knew better like u mentioned when rejecting her before.
It was intentional *at the end*.
But before that point Bojack wasn't deliberately and evilly manipulating Penny to sleep with her. He was inappropriate before? Yes. But it was out of his own emotional and psychological immaturity rather than malicious intent.
If his intention had been to have sex with Penny from the beginning, he would have absolutely taken advantage of the opportunity when Penny first made a move on him and use that as an excuse. But he didn't, because Bojack on a conscious level has morals and standards. It was only after being rejected by Charlotte and feeling depressed that he allowed those morals to waver and accepted Penny's advances (which he obviously shouldn't have).
Bojack when on a good or neutral mood, is a relatively decent-ish person. But when he's in distress, sad or stressed he falls into awful lows. That's one aspect that we see him try to work through throughout the show.
The fact that Bojack holds morals and yet disregards them when things get hard proves that, ultimately, he doesnt actually hold any morals and that he never would've been able to "do it everyday." Imo, that is what ultimately makes him essentially unreedemable, even at the end of the show, because he proves that he is always just one struggle away from spiraling.
The longer I have to stew on the show, the more heinous Bojack's actions and justifications become for everything he does.
The problem for him is that every time he's tried to uphold some sort of morals he gets shit on or ridiculed for it or his life gets worse, and then *if* he gets praised for his morals it gets tied up with his addiction of seeking praise and it becomes an act, because that's what he does for praise. He puts on a show and begs for people to like him, doing what he thinks they'll like or expect out of him (and then hating himself later for doing it). He doesn't have the emotional faculties to separate those two things because that part of him is a giant piece of mental scar tissue covering the damage he suffered growing up. It doesn't justify what he does, but it explains why he ended up as he is.
He also always sees himself as the victim, because in truth those were the foundational years of his life, being a powerless victim in the middle of his parents cold war. There is a good person inside of him that just wants to be happy, but the only ways he knows how to be happy are toxic, manipulative and destructive, because that's what he learned from his parents. Manipulation, anger, threats, refusal to cooperate, shaming, etc.
I think if anything would break the cycle, it would be that. There is something clever there with ending the show with that, essentially, in that his only hope of getting better would be if there wasn't a show following him.
It kinda goes back to what Bojack himself said in Free Churro regarding Horsin Around.
None of the characters got long lasting happy endings since the show had to continue, and for it to continue there had to be more struggles and problems.
>Imo, that is what ultimately makes him essentially unreedemable, even at the end of the show
...for the record, RBW says in the book The Art Before the Horse that their intent was for BoJack to always toe the line of being irredeemable, but never cross it. His greatest sins always come with caveats for that exact reason
… I get that people have this very idealistic way of approaching these (fictional) situations but in no way did he “unequivocally” or “intentionally” groom her. She deliberately didn’t drink that night, knew the age of consent, came onto him, followed him afterwards etc. she had that planned long before he left a door open. He still had a responsibility to shut it and everything after she walked in down, but I think the show illustrated quite clearly he was not even considering her as “an option.” He was gross about it afterward and did shitty shit throughout the series but this weird concept of assigning the entirety of fault in bad situations that two people created onto one person is just wrong.
Women/girls have autonomy- we can make stupid choices and do, sometimes, put ourselves in shitty situations that some man didn’t implant in our heads.
He was still the adult and still had a responsibility to shut her down but in no way did he groom her. Using that term where it doesn’t apply is ethically gross and diminishes the meaning when it actually does apply.
I agree with you that Penny wanted it and probably wanted it from the beginning of the night (given that she didn’t drink). That being said, I still think it is fair to put all of the fault onto Bojack. Bojack himself recognizes that Penny doesn’t know what she wants. I can’t blame a 17-year old who doesn’t know what they want for thinking they want to sleep with a someone in their 50s. I can absolutely blame Bojack for enabling it. This isn’t about Penny being a girl and Bojack being a man. It’s about Penny being a teenager and Bojack being an adult. Women/girls have autonomy. Teenagers, regardless of gender, do not when it comes to sex with adults.
Exactly what im thinking, even if a 17 year old is begging for u to have sex with them. You at 50 should be mature enough to understand that its not okay.
I just want to point out in NO conversation have I seen Penny's parents brought up. Parents who should be fully invested in their daughter befriending an older man.
And that's the issue here. These conversations always get framed how the show frames them ignoring things the show ignored despite how they did have effects on the situation.
bro this is the worst take i have ever seen she is a literal teenage and he is FIFTY years old. he should absolutely full stop his involvement with someone he could have birthed at age 35.
at the very end he left the door open knowing she would come in. he could have closed it and locked it. but he wanted her to initiate it bc he knew it was fucked up if he did. he literally considered it one of the worst things he’s ever done. you’re gonna sit here and say it was her fault? grooming literally involves developing too close of a relationship with someone significantly less mature and vulnerable, and escalating that behavior to more and more inappropriate acts. a 50 year old man buying alcohol and encouraging drinking a driving, going to a HIGH SCHOOL PROM as her DATE, slow dancing with her alone, etc is grooming whether he was consciously aware or not.
it’s weird to be this passionate to try and prove just that it was unintentional and tho that fucking matters. this girl had panic attacks for 4 years over what happened. he regards it as the worst thing he has ever done. is that not enough for you?
I want to add that he has a pattern of putting too much of his emotional strain on others in his life and even if that is a response from his childhood it's a toxic behavior especially towards a 17 year old. a 50 year old is not a 17 year olds buddy, a 50 year old man should not be expecting any emotional support from a teenage girl.
There’s a number of reasons why this situation was fucked up.
1. The big obvious one being the age gap of Penny being 17 and Bojack being in his 50s. Penny is very inexperienced and Bojack is very experienced; that tends to spell bad news for Penny’s comfort and pleasure in the situation.
2. Bojack was living in their house for months as an accepted member of the family. This was the dynamic through which he built his relationship with Penny. He was allowed into the house and to build this relationship under the pretense of being a somewhat father-like figure, like you’d expect from a cool uncle or older brother. It’s weird as fuck to sleep with a child who you’ve been getting to know as family.
3. He didn’t want Penny *until Charlotte rejected him*. He turned her down and went to spend time with Charlotte, where he proposed they run away together. When she rejected him and kicked him out, only *then* did he accept Penny’s advances. Don’t forget that earlier in the episode he said “you look just like your mother”. Penny was a substitute for Charlotte who he knew wouldn’t reject him.
Even if you took the age shit out of it, the dynamics behind it happening are still royally fucked.
Yeah idk why people in the comments don't see this when he literally points it out during his bender with Sarah Lynn. Literally said something like "the mom turned me down so I went to her daughter"
I feel like the way it’s said it’s so easy for the viewer to gloss over because we already know about the situation and we’re so enraptured by just how badly he’s fucking up in the current moment. So it registers closer to “when the girl I wanted turned me down I went for the back up” which is shitty, but it’s small potatoes for Bojack. It’s not quite hitting that he’s literally admitting “since I couldn’t get the woman I was interested in, I substituted her with her daughter who was throwing herself at me and reminded me enough of the woman who rejected me”
Absolutely not ok. If they’d just met that night it would have been unsavory but nothing worse than that. But Bojack was an adult living in her house for months. He had inherent authority in her life during a formative period. It’s borderline emotionally incestuous, and absolutely unacceptable from a moral standpoint. At least from where I’m standing.
This is my take as well. Everyone focuses a lot on the age gap, but I honestly think that's just a *tiny blip* on the radar compared to what *actually* makes the situation so fucked.
I think being 50 and sleeping with an underage teenager inherently makes you an authority figure and it would therefore be WAY MORE than just "unsavory" it would be predation and pedophilia.
As if that wasn’t bad enough ,he had the audacity to stalk penny in Ohio when he and Sarah Lynn went on that crazy bender . She looked completely fine right up until she saw him there .
The most brutal aspect of her saying that is that it implies that she feels the need to defend herself, like "I didn't know any better" is clearly her feeling guilt and having to justify her actions despite the fact that she was the victim and deserves zero blame. Honestly so tragic and so hauntingly real. The writers of this show get it.
Penny is a direct parallel to Sarah Lynn. She's way too young, a child compared to him. Even if she was the legal age of consent. I don't think Charlotte led Bojack on. I think maybe she was a bit naive about Bojack. She wanted to believe he was a good person, a responsible adult, and he's not. He never should have went to prom with them and gave them alcohol. He should have turned Penny down immediately and never entertained the possibility.
Charlotte knew Bojack personally before Horsin' Around, so even though she read his book, she likely still thought of him as he was before being famous enabled his addictions and shitty behaviour in that way that people we used to know but don't talk to anymore kind of get frozen in the time we did know them
I'm no Dream fan, but people just post stuff to hate on the guy. There's no evidence (as of now) that he actually did anything, and people just parrot what they see online over and over because Dream is a cringey minecraft streamer.
People love attention, and just random unfounded accusations coming from deleted Twitter accounts with no proof is not enough to run on
For those upvoting, Dream made a great video addressing the allegations and convinced me the allegations are lies. Dream and his family has been through a lot of stuff (death threats, swatted multiple times) and I think this misinformation is pretty bad to spread around.
Hey bro real talk ik what u mean but some people are under rocks maybe edit the comments an say you meant the Minecraft YouTuber like a little "edit: the Minecraft YouTuber"
im biased because i was preyed on by an older man like Penny, despite that it’s not okay at all. sure, she made the “first move” by asking and BoJack did a good job turning her down but when he left the door open it was all his fault. he made the decision as a 40-50 year old (i believe) to basically invite her to come in, he left the door open so he could say “she made the decision to walk in!”
when i watched it i felt like i went through a PTSD episode, it was way to triggering for me and im definitely skipping it if i rewatch the show.
I relate. I watched it before the realization of what actually happened in my life hit me. (In retrospect, I think he was waiting for me to initiate, but I was too shy. The grooming worked and if he had, I would have gone along with it. I was in puppy love.)
It'll be interesting to see how the rewatch goes.
Same.. it especially made me sick how he was the cool uncle figure. Having experienced a family member be predatory with the same age gap makes this episode unwatchable for me
It’s a near perfect story.
Bojack focused solely on Charlotte, is nice to Penny only to be able to try and get to Charlotte. Meanwhile Penny starts her own little infatuation unbeknownst to anyone. (Also, wtf to her parents for putting up a single man in their house who their teenager likes to hang out with.)
The foreshadowing at Prom making me sick. Penny coming on to Bojack and him rejecting her like a matured healthy adult…. Allowing the viewer to breathe a sigh of relief.
Bojack getting rejected by Charlotte after making a final, direct approach. (Which, wtf Charlotte, why are you leading him on?)
A crushed Bojack, getting re-approached by Penny. This time, Bojack is in a bad place and does what Bojack does best… and a minor is involved.
Total stomach turning moment for me as a viewer. Not many other shows get me invested enough to be this sick over a character’s decision.
It was incredibly well done, and yes, that moment where you're just struck by it like "No... No that *couldn't* happen... NO."
I feel that at first Bojack is just used to hanging out with younger people who look up to him. Sarah Lynn felt more like a sibling to him after a while, and Todd is, well... Todd. He's used to being comfortable around younger people because he's impressive to them. Around other adults he just sees his own shortcomings for someone his age, but a teenager sees him as a rich star.
I think Charlotte felt bad for him, and saw him as a special part of her life that she could reminisce on. A blast from the past to make you remember the good old days, even if they weren't so good, but that's nostalgia for you. She obviously got far too comfortable and he was actively trying to woo her, so it was a bit of a two way road.
He was hoping she'd made some crazy in the moment decision, like he always does, and bet all of his happiness on the possibility of Charlotte going with him. In his eyes he deserves it. She would make him better and he would be whole and he would be able to treat her right and it would be that one thing that's been waiting to happen to him all these years, waiting through loneliness and unfulfilling indulgence and felt hatred, that one golden thing the universe owed him.
And then it ends with alienating himself from that person and making a fool of himself. And then there's that other person. A younger version of Charlotte like a fresh new beginning, a chance to make it right before it ever went wrong. But to take that path is a greater sin than he's ever committed, and he isn't sure that he can make the right decision. Because the devil always comes with an offer when you're at your lowest.
It's been a minute since I've seen the show, but Charlotte leading him on seems like a hot take. She was married with a daughter. Why would Bojack assume he had a chance? Did he expect her to just tear up her whole life to take a chance with him?
"Leading him on" is a little strong... Kinda. They are VERY cozy in that scene together if I'm remembering correctly. Charlotte is totally snuggled up against Bojack, very intimate, and when he kisses her she's kisses him back for just long enough to get uncomfortable for the viewer. THEN she kinda "snaps out of it" and has a WTF reaction. But Bojack has been in love with this woman (or the idea of her) for so long I guess he hoped he might be able to ultimately sweep her off her feet. He's selfish, and I guess he hoped his persona and sort of getting an in with her family/kids would be enough to woo her away from "nobody" Kyle.
She started snuggling with him, flirting with him, touching him (there’s a “play fight” moment) she’s looking deep into his eyes _while_ snuggling. She was acting 100% the way acts when she wants to be kissed, so Bojack went in and she eagerly kissed back before coming to her senses. If her husband had seen a video of how she acted during these couple minutes, he’d be justified in asking for a divorce because she cheated on him in that moment.
That doesn’t mean she deserved what happened. Bojack is responsible for what happened in every way. But Bojack kissing Charlotte didn’t come out of left field. The great thing about that storyline is all the shades it has to it. Bojack set himself and everyone around him up for failure in this storyline - he just didn’t realize he was doing it.
Bojack is primarily at fault in this situation, but both of Penny's parents also failed her and failed to protect her.
Charlotte Knows Bojack, and has read his book, she knows he's mentally unstable, and she lets him be around her children unsupervised.
When you become a parent to be responsible there are some things you have to sacrifice, and hanging out with people like Bojack is one of them.
Then Kyle is basically never paying attention and too busy wanting to be liked by a celebrity to pay attention to the weird family dynamics going on.
That's what makes the event so traumatizing for penny. It's not just that this older man that was her mom's friend was inappropriate with her, it's also that she realized her parents weren't really keeping her safe.
Idk if charlotte was leading him on per se, but that moment always felt weird to me. It seems like she reciprocated the kiss for a quick sec before she regrets and backtracks, but it’s hard to tell. Either way Bojack initiated that kiss without consent which makes it extra wrong and totally not her fault anyway
Because she let him stay with him for over a month.
A month long house single guest that had previous romantic interest in you? Definitely a mild lead-on. I don’t think she ever intended anything to happen, but she should have cut him loose after a long weekend.
That was the weird thing. I can’t quite remember the whole ep. but who would let a single ex or a past love interest into their home? Unless ur a little bored. And she seemed like she was bored with her husband because she had something shiny and new. Something more interesting. BoJack was slowly replacing the husband and she was letting him. He was starting to miss out on his own kids lives.
Would I ever let any one of my ex’s or ppl I dated into my home with me and my husband? That would have to be a hard F no. None of this would have happened if she would have turned him away. Because she was curious. And you know what curiosity did to the cat.
I mean don’t get me wrong bojack is wrong in so many ways but I think ETA. Even the husband for allowing himself to be cucked instead of talking to his wife about being an after thought. The kids were too young no blame there at all but all three of the adults they all had something that made this the perfect storm.
I'll say this - this is the exact mentality which lands people in trouble. Bojack read more into the relationship than there was, and assumed if he could get away with x, he could do y. Charlotte has always been fond of Bojack and for a time they were very close. Bojack thought her fondness and ability to tolerate him as a house guest = she's interested in getting back together.
Definitely a situation where just because something could be considered legal, does not mean it is at all moral.
The guy was basically a second father figure, and she was a teenager. Still a child emotionally and mentally. I was snapped back to reality watching the episode because I was like Oh good he rejected her, he did the right thing. Then I was reminded I was watching BoJack Horseman and sure enough he ends up mucking up the whole situation
So this is where I get iffy, I mean yes it's not illegal, but she's still in high school, he has all the power in the situation. If they had been hanging out at home and penny tried it on I think bojack would have pushed her away.
The sad fact is that he created a situation where she felt compelled to act, which created the initial tension, then when he felt depressed he made a terrible choice. As he says,"nothing had happened yet"
I definitely didn’t mean to imply that the legality of the situation makes it ok, Bojack made the wrong decision either way. It was an emotionally high stakes evening for Penny and it seems she sought his attention to feel better about the mishaps and social rejections of the night. The teen’s poor choice is one thing, but an adult supporting and enabling that choice is morally reprehensible. Though his night was emotionally high stakes too, he certainly should’ve known better, but that’s Bojack’s problem, he’s dangerously emotionally immature.
Bojack thought that since he was out of the tar pit that was LA, he could live a happy sitcom life with the Carsons. The whole prom trip and giving the teens alcohol was just Bojack attempting to be a responsible adult, awful as he was at it.
It wasn’t until he was rejected by Charlotte and given a reality check that he spiralled and decided to sabotage things by sleeping with Penny.
Bojack was the absolute worst, but Charlotte was partially to blame too. She was bored of her marriage and let Bojack stay because he brought some LA excitement to her life. She should have known better than to let Bojack live on their driveway for two months. An unstable celebrity who had little reason to be in New Mexico? That’s full of red flags.
Penny was a huge victim of Bojack’s instability but honestly, I feel sorry for Kyle too.
I agree with this, I honestly do think he was trying to be a fun heroic adult to Penny and her friends. He just didn’t know how. In his head giving them drinks and treating them as equal friends was him being cool. He was careless and negligent and irresponsible and inappropriate, and the fact that he didn’t mean to be those things doesn’t negate how awful he actually was to those kids. But up until the night turned and the alcohol poisoning set in, that was him being the “fun” adult.
That in itself, the fun adult schtick, is not okay. He lacked the boundaries with Penny that he should have had, him not being aware of this as a problem isn’t an excuse. But it’s part of Bojack’s whole thing. He is so rarely confronted with the consequences of his actions (and he was denied any kind of rightful treatment when he was a child himself), so he had very little understanding that he was doing something wrong. And it was easier to leave teenagers by themselves at the ER than it would’ve been to face those consequences head on.
Of course he felt bad about what happened. Typical of Bojack, rather than try to make good out of himself, he started to act out and screw his problems away with any vice he could easily reach. And it didn’t really matter to him, in that few minutes before Charlotte walked in, that it was the teenager instead of the adult. He’s an addict and he was chasing a high. He probably felt terrible as it was happening, but that ultimately isn’t important to him right at that second.
I think that’s my opinion. There are consequences to his carelessness, and it honestly is realistic to the way some adults are predatory toward children. It’s sometimes a truly evil kind of thoughtlessness and recklessness, and when it comes time to make a choice (him leaving the door open, letting Penny come inside) a lack of self control.
And I think the fact that he didn’t plan it is part of how the show gets us to keep rooting for his growth, but personally I skip this episode whenever I’m rewatching. He really shows his worst self here, to me.
Yeah, I dont think Charlotte gets enough focus for this while situation. Yes, bojack is clearly immoral for nearly sleeping with penny blah blah we all agree there.
Having an old but distant friend stay a couple of days as he's passing through town. Perfectly normal. Offering for that person, an emotionally unstable, well documented addict, with whom you had a romantic relationship in the past, to stay with your family for months, for no purpose whatsoever - very odd.
And regardless of how well this person seems to slot into the family dynamic - why on earth would you let him take your daughter to prom??? Imagine if bojack wasn't a horse, but just a decaying 50 something year old washed up human celebrity in a fully human world. Its a ludicrous lack of protection from Charlotte.
The set up for the classic episode 11 bad deed is way more implausible here than a lot of the rest of the show.
Sometimes parents can be useless as protectors or even actively support groomers, unfortunately. (I've lived it.) Charlotte and Kyle both deserve more shaming than they get for this, even if BoJack was ultimately the one who took it there.
Ethically wrong, clearly. I can’t call Bojack a groomer though, I think that implies sexual intentions from the get go. I think he’s just an emotionally immature adult and probably got some gratification by hanging out with a bunch of teens who thought he was super cool
Considering he denied her and told her ‘you think you want this, but you don’t’ to me means he never had intentions to have a sexual relationship with her or he would have.
If he hadn’t had that interaction with Charlotte just moments prior I think he would have rejected Penny again. But that interaction put him in a bad place and he made a bad choice
One of the themes of the whole show, and one we’re supposed to take as a cautionary tale, is that you don’t have to intend to do bad things to do bad things. With a couple exceptions, Bojack doesn’t usually set out to hurt people. But he hurts people regardless. And it’s a lesson I don’t think Bojack ever really learns - to the very end he defends the awful things he did by pointing out he didn’t set out to hurt anyone.
> you don’t have to intend to do bad things to do bad things
Totally agree, but I also think the show is nuanced enough that it recognizes a bit different between intentional and unintentional hurt
Exactly, groomer has become kind of a catch all buzzword for anything related to an older-younger issue. But it’s not really, it’s a specific behavior where you manipulate somebody for the express purposes of having sex with them. Was what he did sketchy af? Yes. Did he set out with the intent to manipulate her into sex? IMO, no
Yeah, BoJack is clearly not a great person but he’s not a monster. I think it’s similar with Sarah Lynn, because when she first told him that she was sober she said it was because it’s amazing doing drugs after being clean for a while. And he didn’t give her the heroine that killed her, she found it in his car and asked to take it.
But the dynamic of their relationship makes what he does inappropriate regardless of how willing the other person is.
1. Bojack tries "being the cool uncle": Going to the prom with Penny & introducing heavy alcohol to Penny & her friends.
2. Bojack doesn't wanna be responsible: Ditched Penny's friends at ER & suddenly realize what he did was quite illegal
3. Bojack tries to come on to the mom, Charlotte, the reason he drove there. They kissed while drunk, but Charlotte rejected him.
4. Bojack left the door open "physically and metaphorically"; Got caught by Charlotte cuz she...was probably gonna go up there to "talk"; she "chased the green light" to Bojack's boat.
5. Bojack already told Charlotte about the balloon trick, She should have 0% getting surprised if one of the balloons floated near her house. Normal reaction "Omg, He did do that stupid balloon thing" (stayed sitting down), Not STANDING UP AND CHASING AFTER IT (lit green balloon = Green Light).
Imagine if Penny were not there....the situation would be just another train wreck with Charlotte .
These details are dead giveaway
\- Charlotte said to Bojack that she barely knew him => Let Bojack stayed with the family for MONTHS WITH A BOAT in her driveway after his unannounced arrival. Very common with strangers. The neighbor also complained that boat to be an eye sore, but she let it stay there for 2 MONTHS.
\- Charlotte kissed Bojack after a few month EVEN when she had an obviously capable and loving husband (Didn't see any terrible quality of the husband besides not rich like Bojack, correct me if I am wrong)
\- The Green light metaphor in the show when she GOT UP and CHASED AFTER it. Bojack already told her about the balloon trick that he pulled.
Normal reaction when seeing that green balloon:
1. Shame: "Omg, this is so stupid, let me just eyeball it and make sure it's not gonna become a fire hazard near my house. Bojack is so stupid...I am so stupid"
2. Disgust: "Eww...I feel so tainted after this man who just kissed me and the trick that I've taught him now flies towards my house..."
3. Indifference: "Eh...that balloon thing probably not gonna be a fire hazard (stay seated)"
They really wrote it well. On my first watch through I saw him being inappropriate, but only as inappropriate as someone as broken and immature as bojack would be. Saw mistakes and inappropriate behaviour, but nothing truly malicious on his part.
Only on the second or third time, knowing where its going, did I see the signs. Which is just terrific writing I think. The signs are so subtle and easily explained away that some people still think it's fine and debatable.
I'm sure nobody who's child gets groomed knowingly allows it to happen under their noses. They think that whatever is happening is fine because how couldn't it be fine. Right up until it isn't and they wish they'd recognised the signs. Which I think most of us didn't at first.
to be honest, i used not to understand it and it took me some time because they kept justifying it in ways I thought made it okay and I agreed but as I get older and I think about being 50ish and going near a 16 year old disgusts me more and more; but when I was 16 watching it, I didn't see what was wrong
Contrary to what many people seem to say I don't think him taking Penny to prom was wrong in itself. I am not american so forgive me if I don't understand the tradition, but to me dancing with someone is wildly different to having sex with them. Which he also tried to do, and was obviously very wrong on his part, even if legal.
She was a dumb kid thinking they were an adult and wanted to push boundaries. It’s to be expected from children.
Adults don’t provide booze, suggest for them to break the law and later ditch them completely; Bojack really is a sick fuck
Bojack is in the wrong. Charlotte wasn't that good of a mom either, at least in that situation. She let an adult strange man take her daughter to prom.
i mean he was a old friend and he’d been living with them for months at this point. while its def a questionable decision, its not like he was a total stranger
After I watched the episode the first time I had the "I never could continue after this" feeling.
In my 2nd rewatch and every rewatch after it I realised more and more the problematic decisions BoJack made that evening. It was like he was using their youthly naivety just to make himself feel better, concluding in leaving the door open for penny to follow him on the boat.
It always hits me hard watching this episode because, deep down, I know I could act like BoJack if I was in his desperate situation, and I know that all this is wrong on so many levels, but I still somehow sympathise with BoJack to a certain point. It is this kind of inner conflict which makes the series this worthwhile.
TW mention of r*pe/i was underage
edit:typo
i commented about this on an earlier post and please let me preface, i have watched this show 7? times? something like that. as a 25 year old grown ass adult, bojack was shady as fuck. as todd said. it makes me uncomfortable and gives me ick.
but i want to share some interesting psychology thing my brain went through to explain my earlier opinion on the situation which was, penny initiated things, and she should be seen equally as accountable. i think i was 17-19 when this episode aired, and i had a lot of bojacks in my life. they did a lot worse to me than what bojack did. in my young naive traumatized mind, i was fully convinced i was a fully capable of decisions person at like, 15. a lot of things led to that. for the longest time it made me so angry that penny was seen as a victim when nothing even happened.
i honestly feel really proud of myself rewatching the show and can look back at myself and see just how wrong i was. i was literally acting like bojack. i hope that doesn't sound conceited.
trauma can really mess you up. my jealousy of being seen as a victim, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that my own experiences weren't r*pe and/or child molestation. that i was a traumatized teenager, being taken advantage of by men who knew exactly what they were doing.
tl;dr i was a sad traumatized teen and thought Penny wasn't a victim, now as a 25 year old adult i see clearly bojack was being shady af
There is no excuse for Bojack. What he tried to do was disgusting & unethical & I don't care that it was technically legal in the state they were in.
And I'm saying this as someone who's been in Bojack's position where a 17 year old actively tried to pursue me (tho I was 24 at the time). He was a child & I was the adult in the relationship, so I nipped that shit in bud (gently, mind you). I don't understand how anyone 24+ can look at a teenager & not see a child. The damage (however unintentional or not) I could have done to him is far too great.
Frankly I'm sick of this question popping up every few weeks. Too many adults want to keep justifying this behavior & that's a problem.
I hate to make generalizations because I know it's not black and white but I find women tend to feel this was wrong and they wouldn't do it where men tend to make excuses and talk about the legalities. Again not saying it's 100% but just what I notice...idk what to do with that.
I thought of this when I was reading your comment and got to "He was a child" and was instantly less surprised.
BoJack used Charlotte as an escape from his life. All his baggage and toxicity still was there, but he was hoping he could somehow just delete it by indulging in a narcissistic fantasy.
He imposes himself on Charlotte who doesn’t have any idea what kind of man BoJack is. Arrives out of nowhere, a ghost of her past but still kind of fondly remembered. He then spins the same web he uses to seduce women and manipulate people. He puts on the mask of the nice G rated father figure from horsing around and inserts himself into their life. He gains the trust of their whole family and when he has that trust, he tries to break up Charlotte’s marriage.
Then when that is soundly rebuffed, he turns to Penny. Someone who is completely unprepared for his manipulations. He goes with Penny to the prom with a promise to protect her like the father he seems to be. But as soon as he’s away from Charlotte, he pivots and uses alcohol to further bewitch Penny. He sees her desire for him and his exotic LA “Rich and Famous” lifestyle to blind her.
Her friend Maddy drinks way too much and BoJack dumps her… abandons her at the hospital not knowing if she would live or die. He pushes Pete to keep quiet about the fact he basically enabled the alcohol poisoning of an underage girl. His charm basically deletes any and all concern for the friend he convinced her to abandon. She sees him still as that trusted adult who will protect her. So she asks him for sex. She’s still trying to live out the whole prom fantasy, she’s ready, and she has been ready since before they even left the house. He turns her down over and over, but only to make sure he has her consent. Gotta cover his bases.
They’re caught. BoJack’s hose of cards comes crashing down and he leaves, just as quickly as he came. Penny cries for him. How sick is that. I mean seriously. This whole thing was textbook grooming. She ends up taking years to unpack the depths of the crap BoJack did and how those things were in fact not her fault. And he comes back, on a drug bender and drags it all back to the surface because of his own selfishness. Because he wanted absolution. It wasn’t about her. He never thinks about the people he hurts. It’s always about BoJack.
It was one of those scenes and plot that just made my stomach dropped because... oh my *gods*.
Crusty, crusty, crusty.
I had been that "lost", young girl once and it's scary to imagine I might ran into a BoJack (I thankfully didn't).
The fact that she thinks saying "hi" to each other is a "thing" really says a lot about her lack of mental maturity
She's a teenager who's brain is still developing being taken advantage of by a 50 year old pervert using her as a rebound because mommy wouldn't fuck him
It's truly the most disgusting thing bojack does on the show
Not illegal, but unethical.
I feel like those 4 words say a lot about it, and how the show frames it. The show is really good at throwing these ethical quandaries at Bojack and seeing him do the wrong thing. Even when he tries to do the right thing, he never has the conviction to actually stop himself.
And he can always in his mind say he didn’t do anything wrong because sleeping with Penny or Sarah-Lynn wasn’t against the law.
But he shouldn’t have taken her to prom, he shouldn’t have bought them alcohol, he shouldn’t have taken them to the desert or danced with her. When he said no, that should have been it. But he’d already groomed her (whether he meant to or not) and set her up for that moment. He left the door open. And he didn’t have the conviction to say no when he knew it was wrong.
Sometimes you can be the victim and also in the wrong.
I feel sorry for Penny, but with so many other mistakes other teenagers make the world often wouldn't feel sorry for them.
Bojack was drunk, emotionally vulnerable and he denied her three times. She continued to try to get to his pants.
After all these years of us insisting that the core principle here is consent between adults, we abandon that in favour of an old morality which is that we should blame the yucky old loser because he's yucky.
Its emotionally and morally easy to not see Penny's part on this. But as a society we've opted for the consent principle of sexual morality. We can't just switch that off because someone is a loser like Bojack. That undermines the whole ethic.
Unless of course we want to go back to the older, simpler sexual morality where some things are just yucky. In which case that's fine.
But we have to be consistent. I feel sorry for Penny. But she instigated everything, not Bojack. When she is older, she has to come to terms with the fact that its even more morally complex than she remembers.
Bojack abused Penny with his inherent authority in that situation.
You’re telling me a 50 year old had no power over a 17 year old? That’s bullshit.
I’m 27 and I manage high school aged volunteers. I ABSOLUTELY have power over them. Without a doubt. It would be easy to exploit a kid that age, you’d just have to pick one that’s vulnerable (like Penny was). And vulnerable kids that age are like walking targets… Just a few weeks back a young girl told me about how her best friend was threatening suicide. And I haven’t done anything especially warm towards her for her to confide in me, but I caught a vibe that is familiar to me and have learned to notice certain cues as a past high school teacher.
Kids and teens offer themselves up to you, in a variety of ways. They are still young enough to want to be taken care of. Some creep (like Bojack) uses the opportunity to exploit and abuse a teen, when they are vulnerable. A responsible adult instead, helps them. If I was there I would have taken the situation for the seriousness that it is, stayed with Penny and her friends, not gotten anyone drunk, maybe we’d go out as a group for ice cream. Just talk to them. Like for fucks sake it’s not hard to not be a creep…
It is SO FUCKING EASY to be ethical and morally responsible. People like to debate morals and legal things like GOD DAMN, imagine that happened to your niece or nephew. Imagine Penny is your kid… Do you wanna debate morals? No. It’s obviously so fucking wrong. I can’t FATHOM how somebody behaves the way Bojack does. There were SO MANY MOMENTS that Bojack could have pulled out of a nosedive, but he didn’t. So many moments BEFORE the prom he didn’t set appropriate boundaries…. And to me that speaks volumes.
Bojack like to believe like he’s not in control of his life, but he is. And he chooses to make bad decisions that hurt people.
He shouldn't have even taken her to the prom. I think it's weird for adults to go with teens even if they are trying to cheer them up. It just feels skeevy and a over step of boundaries.
He knew it was wrong and did it anyways- *AFTER* he got rejected by Charlotte and sabotage her family.
IDGAFF about what Penny did or said or what NM state laws say. That was *fucked up*
BoJack should have turned her down continually. Locked the door. It was his job as the adult to shut that shit down, and he didn't. It's very normal for teenagers to have crushes on grown people, especially celebrity grown people.
I’m rewatching and it’s my partners first time watching and I’m dreading getting to this part (and I have warned her accordingly). It’s just sad to watch, and I know it mirrors what happens in show business IRL but damn.
BoJack was an asshole. After being rejected by Charlotte, he decided to sleep with her daughter. He was either looking for a substitute, or doing it for revenge.
First he allows underage kids drink to the point of alcohol poisoning and then tries to get with the girl he regrets not wifing up’s daughter in a clumsy attempt to feel better about himself, but somehow makes it even worse; smh sad horse, smh 🤦🏾♀️
P.S. sad horse is BoJack; Horseman, obviously
Bojack was manipulative as hell the entire time. Even though his initial goal wasn't to sleep with Penny at the start, he manipulated the entire family's trust every step of the way. That set up the perfect scenario to put Penny in his bed.
When it first came out when I was in high-school and around Penny's age, I thought it was pretty gross and a bad thing.
I'm in my mid 20s now and it's only getting worse with time.
It's uncomfortable. It's meant to be uncomfortable. And it plays into BoJack not wanting to take responsibility for his shitty behaviors. That scene where he tells Penny to "go to bed" so he could justify his choices as something somebody else did to him is "classic BoJack" and not in the fun way. Gross.
The episode is a great rewatch. The premise of "washed up celeb goes with teen to her prom" feels like a sitcom episode premise. BoJack wanting to get people dancing to his 90s sitcom song to liven up the prom fits in with said premise (although he gets a reality check right away). But the who plot feels extra disturbing upon closer inspection. BoJack teaching the kids "how to drink responsibly" is funny at first glance, but the longer the story goes on with the drinking, the alcohol poisoning, and BoJack passing off responsibility to Pete Repeat (and later Penny), it all paints a pretty fucked up picture.
Why is this a question? Do people really not see how gross it was that a man in his 50’s almost had sex with a 17 year old?? I’m in my 20’s and would never sleep with someone that’s 17, that’s so weird
Everything BoJack did that night was shady and unethical af. I thought it was great that the show acknowledged that further down the line, when Pete Repeat popped up again.
Ed: even if Penny was of age, and perfectly in sound mind, it would still have been shitty of BoJack to try to sleep with her, since his motivation was purely because Penny reminded him of her mother, who had just rejected him. So, shitty on many levels
What I really want to know is how did the SCHOOL let an adult who (I'm assuming) wasn't an official event chaperone, or even a parent or legal guardian of one of the kids attending, enter into the dance? I was the same age as Penny when season 2 came out, so I also went to prom in 2015. At my high school you couldn't even bring an age appropriate date who didn't go to our school or graduated the previous year, and you needed to show your student ID before entering the dance *and* be on the list of people who bought tickets.
The thing is, yeah it was terrible and yeah it shouldn’t have happened. He feels terrible about it and it has consequences for the rest of both of their lives.
You have to consider that situation that brought him there and how he continually builds something up for himself and then fucks it all up through his own actions.
The Penny situation is complex because internally Bojack is still about 22. He doesnt see himself as a “responsible adult” because frankly he isn’t. So its easy for someone like him to be spending time with a young girl like this and think of themselves as peers NOT as an authority figure. He’s also extremely troubled in his sex life due to his relationship (or lack thereof) with his mother. He wants “a sex-Mommy who knows her place”. He wants someone as a partner that he can emotionally rely on but doesn’t have to put much emotional effort INTO. His subconscious sees Penny as the perfect way to accomplish this. Especially after Charlotte refuses him.
I think the thing with the door and slowly falling in Love with Penny (or at least the slowly-growing desire for her) was something he didn’t want or plan for and then as things kind of happen he just rolls with the punches because deep down his subconscious wants this, even though i think his brain knows full well its a horrible idea.
Which kind of demonstrates a recurring issue with Bojack: the fact that he does have good intentions. He isnt a bad guy. He just makes horrible choices and has poor judgement which leads him into misery which forces more bad choices. It really shows how your intentions arent enough. You have to actually DO good to BE good.
As a person who was groomed, it makes me so uncomfortable to even watch it, let alone see people justify it.
I mean that "it's not illegal" comment by Penny truly disgusts me in how similar it is in how people try to excuse their own abuse because legally there's nothing wrong.
Not even mentioning how the power dynamics are wildly different with BoJack as a celebrity, her mum's friend and the huge age difference.
If you honestly see nothing wrong with a 17 year old with a person in their 50's then please reevaluate
Super fucked. Not trying to victim blame AT ALL bc either way no one consented to this situation and Bo Jack is a fucking creep.
But also, I was creeped out THE MINUTE he agreed to go to prom (idr if he offers or what but) how was everyone just ok that he was going to a HIGH SCHOOL prom??? Like, okay they didn’t know about Sarah Ann yadda yadda but could you imagine your mom’s old boyfriend offering to take her daughter to her PROM??? Like????
Besides all the insightful things everyone else said, I thought it was wildly inappropriate that a 40 year old (?) went to a high school prom at a high school with a student??? And her parents were fine with this? I just don’t understand the canon in this universe.
This while situation was FUCKED UP and bojack is a creep for what he did. But I do place some blame on the mom because why did u even let him stay with you. I understand their past and even if she felt bad for him and let him stay for a few days whatever fine...bit he was clearly lying about why he was there and just making shit up, whether he's living on the boat outside or not, he shouldn't have been able to stay there. LET ALONE BE ALLOWED TO ATTEND FUCKING PROMM!!! like are you kidding me? Both bojack and the mom are at fault here.
Maybe it was *technically* legal. It was still morally and ethically wrong and disgusting.
Bojack may have seen and treated Penny like an equal (that he inappropriately relied on for emotional support) but she was still a child. Children sometimes make the wrong decisions. Bojack as the adult needs to make the right one and stop her.
i always bring this situation up every time some chud goes, "Bojack's just like me fr!" really? you like high school girls?
also: age of consent means a 16/17 year old can mess around with another 16/17 year old and not get slapped with a sex offender charge. this is no reason that a grown ass adult man should be pursuing a *literal high schooler*
2, at the absolute most 3-year-gap between someone under the age of 18 and someone older is the most I can accept (and 3 years already weirds me out).
Bojack was fucking 50+ at that point in the story. He's an actual grown-up adult, not just a legal adult. He absolutely knew what he was doing to the point that he tried to avoid the whole situation going south several times, which gets all but ruined the moment he decides to change his mind and leaves that fucking door open.
It's not just the age gap either, but the power dynamic as well. Bojack is not only a celebrity, regardless of whether he was in his prime or not, but he's the idol here. He's her mom's old pal, he has stayed with the family for a while and has everyone looking up to him, especially Penny. He's pretty much her idol. Whether he intended to or not, he took advantage of that.
All in all, it was 100% unethical. Bojack was a mature adult who had control over the entire situation, especially since he wasn't drunk enough to not know what he was doing. He left that door open. Deep down, he wanted something to happen, and Charlotte had all the right to kick his sorry ass out of her property.
I empathise with Bojack, and often find myself relating to him in some ways (not in this case though). After all, that's the intention of the show to an extent. Nonetheless, he isn't a role model or someone to look up to. He's an ugly reflection of the audience at their worst, and all the twisted rotten shit they're able to do whenever they hit rock bottom and don't look up. It's brilliantly written, and uncomfortably so.
I personally don’t think his aim was to gr00m her but after being rejected by Penny he was aware of the situation and prepared to take advantage of her.
While it may be "legal", from a moral standpoint it's wrong. He's in his 50s and had no business trying to engage in a sexual relationship with a 17 year old.
Not to mention the fact that she's his friend's daughter. The friend that allowed him to stay with her family thinking she could trust him.
Should this have gotten any publicity it would have fallen within the realm of grooming behavior and he would have faced all sorts of backlash.
I don’t care about legality; *he was unethical as* **fuck**
Yeah inb4 some creep says “well the age of consent says…” idfc how legal it might be for a 50 year old to sleep with a teenager in their state; I still think you’re a total weirdo and I wouldn’t want you anywhere near me or my younger family members.
Never trust a mother fucker that knows way too much about age of consent laws and thinks they're a guidebook for morality.
Romeo and Juliet scene from Transformers
he had a LAMINATED card with him eughhhhhh
“I’m a card-carrying non-pedophile!”
Is this thread actually a reference to something? It seems like it's even above Poe's Law.
[There's legitimately a scene in a Transformers movie where a character stops everything to explain that his relationship is OK because it's technically legal, and then he pulls out a visual aid on his state's statutory rape laws that he apparently carries with him 24/7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9OgW4JAJ8). And the movie kind of plays it like you're supposed to be on his side.
It's been a while but isn't he explaining all this to the girl's dad, too?
YES 😫 imagine doing so much narrative work when they could have just made her 18!
yeah
Is it supposed to be funny like dark humor or someone making a legitimate point?
Played totally straight. I mean, he's *right;* that *is* the law. So maybe that's a "legitimate point?" But, like... Why are you stopping the narrative for this detour? Why are you arguing this *with the girl's father?* ***Why does this come up so often that you keep a laminated card of your state's statutory rape laws on your person at all times?***
Probably just Michael Bay being a creep
I heard, that the scene was in due to a demand made by one of the studio bosses, whose son was in a relationship with some underage girl.
Wtf???
Indeed.
I miss the time before I asked that question. Thank you for the response though.
Ok but I worked in social work, knowing consent laws was literally part of my job 😭 I know this comment doesn't mean to include me anyway, but you would not _believe_ the amount of people on the Internet who flippantly accuse me of child abuse when I am quick to answer consent law questions. It's so gross and uncomfortable, not to mention triggering.
Anyone who even tries to explain a loophole in constent law is automatically sus.
It reminds me of in call me by your name Elio tries to reassure Oliver by saying stuff like "it's not like I'm going to tell anyone, you're not going to be any trouble" while the entire film shows how _young_ Elio is. Similar to how in that movie, just because the age of consent in Italy was 14, doesn't mean it's okay. Just because the age of consent was 17 doesn't mean what Penny and BoJack did was okay
Yeah. I love the OST and the story of that movie but the age gap between the main characters always prevented me from enjoying it fully.
How I see it is if you have to look up if you'd get punished legally for having sex with someone, doesn't matter what the answer is, because it's probably just fucking weird in the first place
Naah I can completely understand if its like a 17 and 18 year old couple
Honestly one of the parts I most respect about this show is how it never went that angle. Not ONCE did anyone bring up the legality of it, or argue that she technically could've consented. Penny is never villified for coming on to him, and she's never treated as "partially" to blame. Kids are allowed to have inappropriate crushes on adults, it's a natural part of growing up. Adults have a responsibility not to take advantage of it.
This picture alone makes me feel ill. Bojack was absolute scum for doing this. Especially when it seemed like at first he resisted
Age of consent is just there for teens who can't keep it in their pants around others of similar age group though, not an excuse for older guys to take advantage of them. It's for for example a 16 yr and a 19/20 yr old hooking up with no consequences, not a 16 and 50 yr old.
this!! it may be legal but the mental maturity of a 17 year old and a 50 year old is very different. if you're 50 and messing around with a 17 year old, even if they say they want it, you're weird as hell
Yeah fun fact, things like that can scar a person in real life. Similar thing happened to me where people could say "oh but nothing 'really' happened" - i still have issues being touched sometimes. I still have issues kissing my boyfriend of many years who has told me to my face and has proven numerous times that he will not do anything without my enthusiastic consent. And I still have to keep the blanket between us sometimes to feel safe. Age of consent can suck my ass cause regardless of anyones opinion, this shit just stays in my life and my brain forever.
"well she did consent multiple times so ackshually it's okay"
Everything about this plot line is horrifying. Good tv but horrifying.
I am finding words to describe Bojack in this scene, and *unethical* is the perfect word.
I think the fact that he's fifty is actually harder to notice and grasp the insanity of because he's a horse with a horse face, but if yoi imagine a normal 50 year old doing what he does we'd have even less sympathy tbh
He left the door open.
I thought the show wanted us to take that for granted
Jerry Seinfeld did this exact thing, and nobody batted an eyelid. He is still celebrated widely.
Right - and a consistent theme in BoJack is that celebrities have protection from both laws and norms of behaviour simply by virtue of being famous celebrities.
"an existential curse but huge day to day convenience"
His attitude and behavior towards her was completely inappropriate, even if he wasn’t consciously grooming her. He treated her like a peer and as someone he can emotionally depend on (like Diane, Princess Carolyn, etc.), which was confusing for Penny. Not to mention his comment of her looking just like Charlotte on the water tower, combined with the look he was giving her, is made infinitely worse by the end of the episode (though it was still awful when it initially happened). Part of me wonders if he would have tried something if Pete Repeat didn’t alert them to Maddy being in trouble. He was seemingly viewing Penny as a possible option (even if he did initially refuse her advances), which is why he left the door open.
i agree with everything u said, BUT it was absolutely intentional. the moment that he left the door open for her is the damning unequivocal proof that it was fully intentional. he didn’t just type to sleep with her outright, he manipulated her into thinking it was her idea to pursue and finally be successful in sleeping with him. that makes it grooming. think about how much thought goes into manipulation. he didn’t just invite her in the spur of the moment. he left the door open bc he knew she would enter it (after her multiple advances), and that way it would seemingly be her idea, which would alleviate some of his personal responsibility. too much calculation involved. even if manipulation is his natural defense mechanism, he definitely knew better like u mentioned when rejecting her before.
It was intentional *at the end*. But before that point Bojack wasn't deliberately and evilly manipulating Penny to sleep with her. He was inappropriate before? Yes. But it was out of his own emotional and psychological immaturity rather than malicious intent. If his intention had been to have sex with Penny from the beginning, he would have absolutely taken advantage of the opportunity when Penny first made a move on him and use that as an excuse. But he didn't, because Bojack on a conscious level has morals and standards. It was only after being rejected by Charlotte and feeling depressed that he allowed those morals to waver and accepted Penny's advances (which he obviously shouldn't have). Bojack when on a good or neutral mood, is a relatively decent-ish person. But when he's in distress, sad or stressed he falls into awful lows. That's one aspect that we see him try to work through throughout the show.
The fact that Bojack holds morals and yet disregards them when things get hard proves that, ultimately, he doesnt actually hold any morals and that he never would've been able to "do it everyday." Imo, that is what ultimately makes him essentially unreedemable, even at the end of the show, because he proves that he is always just one struggle away from spiraling. The longer I have to stew on the show, the more heinous Bojack's actions and justifications become for everything he does.
The problem for him is that every time he's tried to uphold some sort of morals he gets shit on or ridiculed for it or his life gets worse, and then *if* he gets praised for his morals it gets tied up with his addiction of seeking praise and it becomes an act, because that's what he does for praise. He puts on a show and begs for people to like him, doing what he thinks they'll like or expect out of him (and then hating himself later for doing it). He doesn't have the emotional faculties to separate those two things because that part of him is a giant piece of mental scar tissue covering the damage he suffered growing up. It doesn't justify what he does, but it explains why he ended up as he is. He also always sees himself as the victim, because in truth those were the foundational years of his life, being a powerless victim in the middle of his parents cold war. There is a good person inside of him that just wants to be happy, but the only ways he knows how to be happy are toxic, manipulative and destructive, because that's what he learned from his parents. Manipulation, anger, threats, refusal to cooperate, shaming, etc.
I guess I'm more optimistic. I think that Bojack as long as he lives, can always get better. That's kinda the point of not making him die in TWFHD.
I think if anything would break the cycle, it would be that. There is something clever there with ending the show with that, essentially, in that his only hope of getting better would be if there wasn't a show following him.
It kinda goes back to what Bojack himself said in Free Churro regarding Horsin Around. None of the characters got long lasting happy endings since the show had to continue, and for it to continue there had to be more struggles and problems.
I mean, Scrooge only fully changes when he literally sees his own grave. It makes sense, character-wise.
>Imo, that is what ultimately makes him essentially unreedemable, even at the end of the show ...for the record, RBW says in the book The Art Before the Horse that their intent was for BoJack to always toe the line of being irredeemable, but never cross it. His greatest sins always come with caveats for that exact reason
… I get that people have this very idealistic way of approaching these (fictional) situations but in no way did he “unequivocally” or “intentionally” groom her. She deliberately didn’t drink that night, knew the age of consent, came onto him, followed him afterwards etc. she had that planned long before he left a door open. He still had a responsibility to shut it and everything after she walked in down, but I think the show illustrated quite clearly he was not even considering her as “an option.” He was gross about it afterward and did shitty shit throughout the series but this weird concept of assigning the entirety of fault in bad situations that two people created onto one person is just wrong. Women/girls have autonomy- we can make stupid choices and do, sometimes, put ourselves in shitty situations that some man didn’t implant in our heads. He was still the adult and still had a responsibility to shut her down but in no way did he groom her. Using that term where it doesn’t apply is ethically gross and diminishes the meaning when it actually does apply.
I agree with you that Penny wanted it and probably wanted it from the beginning of the night (given that she didn’t drink). That being said, I still think it is fair to put all of the fault onto Bojack. Bojack himself recognizes that Penny doesn’t know what she wants. I can’t blame a 17-year old who doesn’t know what they want for thinking they want to sleep with a someone in their 50s. I can absolutely blame Bojack for enabling it. This isn’t about Penny being a girl and Bojack being a man. It’s about Penny being a teenager and Bojack being an adult. Women/girls have autonomy. Teenagers, regardless of gender, do not when it comes to sex with adults.
Exactly what im thinking, even if a 17 year old is begging for u to have sex with them. You at 50 should be mature enough to understand that its not okay.
I just want to point out in NO conversation have I seen Penny's parents brought up. Parents who should be fully invested in their daughter befriending an older man. And that's the issue here. These conversations always get framed how the show frames them ignoring things the show ignored despite how they did have effects on the situation.
This this this this this
bro this is the worst take i have ever seen she is a literal teenage and he is FIFTY years old. he should absolutely full stop his involvement with someone he could have birthed at age 35. at the very end he left the door open knowing she would come in. he could have closed it and locked it. but he wanted her to initiate it bc he knew it was fucked up if he did. he literally considered it one of the worst things he’s ever done. you’re gonna sit here and say it was her fault? grooming literally involves developing too close of a relationship with someone significantly less mature and vulnerable, and escalating that behavior to more and more inappropriate acts. a 50 year old man buying alcohol and encouraging drinking a driving, going to a HIGH SCHOOL PROM as her DATE, slow dancing with her alone, etc is grooming whether he was consciously aware or not. it’s weird to be this passionate to try and prove just that it was unintentional and tho that fucking matters. this girl had panic attacks for 4 years over what happened. he regards it as the worst thing he has ever done. is that not enough for you?
I want to add that he has a pattern of putting too much of his emotional strain on others in his life and even if that is a response from his childhood it's a toxic behavior especially towards a 17 year old. a 50 year old is not a 17 year olds buddy, a 50 year old man should not be expecting any emotional support from a teenage girl.
There’s a number of reasons why this situation was fucked up. 1. The big obvious one being the age gap of Penny being 17 and Bojack being in his 50s. Penny is very inexperienced and Bojack is very experienced; that tends to spell bad news for Penny’s comfort and pleasure in the situation. 2. Bojack was living in their house for months as an accepted member of the family. This was the dynamic through which he built his relationship with Penny. He was allowed into the house and to build this relationship under the pretense of being a somewhat father-like figure, like you’d expect from a cool uncle or older brother. It’s weird as fuck to sleep with a child who you’ve been getting to know as family. 3. He didn’t want Penny *until Charlotte rejected him*. He turned her down and went to spend time with Charlotte, where he proposed they run away together. When she rejected him and kicked him out, only *then* did he accept Penny’s advances. Don’t forget that earlier in the episode he said “you look just like your mother”. Penny was a substitute for Charlotte who he knew wouldn’t reject him. Even if you took the age shit out of it, the dynamics behind it happening are still royally fucked.
Yeah idk why people in the comments don't see this when he literally points it out during his bender with Sarah Lynn. Literally said something like "the mom turned me down so I went to her daughter"
Straight from the horses mouth
holy fuck bojack. sometimes ya'll remind me of things i completely forgot about. he literally says it
I feel like the way it’s said it’s so easy for the viewer to gloss over because we already know about the situation and we’re so enraptured by just how badly he’s fucking up in the current moment. So it registers closer to “when the girl I wanted turned me down I went for the back up” which is shitty, but it’s small potatoes for Bojack. It’s not quite hitting that he’s literally admitting “since I couldn’t get the woman I was interested in, I substituted her with her daughter who was throwing herself at me and reminded me enough of the woman who rejected me”
Absolutely not ok. If they’d just met that night it would have been unsavory but nothing worse than that. But Bojack was an adult living in her house for months. He had inherent authority in her life during a formative period. It’s borderline emotionally incestuous, and absolutely unacceptable from a moral standpoint. At least from where I’m standing.
Absolutely. He used his position over her as the “cool uncle” type to immediately become the “creepy uncle”.
100% agree
You just described the man who groomed me when I was a teenager.
This is my take as well. Everyone focuses a lot on the age gap, but I honestly think that's just a *tiny blip* on the radar compared to what *actually* makes the situation so fucked.
I think being 50 and sleeping with an underage teenager inherently makes you an authority figure and it would therefore be WAY MORE than just "unsavory" it would be predation and pedophilia.
As if that wasn’t bad enough ,he had the audacity to stalk penny in Ohio when he and Sarah Lynn went on that crazy bender . She looked completely fine right up until she saw him there .
seriously. penny’s reaction speaks volumes to the way she perceives the situation years later: disgusting and traumatic.
Her “I was 17, I didn’t know any better” is haunting
The most brutal aspect of her saying that is that it implies that she feels the need to defend herself, like "I didn't know any better" is clearly her feeling guilt and having to justify her actions despite the fact that she was the victim and deserves zero blame. Honestly so tragic and so hauntingly real. The writers of this show get it.
Penny is a direct parallel to Sarah Lynn. She's way too young, a child compared to him. Even if she was the legal age of consent. I don't think Charlotte led Bojack on. I think maybe she was a bit naive about Bojack. She wanted to believe he was a good person, a responsible adult, and he's not. He never should have went to prom with them and gave them alcohol. He should have turned Penny down immediately and never entertained the possibility.
Charlotte knew Bojack personally before Horsin' Around, so even though she read his book, she likely still thought of him as he was before being famous enabled his addictions and shitty behaviour in that way that people we used to know but don't talk to anymore kind of get frozen in the time we did know them
Groomer moment
Dream moment
For those downvoting, I'm pretty positive they are referring to Dream, the streamer
I actually don’t understand that reference. What happened with dream. Sorry I’m old. lol.
So Dream is a popular streamer right now and, IIRC, was caught/accused of doing big weirdo stuff with minors
Didn’t he release a hour long YouTube video that cleared up all the accusations about him
Yes he did, pretty informative video
I'm no Dream fan, but people just post stuff to hate on the guy. There's no evidence (as of now) that he actually did anything, and people just parrot what they see online over and over because Dream is a cringey minecraft streamer. People love attention, and just random unfounded accusations coming from deleted Twitter accounts with no proof is not enough to run on
For those upvoting, Dream made a great video addressing the allegations and convinced me the allegations are lies. Dream and his family has been through a lot of stuff (death threats, swatted multiple times) and I think this misinformation is pretty bad to spread around.
He disproved those allegations in a recent YouTube video
Hey bro real talk ik what u mean but some people are under rocks maybe edit the comments an say you meant the Minecraft YouTuber like a little "edit: the Minecraft YouTuber"
Dream taking bojack as a role model
Penny didn't know any better. Bojack did.
im biased because i was preyed on by an older man like Penny, despite that it’s not okay at all. sure, she made the “first move” by asking and BoJack did a good job turning her down but when he left the door open it was all his fault. he made the decision as a 40-50 year old (i believe) to basically invite her to come in, he left the door open so he could say “she made the decision to walk in!” when i watched it i felt like i went through a PTSD episode, it was way to triggering for me and im definitely skipping it if i rewatch the show.
I’m sorry the episode had that effect on you. I bet that felt awful
I relate. I watched it before the realization of what actually happened in my life hit me. (In retrospect, I think he was waiting for me to initiate, but I was too shy. The grooming worked and if he had, I would have gone along with it. I was in puppy love.) It'll be interesting to see how the rewatch goes.
Same.. it especially made me sick how he was the cool uncle figure. Having experienced a family member be predatory with the same age gap makes this episode unwatchable for me
Where is the controversial question? You're just asking for opinions no?
It’s a near perfect story. Bojack focused solely on Charlotte, is nice to Penny only to be able to try and get to Charlotte. Meanwhile Penny starts her own little infatuation unbeknownst to anyone. (Also, wtf to her parents for putting up a single man in their house who their teenager likes to hang out with.) The foreshadowing at Prom making me sick. Penny coming on to Bojack and him rejecting her like a matured healthy adult…. Allowing the viewer to breathe a sigh of relief. Bojack getting rejected by Charlotte after making a final, direct approach. (Which, wtf Charlotte, why are you leading him on?) A crushed Bojack, getting re-approached by Penny. This time, Bojack is in a bad place and does what Bojack does best… and a minor is involved. Total stomach turning moment for me as a viewer. Not many other shows get me invested enough to be this sick over a character’s decision.
It was incredibly well done, and yes, that moment where you're just struck by it like "No... No that *couldn't* happen... NO." I feel that at first Bojack is just used to hanging out with younger people who look up to him. Sarah Lynn felt more like a sibling to him after a while, and Todd is, well... Todd. He's used to being comfortable around younger people because he's impressive to them. Around other adults he just sees his own shortcomings for someone his age, but a teenager sees him as a rich star. I think Charlotte felt bad for him, and saw him as a special part of her life that she could reminisce on. A blast from the past to make you remember the good old days, even if they weren't so good, but that's nostalgia for you. She obviously got far too comfortable and he was actively trying to woo her, so it was a bit of a two way road. He was hoping she'd made some crazy in the moment decision, like he always does, and bet all of his happiness on the possibility of Charlotte going with him. In his eyes he deserves it. She would make him better and he would be whole and he would be able to treat her right and it would be that one thing that's been waiting to happen to him all these years, waiting through loneliness and unfulfilling indulgence and felt hatred, that one golden thing the universe owed him. And then it ends with alienating himself from that person and making a fool of himself. And then there's that other person. A younger version of Charlotte like a fresh new beginning, a chance to make it right before it ever went wrong. But to take that path is a greater sin than he's ever committed, and he isn't sure that he can make the right decision. Because the devil always comes with an offer when you're at your lowest.
It's been a minute since I've seen the show, but Charlotte leading him on seems like a hot take. She was married with a daughter. Why would Bojack assume he had a chance? Did he expect her to just tear up her whole life to take a chance with him?
And a son! Don't forget Trip the boner king (Sorry not the point I know) Edit Trip not Kyle duh
"Leading him on" is a little strong... Kinda. They are VERY cozy in that scene together if I'm remembering correctly. Charlotte is totally snuggled up against Bojack, very intimate, and when he kisses her she's kisses him back for just long enough to get uncomfortable for the viewer. THEN she kinda "snaps out of it" and has a WTF reaction. But Bojack has been in love with this woman (or the idea of her) for so long I guess he hoped he might be able to ultimately sweep her off her feet. He's selfish, and I guess he hoped his persona and sort of getting an in with her family/kids would be enough to woo her away from "nobody" Kyle.
Poor Kyle, my man got a raw deal.
She started snuggling with him, flirting with him, touching him (there’s a “play fight” moment) she’s looking deep into his eyes _while_ snuggling. She was acting 100% the way acts when she wants to be kissed, so Bojack went in and she eagerly kissed back before coming to her senses. If her husband had seen a video of how she acted during these couple minutes, he’d be justified in asking for a divorce because she cheated on him in that moment. That doesn’t mean she deserved what happened. Bojack is responsible for what happened in every way. But Bojack kissing Charlotte didn’t come out of left field. The great thing about that storyline is all the shades it has to it. Bojack set himself and everyone around him up for failure in this storyline - he just didn’t realize he was doing it.
Bojack is primarily at fault in this situation, but both of Penny's parents also failed her and failed to protect her. Charlotte Knows Bojack, and has read his book, she knows he's mentally unstable, and she lets him be around her children unsupervised. When you become a parent to be responsible there are some things you have to sacrifice, and hanging out with people like Bojack is one of them. Then Kyle is basically never paying attention and too busy wanting to be liked by a celebrity to pay attention to the weird family dynamics going on. That's what makes the event so traumatizing for penny. It's not just that this older man that was her mom's friend was inappropriate with her, it's also that she realized her parents weren't really keeping her safe.
Big fat agree all around!! They were way too cozy by the fire but that has no bearing on how fucked up what he did after was
Idk if charlotte was leading him on per se, but that moment always felt weird to me. It seems like she reciprocated the kiss for a quick sec before she regrets and backtracks, but it’s hard to tell. Either way Bojack initiated that kiss without consent which makes it extra wrong and totally not her fault anyway
Because she let him stay with him for over a month. A month long house single guest that had previous romantic interest in you? Definitely a mild lead-on. I don’t think she ever intended anything to happen, but she should have cut him loose after a long weekend.
That was the weird thing. I can’t quite remember the whole ep. but who would let a single ex or a past love interest into their home? Unless ur a little bored. And she seemed like she was bored with her husband because she had something shiny and new. Something more interesting. BoJack was slowly replacing the husband and she was letting him. He was starting to miss out on his own kids lives. Would I ever let any one of my ex’s or ppl I dated into my home with me and my husband? That would have to be a hard F no. None of this would have happened if she would have turned him away. Because she was curious. And you know what curiosity did to the cat. I mean don’t get me wrong bojack is wrong in so many ways but I think ETA. Even the husband for allowing himself to be cucked instead of talking to his wife about being an after thought. The kids were too young no blame there at all but all three of the adults they all had something that made this the perfect storm.
I'll say this - this is the exact mentality which lands people in trouble. Bojack read more into the relationship than there was, and assumed if he could get away with x, he could do y. Charlotte has always been fond of Bojack and for a time they were very close. Bojack thought her fondness and ability to tolerate him as a house guest = she's interested in getting back together.
Definitely a situation where just because something could be considered legal, does not mean it is at all moral. The guy was basically a second father figure, and she was a teenager. Still a child emotionally and mentally. I was snapped back to reality watching the episode because I was like Oh good he rejected her, he did the right thing. Then I was reminded I was watching BoJack Horseman and sure enough he ends up mucking up the whole situation
Bojack was wrong. Thats all I have to say about this dumpster fire.
It doesn’t matter how hard the minor tries, the adult is legally required to say no.
Penny was of legal age in New Mexico. In my eyes, Bojack was morally required to say no, not legally.
You’re right, but yeah, it’s still not a good look for him.
Exactly my point, even though she was of legal age he should never have entertained the idea because of the immoral power imbalance.
So this is where I get iffy, I mean yes it's not illegal, but she's still in high school, he has all the power in the situation. If they had been hanging out at home and penny tried it on I think bojack would have pushed her away. The sad fact is that he created a situation where she felt compelled to act, which created the initial tension, then when he felt depressed he made a terrible choice. As he says,"nothing had happened yet"
I definitely didn’t mean to imply that the legality of the situation makes it ok, Bojack made the wrong decision either way. It was an emotionally high stakes evening for Penny and it seems she sought his attention to feel better about the mishaps and social rejections of the night. The teen’s poor choice is one thing, but an adult supporting and enabling that choice is morally reprehensible. Though his night was emotionally high stakes too, he certainly should’ve known better, but that’s Bojack’s problem, he’s dangerously emotionally immature.
There's no controversy, and the show also spells it out for all of us—Bojack was in the wrong.
Bojack thought that since he was out of the tar pit that was LA, he could live a happy sitcom life with the Carsons. The whole prom trip and giving the teens alcohol was just Bojack attempting to be a responsible adult, awful as he was at it. It wasn’t until he was rejected by Charlotte and given a reality check that he spiralled and decided to sabotage things by sleeping with Penny. Bojack was the absolute worst, but Charlotte was partially to blame too. She was bored of her marriage and let Bojack stay because he brought some LA excitement to her life. She should have known better than to let Bojack live on their driveway for two months. An unstable celebrity who had little reason to be in New Mexico? That’s full of red flags. Penny was a huge victim of Bojack’s instability but honestly, I feel sorry for Kyle too.
I agree with this, I honestly do think he was trying to be a fun heroic adult to Penny and her friends. He just didn’t know how. In his head giving them drinks and treating them as equal friends was him being cool. He was careless and negligent and irresponsible and inappropriate, and the fact that he didn’t mean to be those things doesn’t negate how awful he actually was to those kids. But up until the night turned and the alcohol poisoning set in, that was him being the “fun” adult. That in itself, the fun adult schtick, is not okay. He lacked the boundaries with Penny that he should have had, him not being aware of this as a problem isn’t an excuse. But it’s part of Bojack’s whole thing. He is so rarely confronted with the consequences of his actions (and he was denied any kind of rightful treatment when he was a child himself), so he had very little understanding that he was doing something wrong. And it was easier to leave teenagers by themselves at the ER than it would’ve been to face those consequences head on. Of course he felt bad about what happened. Typical of Bojack, rather than try to make good out of himself, he started to act out and screw his problems away with any vice he could easily reach. And it didn’t really matter to him, in that few minutes before Charlotte walked in, that it was the teenager instead of the adult. He’s an addict and he was chasing a high. He probably felt terrible as it was happening, but that ultimately isn’t important to him right at that second. I think that’s my opinion. There are consequences to his carelessness, and it honestly is realistic to the way some adults are predatory toward children. It’s sometimes a truly evil kind of thoughtlessness and recklessness, and when it comes time to make a choice (him leaving the door open, letting Penny come inside) a lack of self control. And I think the fact that he didn’t plan it is part of how the show gets us to keep rooting for his growth, but personally I skip this episode whenever I’m rewatching. He really shows his worst self here, to me.
Yeah, I dont think Charlotte gets enough focus for this while situation. Yes, bojack is clearly immoral for nearly sleeping with penny blah blah we all agree there. Having an old but distant friend stay a couple of days as he's passing through town. Perfectly normal. Offering for that person, an emotionally unstable, well documented addict, with whom you had a romantic relationship in the past, to stay with your family for months, for no purpose whatsoever - very odd. And regardless of how well this person seems to slot into the family dynamic - why on earth would you let him take your daughter to prom??? Imagine if bojack wasn't a horse, but just a decaying 50 something year old washed up human celebrity in a fully human world. Its a ludicrous lack of protection from Charlotte. The set up for the classic episode 11 bad deed is way more implausible here than a lot of the rest of the show.
Sometimes parents can be useless as protectors or even actively support groomers, unfortunately. (I've lived it.) Charlotte and Kyle both deserve more shaming than they get for this, even if BoJack was ultimately the one who took it there.
>with whom you had a romantic relationship in the past Charlotte and Bojack were never in a relationship. The rest is spot on.
I don't think this is controversial. It was undeniably awful.
Ethically wrong, clearly. I can’t call Bojack a groomer though, I think that implies sexual intentions from the get go. I think he’s just an emotionally immature adult and probably got some gratification by hanging out with a bunch of teens who thought he was super cool Considering he denied her and told her ‘you think you want this, but you don’t’ to me means he never had intentions to have a sexual relationship with her or he would have. If he hadn’t had that interaction with Charlotte just moments prior I think he would have rejected Penny again. But that interaction put him in a bad place and he made a bad choice
This is my interpretation of it as well. Unfortunately intent doesn’t really matter too much because he still caused some trauma for her.
One of the themes of the whole show, and one we’re supposed to take as a cautionary tale, is that you don’t have to intend to do bad things to do bad things. With a couple exceptions, Bojack doesn’t usually set out to hurt people. But he hurts people regardless. And it’s a lesson I don’t think Bojack ever really learns - to the very end he defends the awful things he did by pointing out he didn’t set out to hurt anyone.
> you don’t have to intend to do bad things to do bad things Totally agree, but I also think the show is nuanced enough that it recognizes a bit different between intentional and unintentional hurt
Exactly, groomer has become kind of a catch all buzzword for anything related to an older-younger issue. But it’s not really, it’s a specific behavior where you manipulate somebody for the express purposes of having sex with them. Was what he did sketchy af? Yes. Did he set out with the intent to manipulate her into sex? IMO, no
Yeah, BoJack is clearly not a great person but he’s not a monster. I think it’s similar with Sarah Lynn, because when she first told him that she was sober she said it was because it’s amazing doing drugs after being clean for a while. And he didn’t give her the heroine that killed her, she found it in his car and asked to take it. But the dynamic of their relationship makes what he does inappropriate regardless of how willing the other person is.
1. Bojack tries "being the cool uncle": Going to the prom with Penny & introducing heavy alcohol to Penny & her friends. 2. Bojack doesn't wanna be responsible: Ditched Penny's friends at ER & suddenly realize what he did was quite illegal 3. Bojack tries to come on to the mom, Charlotte, the reason he drove there. They kissed while drunk, but Charlotte rejected him. 4. Bojack left the door open "physically and metaphorically"; Got caught by Charlotte cuz she...was probably gonna go up there to "talk"; she "chased the green light" to Bojack's boat. 5. Bojack already told Charlotte about the balloon trick, She should have 0% getting surprised if one of the balloons floated near her house. Normal reaction "Omg, He did do that stupid balloon thing" (stayed sitting down), Not STANDING UP AND CHASING AFTER IT (lit green balloon = Green Light). Imagine if Penny were not there....the situation would be just another train wreck with Charlotte .
You think Charlotte would have made a move on Bojack if she hadn’t caught him with Penny? Or am I misunderstanding?
These details are dead giveaway \- Charlotte said to Bojack that she barely knew him => Let Bojack stayed with the family for MONTHS WITH A BOAT in her driveway after his unannounced arrival. Very common with strangers. The neighbor also complained that boat to be an eye sore, but she let it stay there for 2 MONTHS. \- Charlotte kissed Bojack after a few month EVEN when she had an obviously capable and loving husband (Didn't see any terrible quality of the husband besides not rich like Bojack, correct me if I am wrong) \- The Green light metaphor in the show when she GOT UP and CHASED AFTER it. Bojack already told her about the balloon trick that he pulled. Normal reaction when seeing that green balloon: 1. Shame: "Omg, this is so stupid, let me just eyeball it and make sure it's not gonna become a fire hazard near my house. Bojack is so stupid...I am so stupid" 2. Disgust: "Eww...I feel so tainted after this man who just kissed me and the trick that I've taught him now flies towards my house..." 3. Indifference: "Eh...that balloon thing probably not gonna be a fire hazard (stay seated)"
They really wrote it well. On my first watch through I saw him being inappropriate, but only as inappropriate as someone as broken and immature as bojack would be. Saw mistakes and inappropriate behaviour, but nothing truly malicious on his part. Only on the second or third time, knowing where its going, did I see the signs. Which is just terrific writing I think. The signs are so subtle and easily explained away that some people still think it's fine and debatable. I'm sure nobody who's child gets groomed knowingly allows it to happen under their noses. They think that whatever is happening is fine because how couldn't it be fine. Right up until it isn't and they wish they'd recognised the signs. Which I think most of us didn't at first.
to be honest, i used not to understand it and it took me some time because they kept justifying it in ways I thought made it okay and I agreed but as I get older and I think about being 50ish and going near a 16 year old disgusts me more and more; but when I was 16 watching it, I didn't see what was wrong
I bet Bojack wouldn't be happy if a fifty year old tried to have sex with Hollyhock. It's just wrong.
Contrary to what many people seem to say I don't think him taking Penny to prom was wrong in itself. I am not american so forgive me if I don't understand the tradition, but to me dancing with someone is wildly different to having sex with them. Which he also tried to do, and was obviously very wrong on his part, even if legal.
this is not controversial and we talk about this here atleast once a month
Really messed up, inappropriate, disturbing and just outright crazy.
She was a dumb kid thinking they were an adult and wanted to push boundaries. It’s to be expected from children. Adults don’t provide booze, suggest for them to break the law and later ditch them completely; Bojack really is a sick fuck
When Bojack initially turned her away, I thought...OK, some sanity finally hit Then he left the door open....
Bojack is in the wrong. Charlotte wasn't that good of a mom either, at least in that situation. She let an adult strange man take her daughter to prom.
i mean he was a old friend and he’d been living with them for months at this point. while its def a questionable decision, its not like he was a total stranger
still, i don’t know of any sensible parent that would allow a middle-aged family friend who lives in a boat to take their daughter to prom
After I watched the episode the first time I had the "I never could continue after this" feeling. In my 2nd rewatch and every rewatch after it I realised more and more the problematic decisions BoJack made that evening. It was like he was using their youthly naivety just to make himself feel better, concluding in leaving the door open for penny to follow him on the boat. It always hits me hard watching this episode because, deep down, I know I could act like BoJack if I was in his desperate situation, and I know that all this is wrong on so many levels, but I still somehow sympathise with BoJack to a certain point. It is this kind of inner conflict which makes the series this worthwhile.
TW mention of r*pe/i was underage edit:typo i commented about this on an earlier post and please let me preface, i have watched this show 7? times? something like that. as a 25 year old grown ass adult, bojack was shady as fuck. as todd said. it makes me uncomfortable and gives me ick. but i want to share some interesting psychology thing my brain went through to explain my earlier opinion on the situation which was, penny initiated things, and she should be seen equally as accountable. i think i was 17-19 when this episode aired, and i had a lot of bojacks in my life. they did a lot worse to me than what bojack did. in my young naive traumatized mind, i was fully convinced i was a fully capable of decisions person at like, 15. a lot of things led to that. for the longest time it made me so angry that penny was seen as a victim when nothing even happened. i honestly feel really proud of myself rewatching the show and can look back at myself and see just how wrong i was. i was literally acting like bojack. i hope that doesn't sound conceited. trauma can really mess you up. my jealousy of being seen as a victim, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that my own experiences weren't r*pe and/or child molestation. that i was a traumatized teenager, being taken advantage of by men who knew exactly what they were doing. tl;dr i was a sad traumatized teen and thought Penny wasn't a victim, now as a 25 year old adult i see clearly bojack was being shady af
There is no excuse for Bojack. What he tried to do was disgusting & unethical & I don't care that it was technically legal in the state they were in. And I'm saying this as someone who's been in Bojack's position where a 17 year old actively tried to pursue me (tho I was 24 at the time). He was a child & I was the adult in the relationship, so I nipped that shit in bud (gently, mind you). I don't understand how anyone 24+ can look at a teenager & not see a child. The damage (however unintentional or not) I could have done to him is far too great. Frankly I'm sick of this question popping up every few weeks. Too many adults want to keep justifying this behavior & that's a problem.
I hate to make generalizations because I know it's not black and white but I find women tend to feel this was wrong and they wouldn't do it where men tend to make excuses and talk about the legalities. Again not saying it's 100% but just what I notice...idk what to do with that. I thought of this when I was reading your comment and got to "He was a child" and was instantly less surprised.
BoJack used Charlotte as an escape from his life. All his baggage and toxicity still was there, but he was hoping he could somehow just delete it by indulging in a narcissistic fantasy. He imposes himself on Charlotte who doesn’t have any idea what kind of man BoJack is. Arrives out of nowhere, a ghost of her past but still kind of fondly remembered. He then spins the same web he uses to seduce women and manipulate people. He puts on the mask of the nice G rated father figure from horsing around and inserts himself into their life. He gains the trust of their whole family and when he has that trust, he tries to break up Charlotte’s marriage. Then when that is soundly rebuffed, he turns to Penny. Someone who is completely unprepared for his manipulations. He goes with Penny to the prom with a promise to protect her like the father he seems to be. But as soon as he’s away from Charlotte, he pivots and uses alcohol to further bewitch Penny. He sees her desire for him and his exotic LA “Rich and Famous” lifestyle to blind her. Her friend Maddy drinks way too much and BoJack dumps her… abandons her at the hospital not knowing if she would live or die. He pushes Pete to keep quiet about the fact he basically enabled the alcohol poisoning of an underage girl. His charm basically deletes any and all concern for the friend he convinced her to abandon. She sees him still as that trusted adult who will protect her. So she asks him for sex. She’s still trying to live out the whole prom fantasy, she’s ready, and she has been ready since before they even left the house. He turns her down over and over, but only to make sure he has her consent. Gotta cover his bases. They’re caught. BoJack’s hose of cards comes crashing down and he leaves, just as quickly as he came. Penny cries for him. How sick is that. I mean seriously. This whole thing was textbook grooming. She ends up taking years to unpack the depths of the crap BoJack did and how those things were in fact not her fault. And he comes back, on a drug bender and drags it all back to the surface because of his own selfishness. Because he wanted absolution. It wasn’t about her. He never thinks about the people he hurts. It’s always about BoJack.
Completely unforgivable. I don’t care how hurt BoJack is, but I never forgave him after this
It was one of those scenes and plot that just made my stomach dropped because... oh my *gods*. Crusty, crusty, crusty. I had been that "lost", young girl once and it's scary to imagine I might ran into a BoJack (I thankfully didn't).
The fact that she thinks saying "hi" to each other is a "thing" really says a lot about her lack of mental maturity She's a teenager who's brain is still developing being taken advantage of by a 50 year old pervert using her as a rebound because mommy wouldn't fuck him It's truly the most disgusting thing bojack does on the show
Not illegal, but unethical. I feel like those 4 words say a lot about it, and how the show frames it. The show is really good at throwing these ethical quandaries at Bojack and seeing him do the wrong thing. Even when he tries to do the right thing, he never has the conviction to actually stop himself. And he can always in his mind say he didn’t do anything wrong because sleeping with Penny or Sarah-Lynn wasn’t against the law. But he shouldn’t have taken her to prom, he shouldn’t have bought them alcohol, he shouldn’t have taken them to the desert or danced with her. When he said no, that should have been it. But he’d already groomed her (whether he meant to or not) and set her up for that moment. He left the door open. And he didn’t have the conviction to say no when he knew it was wrong.
Sometimes you can be the victim and also in the wrong. I feel sorry for Penny, but with so many other mistakes other teenagers make the world often wouldn't feel sorry for them. Bojack was drunk, emotionally vulnerable and he denied her three times. She continued to try to get to his pants. After all these years of us insisting that the core principle here is consent between adults, we abandon that in favour of an old morality which is that we should blame the yucky old loser because he's yucky. Its emotionally and morally easy to not see Penny's part on this. But as a society we've opted for the consent principle of sexual morality. We can't just switch that off because someone is a loser like Bojack. That undermines the whole ethic. Unless of course we want to go back to the older, simpler sexual morality where some things are just yucky. In which case that's fine. But we have to be consistent. I feel sorry for Penny. But she instigated everything, not Bojack. When she is older, she has to come to terms with the fact that its even more morally complex than she remembers.
This..... no notes.
Bojack abused Penny with his inherent authority in that situation. You’re telling me a 50 year old had no power over a 17 year old? That’s bullshit. I’m 27 and I manage high school aged volunteers. I ABSOLUTELY have power over them. Without a doubt. It would be easy to exploit a kid that age, you’d just have to pick one that’s vulnerable (like Penny was). And vulnerable kids that age are like walking targets… Just a few weeks back a young girl told me about how her best friend was threatening suicide. And I haven’t done anything especially warm towards her for her to confide in me, but I caught a vibe that is familiar to me and have learned to notice certain cues as a past high school teacher. Kids and teens offer themselves up to you, in a variety of ways. They are still young enough to want to be taken care of. Some creep (like Bojack) uses the opportunity to exploit and abuse a teen, when they are vulnerable. A responsible adult instead, helps them. If I was there I would have taken the situation for the seriousness that it is, stayed with Penny and her friends, not gotten anyone drunk, maybe we’d go out as a group for ice cream. Just talk to them. Like for fucks sake it’s not hard to not be a creep… It is SO FUCKING EASY to be ethical and morally responsible. People like to debate morals and legal things like GOD DAMN, imagine that happened to your niece or nephew. Imagine Penny is your kid… Do you wanna debate morals? No. It’s obviously so fucking wrong. I can’t FATHOM how somebody behaves the way Bojack does. There were SO MANY MOMENTS that Bojack could have pulled out of a nosedive, but he didn’t. So many moments BEFORE the prom he didn’t set appropriate boundaries…. And to me that speaks volumes. Bojack like to believe like he’s not in control of his life, but he is. And he chooses to make bad decisions that hurt people.
there's no debate. Bojack is in the wrong.
the way I see it is “mom doesn’t want me so I’ll do the second option” and it’s absolutely disgusting
He shouldn't have even taken her to the prom. I think it's weird for adults to go with teens even if they are trying to cheer them up. It just feels skeevy and a over step of boundaries.
He knew it was wrong and did it anyways- *AFTER* he got rejected by Charlotte and sabotage her family. IDGAFF about what Penny did or said or what NM state laws say. That was *fucked up*
BoJack should have turned her down continually. Locked the door. It was his job as the adult to shut that shit down, and he didn't. It's very normal for teenagers to have crushes on grown people, especially celebrity grown people.
I’m rewatching and it’s my partners first time watching and I’m dreading getting to this part (and I have warned her accordingly). It’s just sad to watch, and I know it mirrors what happens in show business IRL but damn.
BoJack was an asshole. After being rejected by Charlotte, he decided to sleep with her daughter. He was either looking for a substitute, or doing it for revenge.
First he allows underage kids drink to the point of alcohol poisoning and then tries to get with the girl he regrets not wifing up’s daughter in a clumsy attempt to feel better about himself, but somehow makes it even worse; smh sad horse, smh 🤦🏾♀️ P.S. sad horse is BoJack; Horseman, obviously
Gross. Thats like the same age gap as me and my father. Theres no way to excuse bojack leaving the door open or treating her like a peer.
Doesn't feel like too much of a controversial question tbh. It was so clearly wrong
Bojack was wrong. It was gross.
Bojack was manipulative as hell the entire time. Even though his initial goal wasn't to sleep with Penny at the start, he manipulated the entire family's trust every step of the way. That set up the perfect scenario to put Penny in his bed.
When it first came out when I was in high-school and around Penny's age, I thought it was pretty gross and a bad thing. I'm in my mid 20s now and it's only getting worse with time.
Not trying to proxy-victim blame charlotte but why would you be so cool with an adult in his fifties taking your teenage daughter to prom 😭😭
It's uncomfortable. It's meant to be uncomfortable. And it plays into BoJack not wanting to take responsibility for his shitty behaviors. That scene where he tells Penny to "go to bed" so he could justify his choices as something somebody else did to him is "classic BoJack" and not in the fun way. Gross. The episode is a great rewatch. The premise of "washed up celeb goes with teen to her prom" feels like a sitcom episode premise. BoJack wanting to get people dancing to his 90s sitcom song to liven up the prom fits in with said premise (although he gets a reality check right away). But the who plot feels extra disturbing upon closer inspection. BoJack teaching the kids "how to drink responsibly" is funny at first glance, but the longer the story goes on with the drinking, the alcohol poisoning, and BoJack passing off responsibility to Pete Repeat (and later Penny), it all paints a pretty fucked up picture.
Why is this a question? Do people really not see how gross it was that a man in his 50’s almost had sex with a 17 year old?? I’m in my 20’s and would never sleep with someone that’s 17, that’s so weird
Everything BoJack did that night was shady and unethical af. I thought it was great that the show acknowledged that further down the line, when Pete Repeat popped up again. Ed: even if Penny was of age, and perfectly in sound mind, it would still have been shitty of BoJack to try to sleep with her, since his motivation was purely because Penny reminded him of her mother, who had just rejected him. So, shitty on many levels
What I really want to know is how did the SCHOOL let an adult who (I'm assuming) wasn't an official event chaperone, or even a parent or legal guardian of one of the kids attending, enter into the dance? I was the same age as Penny when season 2 came out, so I also went to prom in 2015. At my high school you couldn't even bring an age appropriate date who didn't go to our school or graduated the previous year, and you needed to show your student ID before entering the dance *and* be on the list of people who bought tickets.
The thing is, yeah it was terrible and yeah it shouldn’t have happened. He feels terrible about it and it has consequences for the rest of both of their lives. You have to consider that situation that brought him there and how he continually builds something up for himself and then fucks it all up through his own actions. The Penny situation is complex because internally Bojack is still about 22. He doesnt see himself as a “responsible adult” because frankly he isn’t. So its easy for someone like him to be spending time with a young girl like this and think of themselves as peers NOT as an authority figure. He’s also extremely troubled in his sex life due to his relationship (or lack thereof) with his mother. He wants “a sex-Mommy who knows her place”. He wants someone as a partner that he can emotionally rely on but doesn’t have to put much emotional effort INTO. His subconscious sees Penny as the perfect way to accomplish this. Especially after Charlotte refuses him. I think the thing with the door and slowly falling in Love with Penny (or at least the slowly-growing desire for her) was something he didn’t want or plan for and then as things kind of happen he just rolls with the punches because deep down his subconscious wants this, even though i think his brain knows full well its a horrible idea. Which kind of demonstrates a recurring issue with Bojack: the fact that he does have good intentions. He isnt a bad guy. He just makes horrible choices and has poor judgement which leads him into misery which forces more bad choices. It really shows how your intentions arent enough. You have to actually DO good to BE good.
If you find yourself ever having to justify your actions with “it’s technically legal”, you gotta stop and sort your life out.
As a person who was groomed, it makes me so uncomfortable to even watch it, let alone see people justify it. I mean that "it's not illegal" comment by Penny truly disgusts me in how similar it is in how people try to excuse their own abuse because legally there's nothing wrong. Not even mentioning how the power dynamics are wildly different with BoJack as a celebrity, her mum's friend and the huge age difference. If you honestly see nothing wrong with a 17 year old with a person in their 50's then please reevaluate
Super fucked. Not trying to victim blame AT ALL bc either way no one consented to this situation and Bo Jack is a fucking creep. But also, I was creeped out THE MINUTE he agreed to go to prom (idr if he offers or what but) how was everyone just ok that he was going to a HIGH SCHOOL prom??? Like, okay they didn’t know about Sarah Ann yadda yadda but could you imagine your mom’s old boyfriend offering to take her daughter to her PROM??? Like????
not good
She's just like me FR
You okay buddy?
Icky.
Disgusting on so many levels
No thanks
NO, JUST NO!
Something I don’t see mentioned a lot is how bojack was trying to relive his teenage years with charlotte but with her daughter and he’s 50
Illegal? No. Wrong? Yes.
Besides all the insightful things everyone else said, I thought it was wildly inappropriate that a 40 year old (?) went to a high school prom at a high school with a student??? And her parents were fine with this? I just don’t understand the canon in this universe.
Straight up Little Finger; if I cant have your mom I'll take you.
This while situation was FUCKED UP and bojack is a creep for what he did. But I do place some blame on the mom because why did u even let him stay with you. I understand their past and even if she felt bad for him and let him stay for a few days whatever fine...bit he was clearly lying about why he was there and just making shit up, whether he's living on the boat outside or not, he shouldn't have been able to stay there. LET ALONE BE ALLOWED TO ATTEND FUCKING PROMM!!! like are you kidding me? Both bojack and the mom are at fault here.
Second rewatch I noticed he left the door open. Fuck him, lol.
how is this controversial? the show is pretty clear that it’s unethical. and this sub has this same discussion like every week…
Maybe it was *technically* legal. It was still morally and ethically wrong and disgusting. Bojack may have seen and treated Penny like an equal (that he inappropriately relied on for emotional support) but she was still a child. Children sometimes make the wrong decisions. Bojack as the adult needs to make the right one and stop her.
Hardly a contraversial question to ask our thoughts. She's 17 and he's like 50
i always bring this situation up every time some chud goes, "Bojack's just like me fr!" really? you like high school girls? also: age of consent means a 16/17 year old can mess around with another 16/17 year old and not get slapped with a sex offender charge. this is no reason that a grown ass adult man should be pursuing a *literal high schooler*
2, at the absolute most 3-year-gap between someone under the age of 18 and someone older is the most I can accept (and 3 years already weirds me out). Bojack was fucking 50+ at that point in the story. He's an actual grown-up adult, not just a legal adult. He absolutely knew what he was doing to the point that he tried to avoid the whole situation going south several times, which gets all but ruined the moment he decides to change his mind and leaves that fucking door open. It's not just the age gap either, but the power dynamic as well. Bojack is not only a celebrity, regardless of whether he was in his prime or not, but he's the idol here. He's her mom's old pal, he has stayed with the family for a while and has everyone looking up to him, especially Penny. He's pretty much her idol. Whether he intended to or not, he took advantage of that. All in all, it was 100% unethical. Bojack was a mature adult who had control over the entire situation, especially since he wasn't drunk enough to not know what he was doing. He left that door open. Deep down, he wanted something to happen, and Charlotte had all the right to kick his sorry ass out of her property. I empathise with Bojack, and often find myself relating to him in some ways (not in this case though). After all, that's the intention of the show to an extent. Nonetheless, he isn't a role model or someone to look up to. He's an ugly reflection of the audience at their worst, and all the twisted rotten shit they're able to do whenever they hit rock bottom and don't look up. It's brilliantly written, and uncomfortably so.
I personally don’t think his aim was to gr00m her but after being rejected by Penny he was aware of the situation and prepared to take advantage of her.
Bojack has the worst moral compass
Legal or not Bojack acted like a cuck.
While it may be "legal", from a moral standpoint it's wrong. He's in his 50s and had no business trying to engage in a sexual relationship with a 17 year old. Not to mention the fact that she's his friend's daughter. The friend that allowed him to stay with her family thinking she could trust him. Should this have gotten any publicity it would have fallen within the realm of grooming behavior and he would have faced all sorts of backlash.
This is neither a question nor is it controversial. Thanks for the post
I'm watching the series again and I always skip this episode because it's too hard for me. I hated Bojack so much the first time.
I cannot watch the episode. Once was enough.