Diane is a bad person
I always find it kinda funny when people say “if you hate Diane you just hate women having flaws” or “you only dislike her because she’s a feminist,” because that mindset is one of Diane’s flaws in the show.
That opinion feels so egotistical and condescending to me. It radiates this energy of “my interpretation of the show is the enlightened one, and if you disagree, you’re either sexist or too dumb to understand it correctly.”
BoJack Horseman is a show built around flawed people and different perspectives. Everyone’s going to resonate with different characters and be frustrated by different characters. That’s the whole point. Acting like there’s only one morally acceptable reading of Diane completely misses what the show is doing.
And to be clear, me thinking Diane is a bad person is just my interpretation of the show. I’m not saying everyone who likes her is wrong. I actually think she’s one of the best written characters in the series specifically because she feels so real. But being realistic and being a good person are two different things.
Diane constantly holds everyone around her to impossible moral standards while rarely giving that same grace back. The show calls this out directly at one point when Stefani tells her she holds everyone, including herself, to impossible standards and that it’s toxic for her personal life.
A lot of her behavior comes from this need to see herself as more morally aware than the people around her. She judges people constantly, especially BoJack and Mr. Peanutbutter, but she’s also deeply hypocritical herself. She cheats, lies, weaponizes personal information when she feels justified, disappears from her marriage instead of communicating, and repeatedly excuses her own behavior through trauma and depression while criticizing others for doing the same thing. A lot of people dislike her because she can come off as self-righteous and emotionally condescending while still making selfish decisions herself.