s6 ep16
i just realized that both bojack horseman and breaking bad ended on season 6 episode 16 (even if both shows didn't have the same runtime/total episodes) and now I'll yap about it.
i realized this right now and i am not sure if someone else has talked about it tho I AM SURE PEOPLE MUST HAVE. once i noticed that, i started making more and more connections and i love it and hence i wish to talk about it due to my love for both shows, especially bojack horseman.
both bojack and walter are incredibly flawed anti-heroes that destroy the lives of the ones around them. both funnily enough have the same side-kick in the form of aaron paul (todd/jesse) and both were responsible for the deaths of young addict women (sarah lynn/jane). ofcourse bojack was much more responsible for sarah lynn's death than walter was for jane's and i found the whole story about sarah lynn more gut-wrenching.
however, i especially love the fact that despite seemingly both getting better by the finale s6 ep16, both lose their most beloved in those episodes (diane/jesse). i love how bojack horseman had both diane and todd as different characters and had different relationships with bojack and were affected differently in their own ways. as compared with breaking bad i think skyler and jesse could've been those two but I'd say the show didnt focus on skyler enough and we don't know much about her character outside of her relationship with walter.
i obviously can't end without expressing my thoughts about how destructive both men were without caring about the consequences of their actions and how both shows dealt with themes of addiction and power. walter cooked meth and the best quality they've ever seen while not caring about the societal impacts it creates as they gave him a sense of power and agency for the first time in his life. bojack i think dealt with these much more personally and with less grandiosity, which is also why i like the show better, where bojack himself dealt with addiction and his fame and power (which i can compare with walter's cancer haha) helped keep up his addictions. the fame and addictions combined made him into a man that viewed other people as a means to an end, making him somewhat unbothered about how much he affects others.
the song that played as an outro was "mr blue" for bojack and "baby blue" for breaking bad which is also a cool little detail and i keep wondering if so many of these parallels were deliberate. like did bojack horseman productions hire aaron paul and then decided to add a lot of these funny parallels between the two shows? nonetheless, thank you will arnett and bryan cranston for portraying such complex and excellent characters.
lastly, we got a saul goodman spin off, and I'd LOVE a princess caroline spin off too (pls pls pls).
ofcourse i have glossed over the details about bojack's childhood which also shaped a lot of why he was the way he was since this post was mostly about the comparisons.
what are your thoughts about the two shows? please feel free to add more parallels and let me know if there's been more such posts comparing the two. please correct me if any of my opinions needed more nuance.
thank you for reading :))