The Weight Of Potential In BoJack Horseman

Every person is born with talent and potential, and while similar in concept, the two couldn’t be more different. Talent describes a couple of distinct skills one is naturally gifted at and has promise in pursuing. When one chases after their talents, their skills are almost never the cause of a setback. Meanwhile, the potential is far less defined and covers a wide array of skills, with a clouded path to success and a future of nothing more than “ifs.”

In Netflix’s critically-acclaimed animated sitcom BoJack Horseman, almost every central character found themselves with a thriving Hollywood career at some point thanks to their talents. They had riches and people clamoring to work with them, but their thirst for success still wasn’t quenched, so they began to go after their potential — even if it meant their ruin. But in this cast of self-obsessed celebrities, one character stands out from the crowd: Todd.

Todd Chavez was first introduced as BoJack’s roommate, meaning he slept on the couch and didn’t pay rent. Compared to this cast of Hollywood greats, he looks like quite a deadbeat. Though, as those greats struggle for the same unachievable goals over and over, he lives his life consistently happy, with a strong moral compass guiding him. While he has proven to possess immense potential with all his stupidly ingenious business ventures and a grandiose sense of storytelling only a rock opera could do justice, Todd doesn’t allow the fickle “ifs” of his success to control his life. Instead, Todd takes the chances he’s given, allows them to run their course, then moves on to his next great endeavor.

No Potential, No Weight

While Todd is one of the more cheery characters on BoJack Horseman, he typically isn’t the first to come to mind. Instead, the title goes to Mr. Peanutbutter, the former star of a popular 90s sitcom with a premise suspiciously similar to BoJack’s own Horsin’ Around. Unlike BoJack Horseman, however, none of Mr. Peanutbuterr’s success came from his talent.

Rather, all his success came from his overpowering charisma, the same charisma that landed him a starring role on a television show without even needing to audition. Because it’s his friendliness that built his career, no one expects any amazing artistry from him. Mr. Peanutbutter has never felt pressure from himself or the industry to rise as Hollywood’s greatest and can go on living happily.

However, that happy lifestyle is somewhat rooted in denial. When life doesn’t go as easily as usual, Mr. Peanutbutter has a difficult time coping. The famous actor spent the majority of BoJack Horseman married to Diane Nguyen, a character more prone to gloominess. Even though she lived in a nice house and seemed to have everything she could ever need, she grew unhappy in their marriage over time and eventually wanted to separate.

His mindset of “as long as Mr. Peanutbuterr’s happy, so is everyone else!” had ruined its third marriage and he was left more confused than ever. When one develops no sense of struggle, they indeed live happily but become blind to the hardships those around them suffer through.

Awareness Without Weight

Todd is a highly empathetic character with a desire to always help those around him. Though he began the series living off BoJack’s wealth, he was always there whenever BoJack needed help. Being by the side of the series’ messiest character meant he witnessed first hand the kind of anguish those crushed by the weight of potential faced. While Todd is still a consistently happy character, that isn’t because his happiness is rooted in denial like Mr. Peanutbutter’s. Instead, his happiness is aided by a knowledge of decisions and lifestyles to avoid.

Nothing sums up this important distinction better than Todd’s relationship with BoJack. Todd always felt like a guaranteed friend to him; someone who would continue to like him no matter what he did. In the season one episode “Zoes and Zeldas,” BoJack went as far as sabotaging Todd’s audition for his space rock opera to ensure his potential success wouldn’t keep him from leaving.

Time after time, BoJack Horseman proved himself to be a terrible friend. Though this realization was slow for Todd, once he found out that BoJack had slept with his close friend Emily towards the end of season three, he was finally ready to remove himself from their toxic relationship. Going forward, Todd’s endeavors could prove to be far more successful, and his relationships far more fruitful.

Weight From Within

Pressure can come from anywhere, but in Hollywood talent agent Princess Carolyn’s case, it comes entirely from herself. Princess Carolyn is a textbook workaholic; most nights are late nights, she takes on more than she can handle, and she has a hard time separating her personal life from her work life, despite what she may say. Even though she was recognized for opening her own agency and being responsible for launching the second phase of BoJack Horseman’s career, it wasn’t enough for her. She dreamt of being not only the best agent but the best mother as well.

Princess Carolyn’s desire for motherhood got twisted with her professional life, leading her to overly tend to the needs of her clients as if they were her own children. She became so wrapped up in her work, she could never hold a stable romantic relationship and had to watch as partners came and went, the future of a family slimming. To cope with the loss of something she believed she could never have, she worked herself harder as an agent for some sense of fulfilment, and the vicious cycle continued until she finally broke free in season five by pursuing adoption.

Self Forgiveness

Where Princess Carolyn has all these impossible standards laid out for herself, Todd has virtually none. Despite being seen as the slacker of the group, he works incredibly hard when a friend needs help or his heart is set on a project.

Unlike Princess Carolyn, Todd’s sense of self-worth isn’t tied to his professional achievements. While no one wants their career to go south, Todd doesn’t get hung up on his failures and interprets them as a sign to move onto his next endeavor. This is why his resume includes everything from owning an amusement park to being the president of ad sales for a popular online video platform.

Peer Pressure

Sarah Lynn broke into the acting industry at the young age of 3, starring as one of the children on Horsin’ Around. Since she began a career so young, Hollywood has essentially shaped every stage of her life, taking her from a beloved child to a teen pop icon to an unstable drug addict.

Being at such an impressionable age in such a corrupt industry meant that to her, the pressure of maintaining the perfect Hollywood image was a normal part of life. It was her esteemed co-star BoJack Horseman who kicked off her downward spiral with the advice “Don’t stop dancing,” which made her believe that the only love she would ever need was that of her fans.

After Horsin’ Around came to an end, Sarah Lynn began her pop star career, touring the world to see these people who were supposed to love her the most. But once those very same fans deemed her “too old” to be pursuing such a sexualized career, she lost any semblance of herself to drugs, alcohol, and partying. She was so desperate for approval at this point that she only wore the clothes she did to please a company.

She is introduced in BoJack Horseman‘s first season deep in this stage of her life, crawling her way back to BoJack to find someone to guide her. He initially allowed her to act out, but once he started to set boundaries, she left because she couldn’t understand that as a form of caring. Sarah Lynn would eventually begin rehab later in the series, seeming to have finally broken free of the weight Hollywood placed upon her, only to have it ruined by BoJack Horseman, the person who drove those twisted beliefs into her in the first place.

Deciding Your Own Path

The pressures Todd faced growing up were nowhere near as traumatic as Sarah Lynn’s, yet he still felt them from his parents. Todd’s step-father, Jorge, came into his life so early that for all Todd knew, he could have been his real father. This also meant that Jorge had just as much authority over him as a real parent would, and this created a harsh upbringing for him. Just as BoJack was trying to prepare Sarah Lynn for the realities of Hollywood when she was a little girl, Jorge took on an authoritative parenting style with Todd so he would be ready when it was time for him to struggle through the real world.

Todd was eventually kicked out of his parents’ home for a severe video game addiction, but looking back, he has no regrets. Even without video games, Todd knew that the life his parents wanted him to live wasn’t for him. He went on to live without the pressure of others influencing his decisions and by the time he sees his parents again at the end of season six, he is in a stable relationship with a bunny named Maude, owns an apartment with her, and is the head of a daycare.

Crushed By The Weight

When viewers first meet BoJack Horseman, he is portrayed as a washed-up, self-loathing, sex-addicted alcoholic, and he only gets worse as the series goes on. All his life, the pressure from his parents to be worth something weighed on him, but the added pressure to be one of the best in Hollywood was what finally broke him. His passion for the acting craft wasn’t enough to keep him from wallowing in the realization that he could never make himself, his parents, or the public happy, so he spent his time at home wishing he never pursued this career in the first place.

BoJack often fantasized about the life he could have had where he was married to Charlotte, an old friend who escaped L.A. before it could ruin her, who lives with him on a lake along with their two children. Over the course of BoJack Horseman, he makes several attempts at recreating this fantasy life by acting as a parent to Hollyhock and showing up unannounced at Charlotte’s house long after she has started a family of her own, suddenly getting deeply involved in their lives. But because he has become such a toxic person, these relationships crash and burn, and he is left more disappointed than he was before.

Drawing The Line

Todd’s upbringing was nothing like BoJack’s, but he still grew up in the same L.A. that crushed him. Hollywood is a town filled to the brim with greed, manipulation, and abuse, with nearly everyone being a victim in some form (( Tom Sizemore, By Some Miracle I Made It Out Of There: A Memoir (New York: Atria Books, 2013) )). Where BoJack was both taken advantage of by evil executives such as Angela Diaz and taken advantage of by Hollywood hopefuls like actress Gina Cazador, Todd could sense when a situation was turning sour and never allowed himself to reach that point.

Todd is heavily grounded in his values, never doing anything that would violate them. With several of his friends being as messy as they are, it would be easy for him to sink to the lows they often find themselves in for the sake of briefly lifting the weight off their shoulders. However, thanks to his awareness of the events happening around him, he knows what he risks compromising if he goes along with their destructive attempts at happiness.

Lifting The Weight

When it comes to the weight of potential, Diane Nguyen has been through it all. She began the series as a successful writer, but didn’t yet have enough fame to be a household name. She always dreamt of writing a profound piece that could change the way the public views the world, something that would prove to her verbally abusive family and herself that she held some amount of worth.

Diane’s expectations for her career were perhaps the highest, doing everything she could earlier on in the show to expose the world’s wrongs. But such a mighty task eventually came crashing down on her as she set off to war-torn Cordovia and experienced first-hand how terrible the world could be, sending her into a depressive state where she crashed at BoJack’s for a whole 6 months.

However, Diane, who appears in the series finale, is an entirely different person from the Diane even a season prior. Through her struggles, she learned to adapt an outlook closer to Todd’s, and less like those of her other friends.

After realizing how grueling L.A.’s life could be, how unhappy she was with Mr. Peanutbutter, and how impossible it was to reshape the world with her words, she settled down in Houston with a laid-back bison named Guy as the author of middle-grade novels. It was a future she never saw for herself, yet Diane had never been happier.

Rather than trying to push back against the weight until it inevitably crushed her, she removed herself from its influence and took a more realistic approach to utilizing her potential. By beginning again in this new environment that fostered nothing but health, Diane was finally able to define success on her own terms and live a little more like Todd.