Summary: Flashbacks show Princess Carolyn living with her mother in North Carolina as a housekeeper. She gets pregnant with the son of the Wallace family, the house they serve. Princess Carolyn's mother is excited but there is a miscarriage. Princess Carolyn gets into UCLA and leaves. In the present, Princess Carolyn goes to North Carolina to meet with Sadie who is looking for someone to adopt her unborn baby. Princess Carolyn tries to win her over, but struggles to balance her conversations with her life as she gets constant calls from L.A., which ultimately leads to BoJack falling off a building and being hospitalized after a dangerous stunt. Sadie notices how manipulative Princess Carolyn is and passes on her. Princess Carolyn returns to LA unsuccessful.
The Good: I appreciate that we got a deeper look into Princess Carolyn's past and what shaped her as a person. Everything didn't quite work perfectly (see: The Bad), but it was a good story that's worth telling. Princess Carolyn's mother is drunk, manipulative, and sometimes abusive in her parenting style. I thought the character was well realized. She seems like she genuinely cares about her children, but her stubborn beliefs that her lifestyle is ideal, and her inability to cope with her kids moving on in their lives made her a bad parent. We also get to see how Princess Carolyn's manipulations manifested from a young age with how she convinces Cooper to convince the coach that he's good enough, even if he's not. This business strategy is something that Princess Carolyn employs time and time again throughout the episode with just about everyone she talks to. It's fun to see the rest of the main cast checking in by phone with her, but Princess Carolyn uses her skillset to get rid of them as quickly as possible, creating red flags for Sadie to notice and ultimately call her out on by the episode's end (see: Best Moment). I appreciate how entertaining it is to watch how things fall apart in LA. Most of the humour in this episode comes from these check-ins, and every character is fun to watch. BoJack's good times on set being disrupted by Mr. Peanutbutter upstaging him is true to what I would expect to happen, and it's amusing to see BoJack's jealousy clash with Mr. Peanutbutter's obliviousness. Todd struggling to answer questions in his new job is an amusing development as well. On the more serious side, Princess Carolyn's advice for Diane is consistent with her manipulative behaviour. Princess Carolyn encourages Diane to manipulate Flip into doing something, and then absolves her of all blame after it led somewhere bad. You get the sense that this is what Princess Carolyn does, she manipulates others to get what she wants, but absolves herself of blame if anything goes wrong. In this case, Princess Carolyn's lack of involvement with her job and her thoughtless encouragement leads to BoJack getting into a horrific accident, but she clearly has absolved herself of any blame for what happened. It is a sad and relatable scenario though, as most people can relate to putting their every effort into getting something done (the adoption), only to get nothing to show for their efforts. Princess Carolyn sacrificed a lot to appeal to Sadie, and ultimately it was all for nothing. There are a few fun jokes that I got a laugh out of. The Wallace family having an empire built on answering machine tapes is quite funny. The flea market has some funny jokes in it, like a sign saying " stuff I stole to make money to buy heroin", and a shirt that says "stop pausing and just watch the show". The Bad: This episode does not go far enough into Princess Carolyn's past to entirely work. We learn about her backstory, but much of it is stuff that we could have already guessed based on what we knew about Princess Carolyn before this episode. "Ruthie" gave several hints about Princess Carolyn's troubled relationship with her mother involving miscarriages, and also told us the truth about Princess Carolyn's necklace. Seeing these scenes actually happen did not feel fascinating, instead it just felt like checking items off a list to show us. This made Princess Carolyn's backstory feel somewhat forgettable and less emotional than I was expecting. I thought this episode was lacking in jokes. We didn't get the usual amount of background humour as I've come to expect, and if there were North Carolina centric jokes, I didn't understand very many of them since I don't know much about North Carolina. "BoJack Horseman" has quite a bit of reference humour, and the negative aspect of this type of humour is that if the viewer is not well versed in the topic being jokes about, the jokes will fall flat. I don't think many people are well versed in North Carolina, so the jokes in this episode won't work very well for a significant portion of the audience. The Unknown: How bad is BoJack's injury? Will this be a key storyline in this season? Will Princess Carolyn find other opportunities for adoption? Best Moment: Princess Carolyn tries to make a big play to convince Sadie that she's the best pick, but Sadie is not falling for it. Sadie has seen Princess Carolyn manipulate just about everyone for her own needs, and is not afraid to call her out on it. In response to this, Princess Carolyn has nothing. Without her selling abilities, she has nothing to offer and has to contend with the fact that she's not the best choice. So in the character's best moment in the episode, Princess Carolyn gives up the facade and gives her genuine advice to Sadie based on her own experiences. Finally, an honest moment. Princess Carolyn gets no reward for it, but it's nice to see her show something genuine. Character of the Episode: Princess Carolyn. Conclusion: An episode that has some good ideas and fills in some solid backstory for Princess Carolyn, but it doesn't quite hit those lofty emotional highs it's aiming for. Score: 67
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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