12 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching Bojack Horseman
3. What Are You Doing Here?
One of the key early arcs of BoJack Horseman Season Two is BoJack’s inability to correctly display the emptiness needed for the Secretariat line ‘what are you doing here?’. It links into the previously mentioned self help tape, with BoJack’s new found happiness leaving him enthusiastically exaggerating every line he delivers.
It’s not until his mother brings him back down to Earth that he can finally embody Secretariat and do the line justice. Just because the scene is done doesn’t mean BoJack is though. A major theme of the season is BoJack feeling out of place, a feeling which eventually takes him to New Mexico. All through the season, that question - what are you doing here - repeats.
BoJack says it to Diane (who also feels out of place and abandons her reporting trip to crash on BoJack’s couch), to Todd, to Princess Carolyn, to Mr Peanutbutter, to Corduroy... he even says it to himself - what am I doing here? - to round the theme off.
The words are so simple that used twice or even three times would just be a coincidence. Here though, it’s brilliantly layered and clearly deliberate.