Aaron Sorkin - Iconic Showrun

"I need to go take a shower so I can't tell if I'm crying or

not" is not a quote you would expect to hear from a classical cartoon, but if Raphael Bob Waksberg's Bojack Horseman (20142020) establishes anything in its first season, it's that it's not a classical cartoon. But it's not the first to subvert these pre-conventions, entering the pop cultural sphere a full year after Adult Swim's Rick & Morty (20132021) and four years after FX's Archer (2009). This call for more complex animated shows may seem jarring after years of the popular belief that animated shows could only ever be comedic or decades of the belief that animated shows could only ever be made for children, but upon the release of shows such as Bojack and Rick & Morty, audiences have begun to pay attention to the impact that thoughtful and nuanced adult animation can have.

Bojack Horseman centres its titular character as he navigates the pitfalls of existing as a 1990s sitcom star in a 21st century Hollywood, and manages to both ignore and embrace a key feature of its narrative that may have initially had audiences questioning the show's integrity - the protagonist is a horse. In fact, much of the main cast are cartoon animals and, despite this initial oddity, the show manages to balance this absurdism with a profound familiarity and empathy in how it portrays its fluffy characters and humanises their individual stories. There becomes a distinct tonal dissonance between the brightly coloured animation in front of us and the darker themes of the show’s narrative. Rick & Morty employs a similar technique, mixing mature themes with jovial, lighthearted visuals to create a confusing concoction of comedy and tragedy. In many ways, it seems as though the surrealism of what we are seeing - this clash between reality and fantasy - may activate a much deeper urge in our human psyche, a desire to see our innermost feelings and emotions projected onto art, a medium that has been used throughout human civilisation to convey feelings we cannot give voice to.

Both Bojack and Rick & Morty frequently make use of alternate animation styles, warping and transforming their own characters into alternate versions of themselves, turning the metaphorical into the literal, using art to create notions that rise above our suspension of disbelief and bleed into our own lives. Perhaps it is only through these abstractions that we can truly relate to protagonists, our fluffy or space-travelling cast of characters removing any barriers of realism that may have kept us from fully empathising with more realistic characters like Walter White or Don Draper.

It is in the wake of animated adult shows like this that we begin to question the effects that art can have on us, the boundaries between realism and surrealism, and if a horse can truly have such complex feelings. Despite the weirdness, the tonal confusion, the blurred lines between hilarity and devastation, animated shows like Bojack and Rick & Morty may be the way forward for those of us who want to say "I need to go take a shower so I can't tell if I'm crying or not."