Welcome back to this amazing animated universe! As with previous seasons, “BoJack Horseman” continued to astound us with the level of voice talent brought into play; new cast members this year include Oscar winners, comedy legends, family members, and meta commentaries on the series. Below is a look at both the new and returning faces featured this year, all of which were wonderful contributors to one of our favorite shows.

[Editor’s note: Mild spoilers follow for “BoJack Horseman” Season 5.]

Returning Characters

Rami Malek – Flip McVickers

We met the creator and showrunner of “Philbert” in Season 4, but Malek really gets a chance to shine here as Flip descends into full-fledged megalomania.

Natalie Morales – Yolanda Buenaventura

Todd’s seemingly perfect partner in asexuality returns this year, a brutal reminder that just because someone shares your preferences doesn’t mean they’re ultimately a good match.

Kimiko Glenn – Stefani Stilton

The founder of Girl Croosh is still Crooshing it.

Angela Bassett – Ana Spanikopita

BoJack’s former PR rep returns with a brutal revelation, because no one can escape their past in the end.

Cedric Yarbrough – Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface

This loose cannon plays by his own rules, even when he’s “undercover.”

Ken Jeong – Dr. Hu

Last seen in Season 1 (which led to no shortage of delightful “Doctor Who” references), the return of Dr. Hu in Season 5 meant a sad reminder of Sarah Lynn’s loss that may have contributed to BoJack’s emotional state in Episode 10.

Abbi Jacobson – Emily

Emily has always been a major part of Todd’s backstory, but it’s nice to see them try to figure out how to be friends, now that he’s openly asexual.

Keith Olbermann – Tom Jumbo-Grumbo

Trust MSNBSea’s erstwhile anchor to get involved with the latest controversies.

Lake Bell – Katrina Peanutbutter

Jessica Biel – Herself

In the brilliantly-titled episode “Mr. Peanutbutter’s Boos,” Mr. Peanutbutter’s first two ex-wives return with period-appropriate Halloween costumes and key realizations about why, exactly, his marriages all seem to crumble.

Aparna Nancherla – Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack

BoJack’s half-sister makes a few appearances through the season, and she’s lovely as always, even if she remains scarred by the events of last season.

As Themselves

Laura Linney

The premise of Laura Linney’s movie in this context is amazing and it would be very nice if it were one day made. Also, as always, points to the stars who appear as themselves on this show, because no matter what, something weird will be asked of them.

Mark Feuerstein

The “Royal Pains” and “In Her Shoes” star quoting the Torah to defend Vance Waggoner’s anti-Semetism is the sort of lovely insider touch this show excels at including.

Character Actress Margo Martindale

As always, HELL YES.

New Characters

Stephanie Beatriz – Gina Cazador

It might seem like typecasting to cast the actress best known as tough cop Rosa Diaz on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” as the actress who plays tough cop Sassy Malone on “Philbert,” but not only does she deliver a beautifully nuanced performance, but demonstrates some impressive range — including a lovely singing voice.

Whoopi Goldberg – Mikaela

She only sticks around for a bit, but much like Princess Carolyn, we wish we’d had more time with this life-affirming adoption worker.

Randall Park – American Tourist

Episode 2 of Season 5, “The Dog Days Are Gone,” made some interesting choices when it comes to race-bending, and right up there is casting the always wonderful Randall Park as a white American tourist who seems not to be able to understand Diane in Vietnam.

James Duval – The Grip

Duval is also featured in Episode 2, and while not explicitly white, casting him as a bald eagle who also happens to be a grip working on Laura Linney’s new movie is a pretty clear indicator of what’s implied.

Hong Chau – Pickles

Anyone who doesn’t want only good things for Pickles is a monster. She may be the worst sort of example of Millennial, but she also clearly has a lovely heart, and hopefully becoming Mrs. Peanutbutter #4 won’t be too tough for her.

John Leguizamo – Mr. Buenaventura

Honestly, given John Leguizamo’s already impressive resume, the fact that he’s not a bestselling author of erotic novels in real life is a bit of a shock.

Eva Longoria – Mrs. Buenaventura

Just great casting, especially given the direction this farce takes.

Bobby Cannavale – Vance Waggoner

It’s fair to be concerned that Bobby Cannavale might be in danger of getting typecast as a #MeToo avatar, with this as well as his role in “Master of None” Season 2. Fingers crossed his character in “Homecoming” helps him escape that trope.

David Sedaris – Mother Carolyn

Amy Sedaris’ brother is an acclaimed writer who narrates his own memoirs for audiobook purposes, and when doing so, will go into character as his own mother, deceased now for several years. So holy crap, casting him as the mother of Princess Carolyn (played by Amy Sedaris) is just an amazing choice.

Brian Tyree Henry – Cooper Thomas Rogers Wallace Jr.

As the answering machine tape empire’s scion/rising teenage football star, Henry’s aw-shucks delivery is simply perfect.

Daveed Diggs – Cooper Thomas Rogers Wallace Sr.

Diggs and Henry, for the record, are the exact same age, which makes their father/son casting pretty funny — yet both men slip pretty seamlessly into the roles, and Diggs makes the most of that incredible monologue about Princess Carolyn’s potential future.

Jaime Pressly – Sadie

The “My Name is Earl” star brought authentic Southern charm to the role.

Issa Rae – Indira

Being a therapist seems like a difficult profession, and even more difficult when BoJack — sorry, “BoBo the Angsty Zebra” — is one of your clients.

Wanda Sykes – Mary Beth

Also not easy? Having to negotiate a feud between Princess Carolyn and Todd Chavez. Much sympathy to this married couple, dealing with these folk.

Audra McDonald – Nun

Deliberate shout-out to Audra’s role in the live “Sound of Music”? We can hope so.

Gabe Kaplan – Abe Ziegler

Richard Lewis – Ziggy Abler

These two make for an amazing paring, as proven by their character names. May we all be able to overcome longtime grudges the way these two veteran comedy writers can.

Isiah Whitlock, Jr. – What Time Is It Right Now CEO

The only flaw in Whitlock’s appearance here is that he never gets to say “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.” But we will forgive the show this oversight.

“BoJack Horseman” Season 5 is streaming now on Netflix.

If you were blown away by “Free Churro,” Episode 6 of “BoJack Horseman” Season 5,” here’s what it was like when creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg heard Will Arnett perform it for the first time.

“The table read for that script was really phenomenal,” Bob-Waksberg told IndieWire. “It was just Will doing this one man show for this crowd, and it was incredible. It was one of my favorite experiences working on this show, being at that table read and getting that experience… I would say, a master class in acting. He knocked it out of the park.”

“Free Churro” doesn’t immediately telegraph that it’s going to showcase Arnett and Arnett alone, but it eventually becomes clear that the only voice we should expect to hear is the “Arrested Development” star, as very famous movie and TV star BoJack Horseman says goodbye to his mother with an episode-long eulogy.

It’s a tour-de-force moment for the actor, one which Bob-Waksberg said wasn’t a cause of stress for the production team, because “there wasn’t a lot of doubt going into it. I think we felt it was a good script and Will would be able to do it. He’s proven himself to us over and over again that he can handle anything we give him… He’s able to find these comedy beats that are really funny and he’s also able to find these dramatic beats and really explore the drama of the situation in this really beautiful way.”

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

According to Bob-Waksberg, the actual recording of the episode was done in “very large chunks.”

“Usually when we record, we try to get two or three takes for every line. This was like, ‘I don’t want to exhaust you, so we’re going to go through the whole thing and then if you fudge up or you feel you want to try something again, you can go back and redo it,'” he said. “But, in general, I didn’t stop him. If he was already stopped, I’d give him a note. But mostly it is just his cold read and his take on the character in the moment. There was very little direction given on this episode.”

But Arnett made it clear that, in Bob-Waksberg’s words, “he wanted to get it right. He took it very seriously. He said, ‘Don’t let this go on if it’s not right. I want to know it.’ I think his instincts were really dead on and I think that comes from five years now of really understanding this character, but also his entire acting career and the tools he’s picked up and what he knows how to do. His voice is just an incredible instrument and he’s an expert at manipulating it. So a lot of it was just letting him go and doing the episode as written and then animating it to his voice. It was a real treat.”

For the record, the cast will table read episodes together, but it’s rare that they’ll record together. “I know of two times in our show’s history we’ve recorded two people together,” Bob-Waksberg said. “One was in Season 1, that was the paparazzi birds, because those are my friends Dave [Segal] and Adam [Conover]. We thought it would be fun to let them play off each other and do it together, but since then they’ve always recorded separately.”

Meanwhile, “The second time we had two people together was for the big Bojack/Princes Carolyn fight in the restaurant, where the whole episode goes through this one long conversation between them, because I thought it would be good to get their real interplay with each other. So we had Amy [Sedaris] call in from New York and Will and Amy read through it like a play and we got their actual interactions with each other and the way they actually talk to each other.”

“Bojack Horseman”

Netflix

But those are the only two instances, which is pretty incredible when considering the depth of emotion so many “BoJack” scenes communicate. “You watch the episodes and you go, ‘Oh no, it really sounds like they are talking to each other,’ because they are very good actors,” Bob-Waksberg said.

And they’re very good actors confronted with an ever-changing set of scripts, as each season of “BoJack” continues to evolve. “I think we always try to experiment,” he said. “Every season, I want to have episodes that feel like a new thing for the show to be doing or a new way of telling the story or a new kind of story that we’re telling.”

As he added, “For me, that really is a hallmark of the show and what’s fun about the show. It’s not just feeling like every episode is just a bucket of stuff that happens between the previous episode and the next episode. But I like the idea of every episode feeling distinct both in story but also in form.”

“BoJack Horseman” Season 5 is streaming now on Netflix.

Per series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, BoJack Horseman’s Season 5 path was dictated in part by the fans — but not in the way you might think.

“I saw a lot of reaction from people when Season 3 ended saying, ‘I’m done with this character,'” Bob-Waksberg told IndieWire. “‘BoJack is un-redeemable, he’s unforgivable. He’s crossed the last threshold of my compassion. I’m going to keep watching the show because I love all the other characters and I love the world, but I can’t care about this character anymore.'”

Season 3 of Netflix’s Hollywoo(d) satire ends with one of the show’s darkest notes: the death by overdose of “Horsin’ Around” child star Sarah Lynn (voiced by Kristen Schaal), followed by addict/actor BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) abandoning his life and friends in Los Angeles.

But, cut to one year later, and a new season sees BoJack confront at least a few of his darkest issues and, more importantly, make a connection with his newly-discovered half-sister, Hollyhock (voiced by Aparna Nancherla). “At the end of Season 4, a lot of people said, ‘Oh my God, I love him. I’m so happy he’s happy. He found the way to be. There’s someone in his life now. This is great. This is wonderful.'”

It was something that Bob-Waksberg found interesting, but also concerning. “I wanted to say hold on, the guy at the end of Season 4 is the same as the guy at the end of Season 3, and I think the end of Season 3 BoJack does not discount the end of Season 4 BoJack,” he said. “The end of Season 4 BoJack also does not forgive the end of Season 3 BoJack. How do you live with this guy who is both those things?”

“Bojack Horseman”

Netflix

Bob-Waksberg’s response was to tackle it head-on in Season 5. “We really wanted to show, this season, BoJack in many ways at his most vulnerable but also at his most abhorrent. To kind of deal with the unease of that, I think that was a really fascinating thing to explore.”

Within that context came the decision to “not to dismiss him entirely but not forgive him entirely. To explore that dichotomy and what is it like to be a person in this guy’s life, where you care about him but you also are very much aware of some of his perhaps unforgivable actions,” he said. “And how do you square that away within yourself? And how do you deal with that when that is you, when you are BoJack and you feel vulnerable but you also know you’ve done terrible things that are inexcusable?”

The connection between BoJack’s personal journey and the show “Philbert,” a gritty new detective drama being produced for the streaming network WhatTimeIsItRightNow.Com, came about pretty naturally.

“When we started it, we’re like all right, we want to make this show feel like its directly connected to BoJack’s brain in a way, and that this character could be a really interesting commentary on the way that Bojack sees himself but also as the way we see BoJack — the way the audience sees Bojack,” Bob-Waksberg said.

“The idea of him kind of losing himself in this character or the character kind of infiltrating his psyche felt like a really interesting thing to explore. I am interested in seeing that with actors, how much playing the character does affect them. It’s not a clean thing, where at the end of the day you can go, ‘OK, I did my job and I’m stepping away.’ I think actually some actors do. I think some actors are very smart and have the tools. They know how to disconnect themselves from the characters, but I think for a lot of them, it’s very difficult.”

Part of letting “Philbert” as a satire evolve included putting the spotlight on showrunner Flip McVicker (voiced by Rami Malek); who, as the prototypical tortured writer, was a character Bob-Waksberg and the writers didn’t hesitate to mock.

“I’m always happy to take down pretentious writers on my show because I feel like that’s only fair,” he said. “I feel like we do so much shitting on network executives and actors and all the other parts of Hollywood, it would hypocritical for me to be like, ‘But the writer is the sole brilliant artist and if only he or she were allowed to flourish unfiltered, then the world would be a better place.'”

“Bojack Horseman”

Netflix

It’s not the first time the writing process has been challenged by the show, as Bob-Waksberg noted — the Season 3 character Cuddlywhiskers was another key example. “I kind of want to take the writer down a peg. I think there are a lot of pretentious writers in this business, which I am certainly one, in certain cases. I think it’s important to note that we have our own damage to work through, and we are not necessarily these brilliant artists that are being compromised by the deals with have to make with this suits,” he said.

He also noted that in the world of television, an egotistical writer can be a destructive force on set. “The tyranny of the showrunner is a very real thing as well,” he said. “It’s something I’ve seen a lot of: these tortured geniuses, or self-proclaimed tortured geniuses, who kind of take their damage out on others. I think being a showrunner, you have a lot of unchecked power and I think that can be a very dangerous thing.”

“It’s a thing I take very seriously,” he said. “I would actually love if our industry could regulate that a little better — if the Writers Guild could regulate that a little better — because I do think there are a lot of people given these high-powered jobs who don’t deserve them and I think are not ready for them and they make a lot of people miserable. That was kind of the inspiration for that character. Someone who makes people miserable. Mostly through inexperience and delusions of grandeur.”

Bob-Waksberg declined to draw any direct comparisons between “Philbert” and real-life dark dramas currently streaming on any particular service, laughing as he said, “They’re all the same, right?”

“It’s up to the audience to decide which shows they think this is like,” he said. “I don’t think it’s like one specifically, but certainly there are lots of tropes and trends that we poke at. I would say any show with an unexamined male antihero is what we have in our crosshair. Any show that kind of relish the damage of its main character without really investigating what that damage does, where it’s from or what it means, is a show I think needs to be taken down a peg.”

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from “BoJack Horseman” Season 5, Episode 2, “The Dog Days Are Over.”]

Beneath the animated, anthropomorphic, and pun-tastic exterior of“BoJack Horseman” is a brilliantly satirical series that conveys an uncanny authenticity when it comes to representing the troubled side of the human emotional experience. That’s why it rang false that the Vietnamese American character Diane Nguyen was voiced by white actress Alison Brie. In January, creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg tweeted out a mea culpa about the cartoon whitewashing, and discussed with IndieWire how his “colorblind” casting didn’t result in inclusivity or proper representation, which he was determined to improve on his show.

While “BoJack Horseman” has increased its casting of people of color (Season 5 features Hong Chau, Issa Rae, and Rami Malek, to name a few), in “The Dog Days Are Over” the show was able to increase inclusivity behind the scenes as well. In the episode, Diane is left adrift after divorcing Mr. Peanutbutter and heads to Vietnam, where her parents are from.

“The idea for Diane going to Vietnam came up earlier when we were writing the season,” Bob-Waksberg said in an interview with IndieWire. “It made me very nervous, I think because I knew it would bring up a lot of these conversations that I personally felt like I was unprepared to have. I, a little cowardly, tried to push it off and said, ‘Oh what if she left at the end of the season and like we told the story next season?’

“[Latinx writer Joanna Calo] really fought for this episode and said, ‘No, I really think we should tell the story. I think this is a story that really means something.’ To me, Joanna is a Latina woman who I think had a long journey with her own racial identity and her own cultural identity and what that means to her,” he said. “I think she felt like she could really say something about Diane and her story through this episode. So that being said, let’s do it and try to do it right. We sent the script to VyVy Nguyen [Editor’s Note: No relation to this reporter], an actress who was in the episode and we got her feedback. She had a lot of smart things to say about her experiences as a Vietnamese woman, second generation, and her going back to Vietnam and what that was like for her. That was incredibly helpful to have that insight.”

It’s an important distinction to make that Diane is a Vietnamese American and therefore how she experiences America and Vietnam are distinctly different from how someone who is born and raised in Vietnam would. Part of the purpose of her trip is to find herself as a person separate from her failed relationship and see if her cultural roots resonate with her.

“We also tried to make sure the episode was consistent with the character of Diane that we’ve laid out previously and her own discomfort with her own cultural heritage,” said Bob-Waksberg. “I will talk to the fact that is an outgrowth of my own discomfort with my cultural heritage or my discomfort telling stories about her culture or her race. But I did think, ‘Given what we’ve established as a character, let’s take that seriously and let’s explore that. Then it was really important to me that we had Asian actors in the cast and make sure we’re telling the story with the right people and telling it the best way we could.”

The Consultant: A Nguyen-Nguyen Situation

Enter the aforementioned VyVy Nguyen, an actress who served as a creative consultant on the show, but also voiced three characters in the episode: the worried Vietnamese mother, the pangolin cashier at Chicken 4 Dayz, and the crane at Americrane Airlines. Nguyen could identify with Diane somewhat as a second-generation Vietnamese American whose craft requires her to have a mastery of the English language. While Diane is a ghostwriter, Nguyen is an actress and translator, of which the latter skill helped get her noticed by “BoJack” casting director Linda Lamontagne when seeking someone both proficient in speaking Vietnamese but who also understood culture from a Viet-American point of view.

VyVy Nguyen on “BoJack Horseman”

Joanna Degeneres, Netflix

As a performer of color, Nguyen can’t separate herself from the representation issues that make it a challenge for her to get her foot in the door. So-called colorblind casting tends to still dip into the same white well, and the roles for Vietnamese women tended to be stereotypical nail workers or seen only through the context of the Vietnam War. Rarely (as seen recently in “Queen Sugar”) are they written as regular folks who happen to have the occasional Vietnamese cultural touchstones. And only lately have Vietnamese actresses been seen in more aspirational roles such as Lana Condor in “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and Kelly Marie Tran in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

But even those circumstances can cause fierce competition among Asian American actresses who are up for the same few roles. Nguyen has been at the same auditions as Oscar nominee Chau (who is featured on “BoJack Horseman” this season as Pickles), and her dream role was one that she lost to another fellow Vietnamese American actress.

“I was obsessed with Star Wars growing up. It influenced me some much into wanting to be an actor growing up. I used to pretend I was Princess Leia’s best friend. I wrote about it in my college essay when I applied to drama school,” Nguyen told IndieWire. “I was in the running for the role of Rose, funnily enough against Kelly Marie Tran, whom I know and adore. I got pretty far in the process, but they had to make a decision.”

Then, this gig came along on “BoJack” that seemed tailor-made for Nguyen’s specific skill set, which was translating, cultural advising, and voicework. “What they wanted was someone to consult, to make sure that nothing was culturally inappropriate or offensive in any way,” she said. “They wanted to make sure that the locations and details were accurate, and that they were going to require some Vietnamese translation for some lines.”

For example, Nguyen made sure that Diane’s background checked out. “There was originally a line saying that Diane was third generation. [But] the Vietnamese community, most of the people here came during the Vietnam War so there is not really a third generation of her age,” said Nguyen. “So, it got changed to be much more vague. Unfortunately they had already established her family has really strong Boston accents so it wasn’t something they could ret-con, so Raphael just decided to make it a little more open-ended there.”

Pronunciation: Can’t Nguyen for Losing

For viewers who speak Vietnamese, one of the most glaring details about Diane wasn’t just that she is played by a white actress, but that the pronunciation of her last name is a running gag on the show. According to the scripts, some of the characters can pronounce the surname Nguyen, whilst others mangle it or avoid saying it altogether. The truth is that no one on the show has said it correctly because it’s only been pronounced in a Westernized, non-accented way.

The surname Nguyen, shared by approximately 40 percent of Vietnamese people, is comprised of the initial phoneme “ng,” which English speakers are not used to beginning a word with (but are fine pronouncing on the end of words as in “king”), and the second part “uyen” that includes a triphthong with three vowels. Both combine to make one complex mouthful of a syllable. Adding to the difficulty is that Vietnamese is a tonal language, which means the tone in which a word is said changes its meaning even if the pronunciation remains the same. Thus, the proper way to spell Nguyen is with its diacritical marks – Nguyễn – which indicate the tone of the word. Numerous YouTube videos try to either explain the pronunciation of this surname, with this video as perhaps the simplest, most straightforward one.

“It’s incredibly complicated for someone who doesn’t speak a tonal language to kind of get the grasp of it,” said Nguyen. “There are lots of variations on how to say it in the Americanized accent, and I feel like there’s no one generally accepted way to say it.”

It’s simply easier to tell English speakers to pronounce Nguyen as “win” or “nwin,” “new-inn,” “noo-yen,” or any other number of close approximations. None of them include the tonal aspect.

“It can get very hairy. I had this conversation, too, with Raphael because he had gotten lots of tweets about, ‘You’re not pronouncing Nguyễn right,’” said Nguyen. “No matter what Americanized version you choose, someone else is going to disagree with you. When you hear it [said] properly it’s really beautiful. It’s very lilting and lovely.”

Nguyen was also on hand to help Brie record the two Vietnamese phrases that Diane says, having learned them from the pangolin at Chicken 4 Dayz.

“I got to sit in the session with her and kind of guide her with the pronunciation,” said Nguyen. “Obviously it was totally fine for her not to be perfect with the accent [since Diane doesn’t speak Vietnamese]. I was actually in the booth with her twice. The first time was helping her with that where she was parroting what the pangolin had said and later using that with the bald eagle character.”

Read More: ‘BoJack Horseman’ Season 5 Guest Stars: A Visual Guide to Who Played Who in Hollywoo

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“BoJack Horseman” has been a critical favorite for so long it’s hard to imagine people still are discovering it. But that’s just what happened Wednesday night, as the Netflix animated comedy pulled off an unprecedented move by premiering in syndication on Comedy Central.

Creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg spoke to IndieWire in the lead-up to Season 5, but while he was getting ready for the latest season’s launch, he was also in the process of going back through Season 1 to ready episodes for their debut on cable.

The Hollywood satire, featuring Will Arnett as the voice of a one-time sitcom star who is now drifting through his acting career on a cloud of alcohol, drugs, and self-loathing, has no shortage of adult content. That makes it a natural fit for Netflix’s lack of standards and practices, but not a dealbreaker for Comedy Central.

“We’ve been going back and editing the first season right now for time, not for content — just to fit in the content of commercial breaks,” Bob-Waksberg said. “You know we’ll see what happens when we get to Season 5 with all the dildos. But so far they’ve offered zero content restrictions.”

Given that “BoJack” is airing after “South Park,” which has always pushed the boundaries of what can and can’t be done on cable TV, airing an uncensored cut isn’t too surprising. “If we need to blur certain words or bleep certain words as we air it at different times of the day, we will, but they have not asked us to change anything as far as content goes,” Bob-Waksberg said. “That’s been really exciting.”

“But I’m really excited to see if the show finds a new audience and what people think of the show on that network,” he said. “To quote the great J.D Salinger, ‘Let’s find out!'”

When it came to adding commercial breaks, Bob-Waksberg said the process has been fun. “I mean, it’s a different way of thinking about the episode,” he said. “It’s been really interesting going back and watching and thinking about how this show has evolved since Season 1, and looking at the first season episodes and going like, ‘Oh, there’s some stuff we haven’t figured out yet. It’s fun to tighten them a little bit, too… Yeah, we can take a little air out of this scene or this doesn’t have to quite go on for so long. We can fiddle with this.'”

“It’s interesting to think about how the show does with commercial breaks, and what that does to the rhythms of the episode. You know? To me it’s kind of surprising. If a scene ends and it all of a sudden goes to black, it gets a laugh out of me. I don’t know if the audience watching on Comedy Central will have the same reaction, but I think there are some surprising act breaks. You go, ‘Oh, that doesn’t seem like an act break,’ so there’s something a little delightful in that, of like, ‘Oh, I guess that’s it and now we’re back again.'”

A big part of the process depended on picking up on each episode’s rhythm. “We actually do write with three-act structure in every episode, since the beginning, even though it doesn’t have traditional commercial breaks,” he said. “Even the episode of BoJack’s one long monologue [in Season 5] was written in three distinct acts. So you don’t necessarily know it while you’re watching the episode but we do think about those rhythms and we do think about, ‘OK, about a third to a halfway through the episode we want some sort of big hinge to happen. Then another quarter of the way through the episode we want another big hinge to happen.’ So sometimes in the actual making of those moments shift around.”

“Bojack Horseman”

Netflix

“It doesn’t necessarily happen in the best places for act breaks as we’re re-editing them now, but it certainly gives us a good foundation,” he said. “That was a very technical answer, but that’s where I’m at right now.”

“BoJack” has yet to be renewed for a sixth season, but Bob-Waksberg has a number of other projects in the works at the moment and is still excited about continuing to tell BoJack’s story. “I think creatively there are things that I’m still discovering about the show and the world and the characters,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m wrapping things up [in the] narrative. I think there are changes that could happen that would make the show interesting in new ways and new kinds of stories we can tell.”

However, he noted, “I think the creative conversation is not the only conversation when you’re talking about a show in its later years and how long it goes. So some of that is not up to me, and I think we’ll kind of see what happens. But I am also very proud of the show every season and I’m happy with the show we’re making. I think whether it has a long life or a relatively short life, I feel very lucky that I get to make it for as long as I get to make it.”

New (to Comedy Central) episodes of “BoJack Horseman” Season 1 air Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m. ET. The series is also streaming on Netflix.

For “BoJack Horseman” episode “The Dog Days Are Over,” indie musician Thao Nguyen of the band Thao & the Get Down Stay Down provided a Vietnamese-language rendition of Grouplove’s end credits song, “Back in the ’90s (BoJack’s Theme).” It’s one of five thematic covers this season, and caps the episode in which BoJack’s writer pal Diane traveled to Vietnam to reconnect with her roots after a soul-crushing divorce.

Nguyen said she immediately responded to the episode’s contemplative and melancholy sensibilities. “As I watched it, I loved the darkness of it. I love the dark humor and the humanity of it,” she said. “It’s a really complex, nuanced thing, the essence of human behavior. Just in that one episode I could tell the thoughtfulness and the consideration in the writing is really impressive. I was very heartened that they wanted to take the time and effort and expense to explore this little bit of Vietnamese representation.”

A few years ago, the Virgina-born Nguyen toured Vietnam, traveling with her mother, who hadn’t returned to her home country since the war ended. This emotional experience, seen in the documentary “Nobody Dies: A Film About a Musician, Her Mom, and Vietnam,” helped her identify with Diane’s feeling of displacement in a country full of people who looked like her but didn’t sound like her.

“The way ‘BoJack’ approached and rendered that experience of feeling like you don’t quite belong anywhere, I related to,” said Nguyen. “The people knew immediately that I was not born in Vietnam, not raised there. I am conversationally fluent, but they could tell immediately that I wasn’t a true native speaker.”

Translating the Lyrics

Initially, singing the song in Vietnamese seemed like a straightforward task; the show requested a fairly literal translation of Grouplove’s lyrics. See below:

Back in the ’90s, I was in a very famous TV show
I’m BoJack the Horse (BoJack!), BoJack the Horse
Don’t act like you don’t know

And I’m trying to hold on to my past
It’s been so long
I don’t think I’m gonna last
I guess I’ll just try
And make you understand
That I’m more horse than a man
Or I’m more man than a horse
(BoJack!)

While Nguyen knows conversational Vietnamese, the language changes in more formal situations, especially in addressing or introducing people. In the song, BoJack introduces himself as a former television star. Although Nguyen asked her mother for help, she also turned to the most culturally relevant entertainment product of the Vietnamese diaspora: “Paris By Night.” The ongoing direct-to-video series, which features an elaborate cabaret show of songs, dances, and comedy sketches, is a staple in any self-respecting Vietnamese-American household.

Read More:Animation So White: 11 Times TV Characters of Color Were Voiced by White Actors

“I was like, ‘How are they introducing the television star on “Paris by Night”?’ That actually was my line of thinking,” said Nguyen. “I remember watching and not knowing at least half the things that the presenters were saying because that vocabulary is sort of different.”

Nguyen also said Vietnamese music often contains poignant themes of loss and reminiscing, which resonated with the BoJack theme. “There’s a couple of very small moments of a more introspective philosophical, existential bent within those lyrics, especially when you consider the character of BoJack,” she said. “I remember channeling a wistfulness or some notion of regret that is actually very prevalent in the Vietnamese music I was exposed to growing up. Vietnam’s always been entrenched in some kind of war, some kind of loss of land and freedom. There’s a melancholy that I’m very familiar with in Vietnamese music.”

Forging the Right Tones

Also, Vietnamese is a tonal language, and a word’s meaning changes depending on the tone given to each word. In order to follow a Vietnamese song’s melody, the tones are often evened out, which sometimes renders their meanings difficult to comprehend.

“What was really fascinating was to make a decision whether or not I would just forsake the total accuracy of the word or melody for the actual melody of the song,” said Nguyen. “It was a mind bender. I had to call my mom and tried to ask her even, ’Is it okay that I’m doing this?’ But to explain it in Vietnamese was like doing a crossword puzzle. I felt like there were a lot of acrobatics happening that I typically don’t do.”

Thao Nguyen of Thao & the Get Down Stay Down

Maria Kanevskaya

Nguyen went solo for the project, recording her own vocals, percussion, guitar, and banjo while she was on a residency. “I just needed to turn it around faster than it would have made sense to book the studio or anything,” she said. “There was another version that you can hear more of the Vietnamese traditional instruments. I had slowed it down and I had used the banjo more like a kind of a đàn sến (two-stringed lute) or a đàn bầu (monochord zither). It was just more of a traditional folk Vietnamese quality to it, but then it sounded less and less like the original (song) and then it would be hard to understand that this is the theme song in Vietnamese.”

Read More:‘BoJack Horseman’ Has Become So Great It’s Beyond Reproach — So Season 5 Critiques Itself

She instead opted for a more original interpretation closer to the theme song’s tempo. She found the process gratifying, but her mother still hasn’t seen the episode or heard the cover.

“I’ve been out on tour,” said Nguyen, who had just finished performing solo on Neko Case’s tour. “I haven’t shown it to her. She did appreciate that people wanted it in Vietnamese. I think she will be mildly amused.”

Listen to Nguyen’s cover of Grouplove’s “Back in the ’90s (BoJack’s Theme)”:

”BoJack Horseman” Season 5 is currently available to stream on Netflix. Thao Nguyen is currently working on her next album.

Evaluating animation can be trickier than other genres. After all, so many of our earliest TV memories are tied to an animated series, short, or special, and that impermeable nostalgia can be difficult to penetrate with typical critical tools like reason, logic, and other objective criteria. Some shows just click. They hit at the right time and capture a blossoming imagination. When it comes to ranking animated series, you’re not just analyzing TV shows. You’re critiquing childhoods.

Of course, animation is also one of the more expansive TV subsets, with dozens of different tones and styles that make comparisons often feel like apples and oranges. There are cartoons, anime, short films, short series, short films turned into short series, web series, adult-oriented animation, and that’s before digging into all the individual genres, like old school slapstick comedies (a la “The Flintstones”) all the way up to the ever-more-popular dramatic animated series (including “BoJack Horseman”).

With all that in mind, animation needs a little extra celebration. Animated series can be dismissed simply because so many viewers see the medium as less substantial than anything done in live-action, thus eliminating even the best of the bunch from discussions of TV’s elite programs. That’s a damn shame, so to help remind everyone of the genre’s extensive impact and utmost significance, the IndieWire staff has put together a list of the Top 50 animated series of all-time.

Honed from a list of more than 100 programs, the below ranking still only illustrates a sliver of the storytelling diversity animation has captured over the last century. Seek out what you haven’t seen and remember fondly those you have. Animation is a genre for all ages and all stories, no matter when you’re able to start watching.

50. “Reboot” (Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson and Phil Mitchell and John Grace, 1994-2001)

This ’90s series, originally from Canada, was the very first completely computer-animated series, and the medium became a part of the message thanks to the premise. On some level, “Reboot” was basically a cop drama following the adventures of a “Guardian” who lives inside of a computer mainframe keeping things operating safely despite evil viruses trying to destroy the system. The metaphor is relatively bonkers, but the quality of the animation is pretty impressive for the time period, anchored by some really engaging character design and meta jokes about coding and gaming which have kept the franchise active in other forms to this day. – LSM

49. “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!” (Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, 1969-1970)

“Scooby Doo”

Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Zoinks! Although this particular Hanna-Barbera title only lasted two seasons, it launched an animated franchise that continues to this day. The cowardly Great Dane with a speech impediment who solved crimes with his, like, totally groovy teen friends captured imaginations with the light horror elements, hilarious catchphrases, bonkers mysteries, elaborate Rube Goldberg-like traps, and goofy characterizations. This series launched many reboots — one that included pop culture greats such as the Harlem Globetrotters and Sonny & Cher, as animated versions of themselves — bizarre spinoffs like “Scooby’s All-Star Laff-a-Lympics,” and multiple imitations. Ranging from comics and films to pop culture references in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and a recent crossover on “Supernatural,” Scooby and his pals have become embedded in the American consciousness. And it would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids! – HN

48. “Teen Titans Go!” (Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath, 2013-present)

Keep your phone silent while watching “Teen Titans Go!” or you’re sure to miss a joke. The fast-paced animated series packs in more laughs per minute than just about any other show on TV, filled to the brim with pop-culture references, sly jabs at the DC universe, and plenty of self-deprecating gags. Born from the ashes of “Teen Titans,” the show kept the original series’ voice actors but changed up virtually everything else. The show features comedically heightened versions of Robin (Scott Menville), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Raven (Tara Strong), Starfire (Hynden Walch), and Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), who are usually too busy discussing 1980s technology, political philosophies, dancing, and so much more. Perhaps the subtle joys of “Teen Titans Go!” can best be summed up by this logline from a Season 1 episode: “Robin and the Titans become annoyed when Beast Boy and Cyborg will only say the word ‘waffles.'” – MS

47. “The Flintstones” (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, 1960-1966)

“The Flintstones”

Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Inspired by “The Honeymooners,” “The Flintstones” became the first animated series released in primetime, and remained the most successful of its kind until “The Simpsons” came along 30 years later. The secret of its charms was its satirical take on modern suburban culture using absurd, anachronistic elements in a Stone Age setting. Fred Flintstone’s bluster and his pal Barney Rubble’s easygoing nature delivered a familiar sitcom magic, whilst dinosaurs and sabertooth tigers added prehistoric exoticism. It also inspired the futuristic counterpart, “The Jetsons,” which also took a ‘60s sitcom flair to the space age. “The Flintstones” is the first primetime animated series to earn an Emmy nomination, and it’s still considered a classic more than half a century later. And that’s something to “Yabba Dabba Doo” about. – HN

46. “Superman: The Animated Series” (Alan Burnett and Paul Dini, 1996 – 2000)

Superman always sprung to life on the page, but repeatedly proved to be a challenge onscreen. How do you provoke an indestructible, goodie-two-shoes hero? Villains have to be specially engineered to pose any threat whatsoever (they can’t all have kryptonite), and Clark Kent can’t be the only identity offering the audience a human connection. Alan Burnett and Paul Dini’s WB adaptation, the first of Warner Bros. Animation’s follow-ups to “Batman: The Animated Series,” made wise choices from the get-go. First, they introduced a Superman who was extremely durable rather than totally impervious. He felt pain when he was crushed by a toppling building, even if it wouldn’t kill him, and watching him strain to save the day made his efforts that much more engaging, week after week. Making Lois Lane an active hero herself helped as well, and the realistic animation fit these updates, along with the bright tone and driving score. – BT

45. “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” (Lauren Faust, 2010-present)

“My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.”

Discovery Media

The plastic equine toys from the ’80s have had a remarkable endurance among collectors, but the Hasbro franchise really hit the big time when Faust’s cartoon deepened the mythology of the ponies and created a media and merchandising phenomenon. In Ponyville, the unicorn pony Twilight Sparkle and her dragon pal Spike befriend five other ponies as part of a task given to her by mentor Princess Celestia. The show’s themes about friendship and kindness balanced with clever pop culture references appealed to a wide audience, including a rabid adult fanbase — most notoriously young and middle-aged men who style themselves as “bronies.” It’s now embedded in remix culture and has inspired countless memes, imaginative cosplay, and, of course, imitators. – HN

44. “Sealab 2021” (Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, 2000-2005)

One of Adult Swim’s initial launch of cartoons, “Sealab 2021” took a forgotten ’70s adventure cartoon and, well, crapped all over it, turning the environmentally-friendly adventure ‘toon into a profane hotbed of workplace resentments and absurd humor, which creators Adam Reed and Matt Thompson would hone in their future series. Still, “Sealab” had plenty to offer, like a bottle episode where the insane Captain Murphy gets trapped under a fallen vending machine and befriends a scorpion. Or the one where the crew was visited by their Bizarro counterparts. Or all the ones where Sealab blew up at the end, only to be perfectly fine in the next episode. It’s okay, though. Pod 6 was jerks. – JS

43. “Rocko’s Modern Life” (Joe Murray, 1993 – 1996)

“Rocko’s Modern Life.”

Nickelodeon

A wallaby, a cow, and a turtle walk into a television set, and the jokes just kept rolling from there. Joe Murray’s satirical adventures of an Australian immigrant, Rocko, his friends Heffer and Philbert, and the various deranged characters populating the fictional American “O-Town” made for wildly creative kids’ tales. Whether warning against the dangers of megacorporation Conglom-O, visiting Heck for some existential lessons from satanic overlord Pinky, or taking a poke at celebrity culture in Holl-o-Wood, the cult favorite was self-aware, sharp, and introduced the world to impeccable talents like Tom Kenny and Carlos Alazraqui. Plus, even for ‘90s Nickelodeon, “Rocko’s Modern Life” was never afraid to get super weird — a respite for children whose imaginations should, and usually do, surprise you. – BT

42. “Gargoyles” (Frank Paur and Greg Weisman and Dennis Woodyard, 1994-1997)

Magic, science fiction, and Shakespeare came together in the mid-1990s for one of the most bonkers animated series ever. The premise might have seemed relatively complicated: Mythical creatures known as gargoyles spend their days hanging out on the corners of buildings, frozen in stone, and at night, they come alive. But really it was a tale of family and romance set against a fantastical backdrop, which delivered no shortage of crazy plot elements (especially in its second season). “Gargoyes” never became as iconic as some of the other shows on this list, but the imagination it put on screen each week was hard to top. – LSM

41. “Duck Tales” (Jymn Magon, 1987-1990)

“Duck Tales.”

Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Much is made of the theme song with its signature “Woo-oo!” chorus — and for good reason. Not only is Mark Mueller’s ditty catchy as hell, but it also encapsulates the fun and adventure present from the series’ early days as a comic book to its onscreen adaptation that continued the vibrant and dynamic visual style. The wealthy Scrooge McDuck is a curmudgeonly yet charming foil for his rapscallion grand nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and along with the pilot Launchpad, they enjoy all manner of global and historical escapades worthy of Indiana Jones himself. This is zippy escapism shared between two seemingly disparate generations, something not seen in children’s cartoons that usually keep authority figures in the background. The series was so popular that it lives again in a 2017 reboot on Disney XD. – HN

“Bojack Horseman” is a show that puts its audience through any number of emotions, but one lucky fan might just get the chance to have a day of bliss.

Partnering with the fundraising site Omaze, the show is auctioning off a chance to visit the studio where the acclaimed Netflix series is produced. To cap off the experience, the winner will get to sit in on a table read of the episode and be drawn by the show’s artists. From there, that person’s likeness will be worked into an upcoming episode.

Read More:  ‘BoJack Horseman’ Season 5 Review: Netflix’s Best Comedy Series Continues to Deliver Smarts and Heart

This prize package, which also includes flight and hotel accommodations and the really good friend of their choosing, won’t go to the highest bidder. Like most comedy-themed Omaze drawings, interested participants can donate in tiers, raffle-style, to increase their possible chances of nabbing the top prize. All proceeds will go to California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund, an organization designed to help a variety of recovery efforts for victims of the state’s ongoing natural disasters.

Here’s series creator and showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg running down everything included in the winners package:

Of course, Bob-Waksberg isn’t alone in pitching all the goodies that come with this prize package. (Bless this beautiful show for finding a way to get Paul F. Tompkins to deliver another Erica joke.) Aside from all the aforementioned benefits, the winner will also walk away with a Todd-style red hoodie, which seems like the real reason to enter.

The series was renewed for a Season 6 back in October, so if production patterns hold, audiences can hunt for this lucky fan’s easter egg likeness sometime in 2019. Anyone interested in entering the contest can do so here, where people have until January 21, 2019 to enter the drawing (uh…) drawing.

It’s crazy to remember it’s only been about seven years since Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu began making original series. From the humble beginnings of shows like “Lilyhammer,” “Alpha House,” and “Battleground,” the industry has witnessed a massive seismic shift — a complete explosion of the very concept of how we approach “television.”

Today, these platforms have added literally hundreds of shows to the TV landscape, which inspired IndieWire to evaluate and rank the 50 best that have debuted since those early days. From terrifying dystopias to intimate relationships, these are series which have made the most of opportunities presented by the distribution revolution — and transformed them into great storytelling.

50. “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” (Netflix, 2015-present)

“Marvel’s Jessica Jones”

David Giesbrecht/Netflix

The best of the Netflix/Marvel series, “Jessica Jones” begins with a bang, introducing a new kind of hero to Marvel fans: a super-powered young woman whose internal demons are stronger than anyone she has to fight on the streets of New York. As Jessica investigates the darker side of the city as a private investigator, the viewer comes to understand the depths of her trauma, and the corner of her heart which still hopes for some sort of happiness. Or, at least, another bottle of the good stuff and a night off from assholes. Tough, uncompromising, and yet deeply vulnerable, from the beginning of the series Jessica, courtesy of creator Melissa Rosenberg, opens up the possibilities for what a darker, sexier take on superhero stories can look like. – LSM

49. “Forever” (Amazon, 2018)

“Forever”

Amazon

Explaining what makes this series from Master of None co-creator Alan Yang and long-time “30 Rock” genius Matt Hubbard so special requires spoiling it. So don’t read on if you don’t want to know the show’s true premise! Suffice to say that you should take the title very, very literally, as the series depicts a marriage between stars Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph that has slowly slouched toward boredom and frustration, a situation that is shaken up considerably when Armisen’s character dies. But Rudolph’s strange mixture of sadness and relief at her husband’s death is punctured when she, too, dies, stranding both in the afterlife — forced to truly be together forever. – LH

48. “Castle Rock” (Hulu, 2018-present)

Sissy Spacek and Andre Holland in “Castle Rock”

Patrick Harbron / Hulu

Creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason turned Stephen King’s most famous fictional setting into their horror-streaked playground in the first season of this new Hulu hit. Though the show didn’t always hit every target it aimed for, its blend of terror, trauma, and family drama made for an intoxicating mix, especially in its standout seventh episode, “The Queen.” In it, Sissy Spacek’s Ruth Deaver flits between past and present, as writer Shaw and director Greg Yaitanes capture what it’s like to struggle with dementia in the context of an hour-long show. It’s this focus on the emotions of horror as much as the raw scares that sets “Castle Rock” apart. – LH

47. “The Crown” (Netflix, 2016-present)

“The Crown”

Robert Viglasky / Netflix

There’s an impressive sense of ambition baked into this royal drama, trying to capture the full weight of regal expectations through the lens of the 20th century’s most famous monarch. Cutting against being the Buckingham version of “Forrest Gump,” “The Crown” still manages to highlight certain vital points in time for the entire nation’s history. Emanating from Claire Foy’s riveting central performance, the shifting fate of Britain localizes itself in the way Elizabeth’s successes and failures extended out on a global scale. Brought to life with an impressive, immersive craft that recreates decades’ worth of history through wardrobe and location related details, the interpersonal sagas of “The Crown” draw their strength from the visual artistry surrounding them. Time will tell how the impending, time-jumping Season 3 continues this project, but as it stands, it’s a lush portrait of a larger-than-life institution that manages to go beyond the normal trappings of a standard period piece. – SG

46. “Mozart in the Jungle” (Amazon, 2014-2018)

“Mozart in the Jungle”

Sarah Shatz

Despite multiple wins at the Golden Globes, one of Amazon’s longest running series to date was always an under-the-radar entry — which remains a shame, because the light but sensitive dramedy about life in the strange and highly competitive world of classical music is one which deserves consideration. The cast was peerless, including a bravura lead performance by Gael Garcia Bernal as the maverick composer who comes in to take over a New York orchestra, Lola Kirke as the aspiring oboist who discovers new passions within her field, Bernadette Peters charming the pants off every scene she’s in, and Malcolm McDowell having a lot of fun on camera. But “Mozart” is also fascinating thanks to producers Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Paul Weitz, whose experiments with form and function are a treat for any film nerds. “Mozart” is a show about artists, artistry, and the costs and joys associated with that pursuit. And the music is so, so beautiful. – LSM

45. “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” (Netflix, 2018-present)

Kiernan Shipka in “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”

Diyah Pera/Netflix

Something wicked this way came to Netflix with this devilishly dark reimagining of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” In the series, Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) and her high school friends face down ghosts, demons, and witches in a ghoulish horror homage-filled romp. But the series also uses those horror trappings to explore bigger themes of empowerment and accountability, adding surprising depth and gravitas to this provocative coming-of-age tale. Satan is a real presence on the show, and his followers are not to be taken lightly, even if the series embraces camp as much as gore. Thus far, “Sabrina” is a worthy successor to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and has the potential to last as long. – HN

44. “A Series of Unfortunate Events” (Netflix, 2017-2019)

“A Series Of Unfortunate Events”

Joe Lederer/Netflix

Lemony Snicket’s wonderfully idiosyncratic novels had been a young adult favorite for years before finally getting the perfect on-screen treatment. It turns out three seasons was just the right format for bringing to life the complete story of the tragic Baudelaire orphans, forever chased by the loathsome Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris, operating at a whole new level of commitment) for their vast fortune. With rich production design, an addictively gloomy tone, and great performances from both its young cast and the strange adults they encounter on their way toward a happy ending, “Unfortunate Events” is the perfect example of a show intended for children and adults alike… as long as those children and adults aren’t at all put off by the terrible nature of the horrible tales being told. – LSM

43. “The Looming Tower” (Hulu, 2018)

“The Looming Tower”

JoJo Whilden/Hulu

It takes a lot of hard work to keep a tragic and true story from feeling like a history lesson, but the combined talents of Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, and Lawrence Wright did just that. Tracking the rise of Osama bin Laden while the American government bickered blindly amongst itself, “The Looming Tower” is packed with valuable lessons and timely sentiments. But it’s also lively, engaging, and light on its feet — until it drops the hammer. Jeff Daniels, as FBI Agent John O’Neill, brings a ferociousness to his work that’s only matched by his casual charm off the clock. Bill Camp gives a masterclass in interrogation, Tahar Rahim is all bubbly, youthful energy, and Michael Stuhlbarg will make you hope you’re never called into his office for the wrong reasons. (He’s not angry, he’s just disappointed.) There are so many little things to appreciate in the 10-episode series, it’s easy to forget the horrific end. Of course, you can’t, but the distractions only make the ultimate takeaway stronger. – BT

42. “Red Oaks” (Amazon, 2015-2017)

“Red Oaks”

Amazon Prime

Gregory Jacobs and Joe Gangemi’s endearing ‘80s coming-of-age comedy is one of the few nostalgia-driven stories to work without all the homages. Sure, the smart but lost tennis pro who falls in love with the club president’s daughter is the kind of story you’d expect from John Hughes or Harold Ramis, but they didn’t make this. With its amazing body swap episode and regular references for cinephiles, “Red Oaks” is an ode to the ‘80s. But more than that, it’s an ode to that fleeting moment between adolescence and adulthood, when you’re carefree and crazy pressured at the same time; when you don’t feel the need to do anything important, but know if you don’t do something you’ll be lost for a long time. Funny, sweet, and surprising, Amazon’s three-season comedy is worth checking out, no matter what element draws you in. – BT

41. “Orange is the New Black” (Netflix, 2013-2019)

“Orange is the New Black”

Netflix

In 2016, Netflix made the unprecedented move of renewing “Orange Is the New Black” for not one, but three seasons — which means that when the show unveils its seventh and final season at some point in 2019, it’ll hold the title of Netflix’s longest-running series to date. That’s a huge accomplishment for the hour-long prison dramedy, which isn’t a perfect show, but does so much, so well thanks to the way in which it evolves. Its strengths are found not in the story of a privileged white woman confronting the prison system as an inmate, but in the stellar inclusive ensemble. “Orange” made award-winning stars of actors like Laverne Cox and Uzo Aduba, who might never have found purchase in this industry, while always aiming to tell stories about the sort of women who might never be featured in a prestige drama. – LSM

Netflix hosted a raucous Emmys FYC screening and panel for critically-beloved animated series “BoJack Horseman” on April 22 and while the panel itself was as colorful and irreverent as the show, with stars Aaron Paul and Paul F. Tompkins, as well as supervising director Mike Hollingsworth, production designer Lisa Hanawalt, and creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, it wasn’t until after the event that the mood grew more contemplative.

Currently in production on its sixth season, “BoJack Horseman,” about a depressive, alcoholic horseman struggling to make his way in a lightly-fictionalized version of Hollywood inhabited by humans and humanoid animals alike, is beginning to draw attention within the industry itself, with Will Arnett’s win for voicing BoJack and the show’s win for Best General Audience Animated Television at the 46th Annual Annie Awards in February.

“I didn’t think we would ever crack through at the Annies,” Bob-Waksberg said in a sit-down interview with IndieWire after the panel. “I’m thrilled we did. That is the animation community. I’ve always kind of assumed, ‘Oh, I guess they don’t like us.'”

That perceived lack of acceptance within the animation community itself has spurred something of a crisis of confidence for the show in years prior, particularly given the single Emmy nomination the show has garnered to date, for Kristen Schaal’s performance in Season 3.

“Every year, we have this conversation of going into Emmy submissions — Do we want to submit as animated show again, or do we want to make a go for best comedy?” he said. The creator is admittedly frustrated by the restrictions of the Television Academy with regards to animation, pointing to the flexibility of AMPAS with regards to animated films eligibility. For example, “Toy Story 3” won best animated feature at the Oscars, while also being nominated for best picture. At the Emmys, no such crossover is possible.

“You have to choose a lane,” Bob-Waksberg stressed. “You have to choose animated or live-action.”

It’s a decision that carries even more weight given a recent TV Academy rule change.

In January, the TV Academy released their official rules and regulations for the year, specifying that a show could appeal its categorization – think “Orange is the New Black” competing at the Emmys first as a comedy, then as a drama – but would only ever be able to change categories once. That means that “Orange” is now forever a drama and, were “BoJack” to attempt to compete purely as a comedy, instead of animated, the die would be cast for the rest of its run.

But, it’s not really about the awards. It’s about getting the show in front of as many people as possible and letting it speak to them. “Whenever you go to an awards show and you win, you have a good time,” Bob-Waksberg laughed. “When you go to an awards show and you lose, it all seems stupid and pointless.”

“I don’t need the ego boost,” he said. “Why do we want to win an award? Yes, my grandmother would be very proud, but I think it’s also so people can hear, ‘Oh, this show won an award. I guess it’s good. I should watch it now.'”

“Art is a dialogue,” he said. “I’m throwing rocks across a chasm and hoping people catch them on the other side. Whatever they catch, that’s what the show is.”

“I have to be okay with people coming away with multiple interpretations of my show, because that is what I’m trying to do,” he continued. “There are moments that I intentionally put in where I go, ‘I don’t know what this part means. Let’s see what people take away from it,’ and I’m delighted to see what they find.”

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Tuesday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best show currently on TV?” can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: Who’s your favorite animated TV character currently on TV? (Must be on a show currently airing new episodes or will be returning.)

Ben Travers (@BenTTravers), IndieWire

Listen, for one season of television — even a very, very, very good season — to overtake plenty of excellent, time-tested animated series would be absurd. My deep-seated affection and admiration for the likes of Tina Belcher, BoJack Horseman, Sterling Archer, Eric Cartman, and even two seasons’ worth of the Hormone Monstress have not been set aside for Roberta “Bertie” Songthrush… and yet, right now, in this exact moment, she is my favorite. “Tuca & Bertie” is a delightful blend of puns and pathos, levity and list-o-mania, fun and friendship; Lisa Hanawalt’s Netflix series needs both its leads to strike that balance, but much like the show itself, I’m drawn repeatedly further into Bertie’s rapidly evolving world. Her dreamy neutral mindset paired with real-world practicalities make her identifiable, while her specific exuberances (like baking) and personal backstory (like her relationship with Speckle) help her stand out. But the way Hanawalt manages to craft a character oft-paralyzed by life itself without making her a stagnant, helpless bird in need of saving is what really elevates Bertie to the top of the heap. She’s the authority in her own story, and that story is bursting at the seams. Check it out, won’t you?

Caroline Framke (@carolineframke), Variety

I am guessing (hoping) that this question is prompted by the release of “Tuca & Bertie,” Lisa Hanawalt’s trippy new series about horny birdwomen getting their shit together. If so, I will submit the pair of them (I know that’s cheating) for being extremely funny and relatable, with the close runner-up (even more cheating) of their hot neighbor Draca, a dermatologist plantwoman who likes vaping topless amongst her turtles.

OTHERWISE (the cheating never stops! I blame Fienberg!) [Ed. note: Yep, see below.] I will go with Steven Universe, the most delightful, earnest, accepting, determined little boy slash ancient gem the animated galaxy has ever seen. The show is set to wind down this year, and I trust them to stick the landing, but whew, will I miss it.

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

Daniel Fienberg (@TheFienPrint), The Hollywood Reporter

There are really way, way, way, way too many perfectly good and viable choices here. Every line Gene Belcher says on “Bob’s Burgers” makes me laugh. Every. Single. Word. Every line-reading Maya Rudolph gives as the Hormone Monstress on “Big Mouth” makes me laugh. Every. Single. One. I’m still a guy who refuses to skip an episode of “The Simpsons” and obviously that show has like 50 potential winners and I could try to really complicate this question by lobbying to include a non-active, legacy character from a current show and sneak in a tribute to the late, great Phil Hartman and try arguing for Troy McLure or somebody. There are a half-dozen great characters in Netflix’s “F is For Family” who probably won’t get any love in a poll like this, but I might want to single out Maureen, the Murphy’s youngest child, who has evolved into one of the show’s more interesting characters. I’m not going to pick somebody from “Tuca & Bertie,” because it’s only been on for 10 episodes, but 10 episodes was plenty of time to build deep affection for many of the show’s characters. I think my answer would probably come from Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman” and it could be any of, again, 50 characters starting with the title character and Will Arnett’s vocal performance which somehow has yet to be nominated for an Emmy. I love Mr. Peanutbutter and Todd and Vincent Adultman and Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack. I love Character Actress Margo Martindale. But you know who I truly love? Jessica Biel! She burnt Zach Braff alive! Yeah, my answer to this poll is Jessica Biel, because many animated characters are great and lovable and hilarious, but only one is Un-Biel-ievable.

April Neale (@aprilmac), Monsters & Critics

Hands down for me, it is Patton Oswalt’s Happy, the flying blue horse for Syfy’s series “Happy!” Happy speaks words of wisdom and tries his gosh-darn darndest to serve as a moral compass for the damaged goods ex-cop turned hitman, Nick Sax (Chris Meloni). Their demented on-screen chemistry shines as Sax tries to save humanity and his daughter Hailey with this little horse who just won’t quit him. Meloni’s comedic take on this violent antihero role is off-the-wall good and Oswalt’s CGI blue Pegasus makes this dark, twisted New York City comic book-styled yarn a fun watch underscored with a hidden heart of gold.

“Bob’s Burgers”

FOX

Kaitlin Thomas (@thekaitling), TVGuide.com

I feel like I’ve been waiting years for someone to ask me this question so I could finally talk about how I see a lot of myself in Louise Belcher on “Bob’s Burgers.” Maybe it’s wrong to love and identify with a 9-year-old girl who’s manipulative and seems to thrive on conflict and chaos, but although Louise has a hard exterior, it’s protecting a gooey center. She loves her family even though she’s constantly making fun of them and tormenting them. She has a special bond with her dad. And she loves a popular boy band member so much she slapped him in his face when she met him. Louise contains multitudes, is what I am saying. And I am obsessed with her.

Clint Worthington (@clintworthing), Consequence of Sound, The Spool

She’s been on the air for nearly a decade, but I just don’t think I’ll ever relate to another physical human being the way I relate to Tina Belcher. It’s easy to make a case for any of “Bob’s Burgers”‘ exceedingly charming cast of characters, to be sure, but Dan Mintz’s reedy, pubescent drawl, combined with Tina’s gawky stature and adolescent struggle to understand her own wants and needs probably resonates with a fair number of middle-school wallflowers out there. The show paints her as an outsider, but not a loser – those who continually bully her clearly have their own problems, and the show grants Tina the occasional realistic victory over her naysayers. (Or in the case of the Equestranauts, neigh-sayers.) As for the family, she maintains a delicate authority as big sister, even over bunny-eared tyrant Louise. Plus, I mean, who doesn’t love butts? There’s a little Tina in a lot of us, and the way “Bob’s Burgers” bears that out with great sensitivity and humor week after week is a minor miracle.

“Big Mouth”

courtesy of Netflix

Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti), Vox

I mean, technically the answer to this is Homer Simpson, but that’s such a Dan Fienberg answer (and to complete the Dan Fienberg answer, I should now list 32 other animated characters I like to varying degrees.) [Ed. note: Yep, see above.] But even though I’m still more or less a Simpsons fan, I should absolutely name something more of the moment. And for as much as I like all those wacky kids on “Big Mouth,” I love the Hormone Monstress even more. Listen to the way Maya Rudolph says “bubble bath” and try not to forever say “bubble bath” in that exact cadence for the rest of your life. You can’t! It’s impossible!

Diane Gordon (@thesurfreport), Freelance

There are so many talented voice actors working right now on shows like “Tuca & Bertie” featuring Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, and the entire cast of “BoJack Horseman.” That said, I choose Netflix’s “Big Mouth” when it comes to current animated series because my favorite animated TV character is The Hormone Monstress. Voiced by Maya Rudolph, she manages to combine the vibe of a classic R&B singer with a boozier version of her classic Donatella Versace imitation, in order to create the voice and personality of the Monstress. Whenever I hear the Monstress counseling “Big Mouth’s” Jessie character, I wish I had heard her voice when I was struggling through my adolescence as it would have made my teenage angst so much more bearable and I wouldn’t have cared so much about the other kids’ opinions. And I might’ve grown up to be a boozy, slutty jazz singer. Who knows? I can’t wait for the third season of “Big Mouth” this fall.

“Rilakkuma and Kaoru”

Netflix

Damian Holbrook (@damianholbrook), TV Guide Magazine

OK, so I have just recently become aware of “Rilakkuma and Kaoru,” this Netflix CGI series about a young woman, Kaoru, and her stuffed-bear friend Rilakkuma. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what this twee Japanese import is. Is it a kids’ show? A Wes Anderson experiment? A post-post-modern Winnie the Pooh? No clue. But it is hella cute and so relaxing. Rilakkuma is some sort Hello Kitty-ish teddy bear toy, I know that, having seen the blank-faced plush at numerous Comic-Cons and the branded shop on Times Square, and I even stopped in the store to find out what was up. All I recall was the salesperson saying Rilakkuma was embraced by fans as a stress-relieving character and that he’s actually not a brown bear, but something or someone in a mascot costume (hence the zipper on his back.) I was lost and if I think too much about that, I get freaked out. The show, however, sucked me in with its dreamy animation and score, as well as the sweet nature of its stories. Rilakkuma has these friends, a chicken and a white bear cub, and they pass the time cooking pancakes or having mini-misadventures. They’re also there to make Kaoru, a Japanese office worker, find joy in a relatively mundane world, so there’s a melancholy tinge underneath the unpretentious, sweetly simply production.Oh and Rilakkuma doesn’t speak; he just makes these low grumble sounds and it’s super endearing because we’re never told that the guy is lovable. He just is and a lot of his behavior seems geared toward letting the other people around them know they are, too. And good God, how can you not love that?!

Tim Surette (@timsurette), TV.com

I’m going to pick from recent releases, so put me down for Kaoru from the cuddly Netflix anime “Rilakkuma and Kaoru.” The series follows a woman whose social life is in tatters, love life is non-existent, and support system comes from her roommates, who are a couple of stuffed bears and a duckling. She gets drunk in the park by herself, pounds takoyaki, and talks to ghosts. Sure she’s going insane, but the series treats her adventures like simple life lessons. It’s comforting to see an animated character’s life that is in such disarray, yet she continues to push on as if it’s going to get better. In other words, she’s relatable.

“The Simpsons”

FOX

Marisa Roffman (@marisaroffman), Give Me My Remote

Maggie Simpson (from “The Simpsons”) is going to take over the world —and nothing can convince me otherwise. She’s the quietest Simpson, but the bravest. Heck, she’s saved her family’s life more than once. If the apocalypse was coming, she’s the one I’d want on my side. #TeamMaggie

Liz Shannon Miller (@lizlet), IndieWire

Hey, the character I most identified with as a child is still around! Goddamn it, Lisa Simpson just gets me. No other preteen girl has been given the chance to have an existential crisis on screen the way that the Yeardley Smith-voiced character was in early episodes of “The Simpsons” — without a doubt, she’s grown up into the equivalent of characters like Diane Nguyen from “BoJack Horseman,” but they all hold a core of Lisa in their hearts, blowing that sweet sax to express their pain.

Q: What is the best show currently on TV?*

A: “Barry” (three votes)

Other contenders: “I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson,” (two votes); “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Killing Eve,” “Ramy,” “Superstore,” “Tuca & Bertie,” “Veep” (one vote each.)

*In the case of streaming services that release full seasons at once, only include shows that have premiered in the last month.

Season 5 of the Netflix animated series “BoJack Horseman” delivered more than its share of standout episodes. But “Free Churro,” the standalone chapter which finds Will Arnett’s title character delivering an impromptu remembrance of his late mother, caught the attention of fans across the globe.

The “Free Churro Project,” initiated through the Instagram account @bojackhiddenjokes and edited by Ben K. Adams, cuts together 200 different self-produced performances of the monologue. Submissions were filmed in different locations around the world, with people from over 40 countries participating.

But even with various global entries, there’s also plenty of variation in how each person delivers their portion of the script. Most are direct addresses to camera, but some take different inspiration from BoJack’s appearance. A few perform their parts in a full suit, while others adopt his trademark diamond-patterned forehead.

The video caught the attention of series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who wrote the episode. Last year, when “Free Churro” premiered, Bob-Waksberg explained that Arnett’s performance wasn’t overly directed. “Usually when we record, we try to get two or three takes for every line,” Bob-Waksberg told IndieWire at the time. “But mostly it is just his cold read and his take on the character in the moment. There was very little direction given on this episode.”

It’s a testament to the episode that these disparate interpretations all seem to work in their own way. Some people deliver it while drinking or smoking. One fan even animated themselves in the style of the show’s human characters and added voiceover of their own. Bedrooms, bars, and outside patios all end up being stand-ins for the episode’s single location.

For anyone wondering if this also includes a recreation of the episode’s final reveal: Yep, there’s a DIY version of that moment, too. The credits for the show (delivered over the familiar tune that closes out most “BoJack” episodes) list the handles of each individual who lent their adaptation to the overall effort.

Watch the full video (complete with a horse mask and an off-screen rim shot) below:

“BoJack Horseman” Season 6 is expected to arrive on Netflix sometime later this year.

“BoJack Horseman” is coming to an end with Season 6, but like many great antihero dramas, it’s extending the final season as long as possible. Netflix announced Thursday morning that Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s award-winning animated comedy will end with a 16-episode final season. Part 1 will premiere on October 25, while Part 2’s release date is set for January 31, 2020. (The dates can also be seen at the end of the new trailer below.)

Season 6 was written and produced as the final season of the series, so “BoJack” fans will get an ending conceived as such by the show’s creative team. Moreover, anyone paying attention to the creator’s recent efforts could have anticipated a transition period. Bob-Waksberg executive-produced the short-lived but beloved Netflix animated comedy “Tuca & Bertie” (created by “Bojack Horseman” supervising producer and production designer Lisa Hanawalt). The series premiered in May and was canceled in July, only two months before “Undone” debuted on Amazon — another well-received original series that Bob-Waksberg co-created and executive produced.

In between, he published a collection of short stories, titled “Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory.”

“BoJack Horseman” Season 6 picks up with BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) still residing at a rehabilitation facility. The celebrity horse narrates the trailer below via a letter he’s writing to Diane (Alison Brie), and it’s clear he’s made great strides since admitting he needs help. A professional self-saboteur (literally and figuratively), there’s no guaranteed happy ending for the former sitcom star, whose Don Draper-esque journey toward self-fulfillment could take him just about anywhere.

Such comparisons (often invited — and subverted — by the series itself) make the final season split all the more fitting. “The Sopranos” split its sixth and final season into two parts, airing in March 2006 and April 2007. “Breaking Bad” did the same with its fifth season, and, yes, “Mad Men” did as well, splitting its 14-episode Season 7 into two parts.

The final season will consist of 16 episodes total, with eight episodes constituting each part. You can watch the trailer for Season 6, Part 1 below before “BoJack Horseman” returns October 25 on Netflix.

Long before the “Skip Intro” era, people have lamented the demise of the theme song. There certainly are times when the days of the wistful broadcast sitcom opening number (or even the days of theme songs that parodied them) seem firmly in the rearview mirror.

But with “Succession” Season 2 coming to a close on Sunday, the rapid rise of Nicholas Britell’s opening 90-second orchestral drum loop earworm spectacular is cause for rethinking that assumption. Maybe it’s just the law of large numbers, but even with the glut of shows that now reduce their openings to a simple title card and a “created by” credit, there are plenty of TV themes besides Britell’s worth celebrating.

Some of these fall closer to the more traditional instrumental expectations. Patrick and Ralph Carney’s opening for “BoJack Horseman” may not have any words, but it doesn’t make that heavy sax riff at the end any less recognizable. If Ludwig Göransson wasn’t already halfway to an EGOT, his “Patriot Act” theme song would be the best work of his career. Those whoops at the end of “The Good Fight” credits are just as much a part of the fabric of the show as the exploding office supplies. Ty Segall’s pick-scraping intro for “Corporate” is as close to capturing the bleak angst of office life in musical form as you’ll hear anywhere else.

This also goes for previously recorded songs being matched to their perfect TV counterparts. For all the problems of “Big Little Lies” Season 2, Michael Kiwanuka’s “Cold Little Heart” is still indelible. It’s bizarre to hear TNT use Charles Bradley’s cover of “Changes” for the upcoming NBA season when that song has so thoroughly latched itself onto “Big Mouth.” This year’s “Black Earth Rising” joining “True Detective” Season 2, “shows that open with late-period Leonard Cohen tracks” is becoming a growing market.

“A Black Lady Sketch Show” has its Megan Thee Stallion-backed puppet credits, “Tuca & Bertie” turned its title into a joyful, frenzied mantra, and there’s a good case to make that approximately 65% of the popularity of “Stranger Things” is owed to those synths. Whether that first slice of opening music extends as long as Rawin Djawadi’s “Game of Thrones” theme or is as concise a snippet as Isobel Waller-Bridge’s metal guitar or naughty Greek “Fleabag” chants, these themes as good as they’ve ever been.

As TV continues to grow, the formerly clear parameters for a TV theme are changing, too. Is there any song more associated with a TV show this year than “Gotta Get Up” is with “Russian Doll”? Sure, it may not have explicitly played at the outset of every episode, but that’s still a “theme song” by any other associative metric. One of the best jokes in IFC’s “Sherman’s Showcase” is seeing and hearing how the show-within-a-show’s opening credits change across the decades. Same goes for the late great “The Detour,” which toyed with Rob Kolar’s 10-second opening so much over its four-season run that it became an art form all its own.

So, yes, it’s true that the most popular TV shows aren’t as intrinsically linked to memorable theme songs as they have in the past. But, as with most things in this saturated streaming age, quality is still out there. It’s just a matter of finding where to listen.

[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “BoJack Horseman” Season 6, Part 1.]

Through five outstanding seasons, “BoJack Horseman” has spurred a disproportionate number of conversations about its dark storylines; an inevitable result of pairing its medium — historically, animation has been reserved for cartoons and comedy — with a plot about depression, addiction, and looking for help in all the wrong places. In Season 6, BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) starts looking in the right places — namely, a rehabilitation center called Pastiches — and his eight-episode trek is a shade lighter, still extremely funny, and largely positive. BoJack is going through the steps to recovery, and creator, writer, and executive producer Raphael Bob-Waksberg builds a staircase from clever and uplifting baseboards.

But it would be wrong to claim “BoJack” is suddenly a fun show, or even that there’s a tonal shift in its swan song. First, it’s always been exceptionally, unquantifiably funny — those elements are just harder to talk (or write) about. Second, and more relevant when describing this final season, we’ve only seen half of the journey. Netflix’s decision to break “BoJack” Season 6 into two parts (one now, the second in January 2020) didn’t alter the structure of the show, just its release. While Part 1 ends on a cliffhanger that certainly works as a stopping point, typically the rush of episodes would continue, and whatever peace BoJack has found would be upended by what always throws him back into a spiral: life itself.

For a show eager to address a lot of relevant topics, Season 6 has a steady, startling throughline: BoJack is trying. And he’s not just talking about trying, or trying when he feels like it, or trying to try — he’s actually doing the work. In the opening montage, Bob-Waksberg & Co. speed through the dejected stage of BoJack’s early treatment, showing him sleeping through a group yoga class or getting carried to the start of a hike (and falling over as soon as the nurses let go). But then he sees a photograph of Sarah Lynn, the innocent child actor-turned-troubled pop star who worked with BoJack on “Horsin’ Around” and later died from a heroin overdose while on a bender with her former co-star. (OK, yes, the show does get very dark.)

Remembering Sarah Lynn focuses BoJack and, in that same montage, he starts putting in the effort. He climbs to the top of the mountain, stretches skyward for morning yoga, and even takes a selfie with the pushy check-in clerk. After the first episode explores BoJack’s long-term relationship with alcohol — from using it to dispel nerves on set to being drugged by his own father as abusive bribery — BoJack continues his recovery as a peripheral part of other characters’ stories. He calls Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) to apologize for being such a problem, but although Episode 2, “The New Client,” tracks BoJack’s development through a few phone calls, Carolyn is the focus as she tries to add her single parent duties to a growing list of work responsibilities.

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

Always attentive to its strong ensemble, Episode 3, “Feel Good Story,” shifts to Diane (Alison Brie), who’s traveling across the midwest with her new cameraman-boyfriend Guy (Lakeith Stanfield), producing videos for Girl Croosh on everything from the migrant sex trade to corporate oligopolies. BoJack appears only in narration, talking over Diane’s struggle to justify her own happiness via letters he’s writing from rehab. Episode 4, “Surprise!”, sees BoJack give Mr. PeanutButter good, selfless advice without even being asked, and by then it’s clearer than ever: This is what “BoJack Horseman” would’ve looked like all along if its star wasn’t an alcoholic asshole.

Getting to this point required going through the prior darkness, but these eight surprisingly enjoyable episodes are particularly moving because it feels like lasting change is possible. BoJack has sought out the right tools and started using them — finally — and it’s such a relief to live in his upward recovery for once instead of a downward spiral. All the bumpy, intermittent growth over the past five hard years smooths out as BoJack removes himself from his friends’ daily lives until he’s safe to reengage. Therein lies the rub, the shoe about to drop, the cliffhanger ending that will drive the back-half of Season 6: BoJack still has to take responsibility for his mistakes and admit he was wrong.

Sarah Lynn represents one of his most damaging transgressions, while getting caught in bed with Penny, his ex-girlfriend Charlotte’s teenage daughter, is another. Both are brought to the forefront in the final episode of Part 1, and both are brought up without BoJack around. It’s especially important to hear the latter story from another perspective, not because the Season 2 episode wasn’t hard enough on BoJack (it was) but because the reminder, years later, needs to come from the victim — aka Hollyhock’s new party friend, Peter, who turns out to be the same Peter who went to prom on a double date with his girlfriend, Maggie, alongside Penny and BoJack. To hear him tell it, some old guy took a group of teens to their seminal high school dance, got them drunk, and abandoned two of them at the hospital. Peter doesn’t even know what happened later, but the beginning is bad enough: BoJack is the unnamed man in Peter’s story, the one who screwed him up for years after, and Hollyhock is about to find out.

Once she finds out, BoJack will find out, and he’ll have to hold himself accountable… or go spiraling down a booze-filled hole yet again. Worse yet, it appears that he’ll have to account for his role in Sarah Lynn’s death, as two old-timey (and thus very dedicated) reporters are intent on tracking down the actress’ drinking buddy from the night of her death. These two stories set the table for a turbulent, traumatic, and confrontational last set of episodes, as we wait to see how BoJack will respond to how his past actions hurt people he supposedly cares about.

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

Episode 6, “The Kidney Stays in the Picture,” offers a small-picture preview of the demons BoJack will face. After accidentally exposing his sober therapist, Doctor Champ (voiced by Sam Richardson, whose contributions to Season 6 are as plentiful as they are excellent), to a water bottle full of vodka, BoJack takes care of the man meant to take care of him. First, he stays with him overnight to make sure no one from the center knows one of their doctors fell off the wagon. Next, he puts Doctor (which is apparently Champ’s first name) into another rehab facility, when it’s clear he won’t quit on his own. (Side note: If co-executive producer and horse enthusiast Lisa Hanawalt didn’t come up with the Equine Therapy puns, I’ll eat some hay.)

That’s when his former aid turns on him. “Of course you did this to me — because I cared about you and you ruin people who care about you,” Doctor Champ says. “I want you to remember this, BoJack. I want you to remember what you did to me.” “I remember everything,” BoJack says. “I’m sober now.”

In the past, BoJack has spiraled when he starts blaming himself for everything; when he believes, no matter what his intentions or efforts, that he’ll only end up hurting people. He spiraled after Penny, after Sarah Lynn, after “Horsin’ Around” creator Herb Kazzaz, after so many other mistakes with Diane and Todd and others. But what this episode illustrates is that accidents happen. BoJack was trying to do the right thing when he threw that vodka bottle out the window, and then he tried to stop anyone from drinking it — but he was too late. Doctor Champ drank it before BoJack could warn him. BoJack immediately admitted he was wrong and took responsibility for his mistake.

And yet… he can walk away from Doctor Champ, not Hollyhock. And what about his reputation? Can he give up the adoration of innumerable faceless fans that he’s been chasing his entire career? To survive these final eight episodes, he might have to — hard times lie ahead, so savor this particular chunk of good times. The road to recovery never ends, but “BoJack’s” exit is coming up.

Grade: A-

“BoJack Horseman” Season 6, Part 1 is streaming now on Netflix.

“BoJack Horseman” is no stranger to household names. Sometimes the show’s many guest cast members riff on their own personality (or even play themselves). A handful of those characters return for the Netflix series’ first part to Season 6 — you can see a quick refresher for last season’s additions here, with the caveat that Julia Chan joins the cast as the voice of Pickles Aplenty, the would-be Mrs. Peanutbutter — but there are plenty of new pivotal and ancillary figures who arrive in the latest batch of eight episodes.

To help get a sense of who’s responsible for these voices, we’ve put together a not-quite-comprehensive list. Slight spoilers follow, but these characters are listed in the order they appear throughout Season 6. So if you’re ready to stop the guessing game (or creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg hasn’t responded to your Twitter request yet), check out the slides below for the answers you crave.

“BoJack Horseman” Season 6, Part 1 is streaming now on Netflix. Season 6, Part 2 will premiere January 31, 2020.

The first half of the final season of “BoJack Horseman” debuted October 25 to critical acclaim (eight episodes are now available, with the final eight launching in 2020), and if series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg had it his way the show would not be saying goodbye next year. In a new interview with Vulture, Bob-Waksberg confirms “BoJack Horseman” ending was not his decision, but Netflix’s. The creator envisioned the series going on for “a couple more years,” he said, but Netflix was ready to end the show after Season 6. Bob-Waksberg, however, has no hard feelings against the streaming giant.

“You know, it’s a business,” Bob-Waksberg said. “They’ve got to do what’s right for them, and six years is a very healthy run for a TV show. Frankly, I’m amazed we got this far. So I can’t complain. I think if we premiered on any other network, or even on Netflix on any other time than when we did, I don’t know if we would’ve gotten the second season…A lot of things on Netflix don’t get second seasons. I think it’s a very busy landscape. It’s hard to make an impression. I think we just got very lucky when we premiered.”

Bob-Waksberg said he appreciated that Netflix told him prior to development on Season 6 that the next run of episodes would be the last for “BoJack.” The creator had requested Netflix do as much at the end of the first season. Bob-Waksberg said his first season ending was finite, which prompted Netflix to ask him to add in some cliffhanger-like threads to tease a second run. He told Netflix that, should the day come where a season wouldn’t need any more loose threads for a follow-up season, to just give him the heads up.

“They don’t have to do that, obviously,” Bob-Waksberg said. “But I said I would appreciate it if I could have the forewarning to give the show a proper finale, and not set up some cliffhangers that will never pay off. So when they picked up season six, they said, ‘Hey, remember how you asked for that heads-up? We think that this is your heads-up.’ So I’m very grateful that we got that notice.”

When asked if he would ever return to “BoJack” in the future for a feature film, Bob-Waksberg said, “I don’t want to rule anything out, but I will say, I am very happy with where we leave all the characters at the end of the show. Right now, I’m not itching to tell more stories in this universe, even though there were more stories that I would’ve been happy to tell.”

Bob-Waksberg stressed the show’s series finale is the same series finale that would’ve aired had the show continued for a couple more seasons. Netflix cutting the series short did not prevent Bob-Waksberg from ending “BoJack” on his own terms. “I feel like we got through a solid ending that I feel good about, and like it’s a nice cap on the show,” the creator said.

“BoJack Horseman” is now streaming on Netflix. Head over to Vulture to read Bob-Waksberg’s interview in its entirety.

“BoJack Horseman” was hardly a breakout hit when it debuted on Netflix in August 2014. Five years later, the animated comedy-drama is one of the most beloved and best reviewed television programs of the decade. How did “BoJack” become one of Netflix’s defining series? A major reason is that Netflix gave “BoJack” the necessary time to build an audience through binge-watching. It’s a luxury that was taken away earlier this year from “Tuca and Bertie,” which was created by “BoJack” producer and designer Lisa Hanawalt.

“Tuca and Bertie,” featuring the voices of Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong, debuted May 3 on Netflix to some of the best reviews of the year. IndieWire flat out named the show the best new series of the year, but like “BoJack Horseman” Season 1 it was not a breakout viral hit. The streaming giant pulled the plug on “Tuca and Bertie” in July. In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, “BoJack” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg didn’t hold back when asked to weigh in on Netflix axing “Tuca and Bertie.” Bob-Waksberg took Netflix to task for changing up its business model and no longer giving shows the same treatment that turned “BoJack” into a streaming classic.

“When we started on ‘BoJack,’ it was understood that the Netflix model was to give shows time to find an audience, and to build that audience,” Bob-Waksberg said. “I remember being told, ‘We expect the biggest day ‘BoJack’ Season 1 is going to have is when we launch ‘BoJack’ Season 2.’ We didn’t get a full two-season pickup, but that was the understanding, that these things take time to build. It was my understanding that that was, at the time, the Netflix model: to give shows time to build. I think it’s a shame that they seem to have moved away from that model.”

Bob-Waksberg’s Netflix diss to the LA Times comes on the heels of his revelation to Vulture that he would’ve kept “BoJack Horseman” alive for a “couple more years” had Netflix not pulled the plug on the series. While the creator was thankful he got a heads up in advance that his show’s sixth season would be its last, he wasn’t planning on ending it so soon. The first half of “BoJack’s” final season is now streaming, with the final eight episodes set to debut in January.

Throughout countless adventures filled with “goofy whimsical messarounds” from BoJack Horseman’s wacky sidekick Todd Chavez (Aaron Paul), the unsettled debate on his ethnic background based on his last name has lingered. It’s a query fueled by a constant stream of references that have registered as clues to his connection with Mexico or Latinos in general. 

Finally, in Episode 6 of the first half of the show’s final season titled “The Kidney Stays in the Picture,” the answers have turned up and there’s plenty to unpack. Voiced by Mexican actor Jaime Camil (“Jane the Virgin”), Jorge Chavez, a dark-skinned, bearded, and stylishly dressed Latino, interrupts Todd’s sock puppet rendition of Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” to inform the beanie-wearing manchild that his mother is in a coma. 

Jorge married Todd’s mother and gave him his last name 25 years ago. He raised him as his own, which may explain his advanced knowledge in throwing a proper Quinceañera, but 10 years ago mom and stepdad kicked him out, disappointed by his lack of ambition. Todd has never experienced pushback from the world and tends to fail upward; conversely Jorge has endured hardship, not unlike many immigrant parents. 

As soon as Jorge recites an acronym for his family name (“C” for cerebral, “H” for high-minded, “A” for analytical, “ V” for voracious, “E” for efficacious,” and “Z” for zealously practical), it’s immediately clear that speaking in “big words” defines him. On a deeper level, his flourished vocabulary serves as defense mechanism to demonstrate assumptions about him and his education are incorrect. He likes serious books and SiriusXM. 

If he’s ever belittled or underestimated based on his accent, his complexion, or his personal history, he’ll counteract it with intellect. To think Jorge has to over-perform, over-dress, and constantly prove his interests and aspirations are not limited to what the white mainstream expects of him is disconcerting, but a reality for people of color. Todd, on the other hand, can’t be bothered to know what “perspicacious” means.

Banding together to recover Todd’s kidney in order to save his mother, stepfather and stepson later attempt to crash a Whitewhale Consolidated Interests party using Diane’s identification card. It’s when one of the sharks at the door refuses to believe Todd’s last name is Nguyen that the adorably silly dude drops a revelatory line, ”That’s racist, people don’t always look like their last names. For example, I’m white and my last name is Chavez.” 

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

Not only those that moment vanish any doubts about Todd’s racial identity, but also challenges the presumption that having the last name Chavez should reflect any physical stereotypes associated with Latinos. Though he’s admittedly Non-Hispanic white, Todd could have also been a white-passing Latino. Culturally, however, his identity is likely more blurred than simply Caucasian, having had Jorge as important part of his upbringing.  

Wielding bigoted clichés in his favor to enter the headquarters, Jorge makes himself look disheveled and grabs trash pretending to be part of the janitorial staff. In Spanish he explains, “I’m here to pick up the trash.” Responding to the security shark’s reluctance he doubles down: “Let’s avoid this uncomfortable moment and let me into the building, please.” His trick works. Jorge plays the part; those attending the festivities believe work is the only reason why someone of his background who speaks Spanish would be there. 

Once on the other side, Jorge refers to his tactic as practical and logical, but that statement doesn’t come without a tinge of sorrow. It means he’s painfully aware of the way people see him and has learned to brush it off. Instead of letting that crush him, he tries to manipulate that to his advantage when applicable, like when on a mission to steal back an organ. He doesn’t expect the white man’s world to offer compassion, thus he adapts. Expectedly, when they are caught inside the facility, only Jorge faces consequences. 

Written by filmmaker Minhal Baig (“Hala”), who surely brought her personal experience as the child of Pakistani immigrants into the mix, the episode acutely contrast Todd’s privilege with Jorge’s worldview derived from his status as an outsider to the dominant establishment. We don’t need the specifics of what he’s gone through to comprehend how this country has weathered his perspective.  

“I raised you as my own flesh. I was tough on you because I expected big things from you,” says Jorge in a poignant speech that’ll ring familiar to those nurtured immigrant households where the stakes for your future carry the suffering of those of came here to provide it. Retaliating, Todd accuses him of being mean, but the world has been mean to Jorge, and Todd can’t see that because he’s reveled in unearned privilege.

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

In Todd’s defense, when he advocates for his alternative version of happiness, he’s speaking for those children of immigrants who don’t abide by what they consider outdated parameters of success. Jorge’s life has been rooted in practicality and the pursuit of stability, so he probably wishes Todd had become a doctor or an engineer. To him, anything short of that represents utter disrespect for his sacrifices. It’s heavy stuff. 

Defeated, Jorge throws in the towel to the tune of, “I wanted so much for you, Todd. I wanted to push you to be your best self. I see now that I failed you.” For parents like him, having a child follow a career in the arts or an unorthodox field feels like a betrayal—even more so here because Todd is the epitome of unconventionality.   

Fractured as their bond may be, Todd still claims connection to the Chavez lineage even if it’s through his prideful reluctance to speak to his mother. Some of what Jorge taught him — and maybe even some of his attitudes towards life — stuck with Todd, for better or worse. And there’s still another half season to further explore that. 

Profound and hilarious like “BoJack Horseman” often is, the episodes goes beyond merely addressing the origin of Todd’s last name, but comments on many of American shortcomings when it comes to people that have been otherized. Jorge summarizes pithily in one key phrase: “Nothing came easy for me, it took hard work, focus, discipline, to get me where I am today,” he says.  “Things didn’t just work out, but I should have realized…you are white.” 

We’ve spent the better part of the last few weeks toasting not only the noteworthy TV accomplishments of this year, but the decade overall. With all the riches that TV has to offer, it can be hard to come up with new ways of saying, “Hey, this thing is good! You should try it if you haven’t already!”

So, at the risk of repeating ourselves, we’ve gathered the top achievements from 2019 on a purely episodic level. Some of these are chapters nested in a much grander arc that require hours of prior viewing to fully appreciate. Others are masterfully executed one-offs that can be enjoyed purely on their own.

Regardless of the reasons for us picking them here, these episodes all underline the idea that TV isn’t just a sea of 6- or 8- or 10- or 12-hour movies. At their best, they can highlight the best of what a show has to offer in the tiniest of packages. They can subvert expectations so thoroughly that they take on a mythology all their own. Whatever the reason, they hold your attention. And sometimes, that’s all you need.

“Barry”

Aaron Epstein/HBO

“Barry” — “ronny/lily”

• Directed by Bill Hader
• Written by Alec Berg & Bill Hader

“Barry’s” standout Season 2 episode is one of the better illustration’s of the show’s ethos. On the one hand, it’s cautionary tale. Barry (Bill Hader) has been operating as an assassin for a long time, and his heart’s just not in it. That leads to mistakes, which leads to complications, which could lead to Barry’s ultimate demise. He is, after all, hired to kill people, so if he’s not good at his job, he could end up dead. It’s very serious, very bleak, and very scary stuff. But on the other hand, “ronny/lilly” is an absurdist slapstick masterpiece. Barry starts the episode by trying not to kill someone, and he ends up wreaking more havoc than anyone could’ve imagined. Co-creators Hader and Alec Berg construct a script fueled by usurping expectations, from the reveal that Barry’s mark is a Taekwondo master, to his daughter’s superhuman abilities, to a coincidental ending that would seem impossible, had we not been prepared to believe the unbelievable. “ronny/lily” is as expertly done as Barry’s mission is carelessly assembled. — Ben Travers

“Better Things”

Suzanne Tenner/FX

“Better Things” — “The Unknown”

• Directed by Pamela Adlon
• Written by Sarah Gubbins

For a season that took a closer look at who Sam Fox (Adlon) is outside of her role as a mother, “The Unknown” manages to incorporate a lot of the conflicted elements driving the character’s progress. For one, there’s the artistic satisfaction she finds in challenging material outside the Hollywood system; a satisfaction joyously captured by her trip to New York City to perform an early iteration of a play headed to Broadway. Then there’s her love life, which is complicated by her attraction to Mer (Marsha Thomason) and made more so by an entanglement with the therapist (Matthew Broderick) who’s supposed to be helping her sort things. “The Unknown” throws all these terrifying opportunities at a woman who puts up a guarded, self-sufficient front — she’s a single mom and a working actor in Los Angeles. How would a long-term stay in New York even work? How would a relationship with a woman? What’s outside of Sam’s comfort zone is exactly what she wants and exactly what she’s afraid to embrace. Written by Sarah Gubbins and directed by Adlon (as were all episodes in Season 3), “The Unknown” is a beautiful, subtle, and immensely enjoyable half-hour story that let’s Sam live on her own just long enough to realize she likes it, before sending her scurrying back to safe shores. — BT

“BoJack Horseman”

Netflix

“BoJack Horseman” — “Surprise!”

• Directed by Adam Parton
• Written by Peter A. Knight

“Surprise!” is, like so many episodes of “BoJack Horseman” before it, a nightmare come to life in the most hilarious fashion possible. The animated equivalent of a door-slamming farce, the episode features a surprise party gone very wrong, as guests are forced to stay hidden in the midst of a relationship-defining blow-out fight between Mr. Peanutbutter and his fiancee Pickles. “BoJack” has always been a blend of what’s best in both animated and live-action television, so an episode which features such pristine use of physical space gags and tension, coupled with an argument where the — extremely effective — emotional climax comes from one party accusing the other of being a very bad dog quickly becomes the platonic ideal of what the show is and always has been. —Libby Hill

“Chernobyl”

Liam Daniel/HBO

“Chernobyl” — “Open Wide, O Earth”

• Directed by Johan Renck
• Written by Craig Mazin

Over its five hours, “Chernobyl” deftly balances the personal journey of its central trio of truth tellers with the greater catastrophe unfolding around them. Though later episodes would reach some unforgettable emotional heights — Legasov’s final testimony, the frenzied rooftop clearing, a litter of puppies found in an abandoned village — this third chapter is the series’ richest kaleidoscope. From an unsuspecting firefighter transforming in front of his lover’s eyes to the grizzled group of miners who sacrifice mightily to save the power plant damage from getting any worse, this hour shows the myriad ways that one disaster rippled through countless lives. Presented with care and solemnity, it lets history speaks through its fictional representatives. —Steve Greene

“The Crown”

Des Willie/Netflix

“The Crown” — “Aberfan”

• Directed by Benjamin Caron
• Written by Peter Morgan

The third episode of Season 3 of “The Crown” is a microcosm of what the show does so well; it takes an extraordinary historical event and re-tells it through the most personal of lenses. A catastrophic coal mining accident kills 116 children and 28 adults in Wales in 1966, and Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) responds by…doing nothing. She writes in her journal and stares out the window as other members of the royal family visit the scene and return emotionally concussed by the devastation. It’s not the place of the monarch to intervene in such matters, she believes, and she could distract from the rescue efforts. She is, of course, grievously wrong, but her fraught internal battle between what it means to be human and what it means to be the Queen is never again so sharply displayed this season. —Ann Donahue

“The Detour”

TBS

“The Detour” — “The Game Show”

• Directed by Joe Kessler
• Written by Jason Jones

No other show on TV committed more fully than “The Detour.” Over four seasons, the TBS show put the Parker family through unspeakable on-screen trials as the central quartet traversed the country and then the globe. Years of that controlled chaos reached its apex in this truly unhinged series of fake Japanese game show segments that saw parents Nate and Robin effectively trying to win back their daughter. The whole thing is an unhinged series of physical and psychological torments, all done on a candy-colored sound stage as a studio audience looks on in delight. There are feats of forced flexibility, plenty of unfortunate liquid-covered surprise entrants, and a finale that will forever change the way you hear John Denver’s music. What a shining beacon of insanity to help send this hidden gem off into the great TV unknown. —SG

“Dickinson”

Apple TV+

“Dickinson” — “Wild Nights”

• Directed by Lynn Shelton
• Written by Alena Smith & Ali Waller

Easily the best series available for viewing upon the launch of Apple TV+, “Dickinson” made its mark on an already excellent year of television with its third episode, “Wild Nights.” In it, Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) and her siblings decide to throw a house party while her parents are out of town, a premise for so many of the best teen movies of all time, and a choice that crystallizes the series’ MO of marrying the reality of being a 19th century young woman with a 21st century spin. As Dickinson attempts to balance her secret girlfriend and her family drama and the mean girls at her party and casual drug use and her dang teenage hormones, things get messy and they get real. It’s like, whoa, American poetry legends — they’re just like us! —LH

“Documentary Now” — “Waiting for the Artist”

• Directed by Alex Buono & Rhys Thomas
• Written by Seth Meyers

Pick an episode at random from the third season of this IFC gem — perhaps it’s best yet — and you’d probably have one worthy of inclusion on this list. The stellar “Company” riff “Co-Op” has a cast at the height of its powers, the season-ending installment on fictional competitive bowlers is surprisingly poignant, and their two-part “Wild Wild Country” reimagining has a third-act twist built on a joke so good you can almost see Michael Keaton glow as he’s delivering it. But few half hours of TV this year were as mesmerizing as this chapter, taking its cues from the 2012 Matthew Akers doc “Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present.” Anchored by a frighteningly committed Cate Blanchett and bolstered by some impressive location work to bring this fictional performance artist’s “legendary” work to life, it’s a tribute to the source material that’s shocking when faithful and riotously funny any time it veers off the expected script. —SG

“Fleabag” — “Episode 3”

• Directed by Harry Bradbeer
• Written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

First and foremost, you should watch all the episodes of “Fleabag” in order — all 12 episodes over two seasons, each a perfect 25-ish minute amuse bouche of hilarity and heartbreak. But if you’re trying to convince someone to give the show a try, Season 2’s Episode 3 is the standalone wonder that doesn’t need any context from the surrounding episodes in order to enjoy it. Fleabag helps her sister Claire cater a work function, and pratfalls ensue — you get to see Phoebe Waller-Bridge do a mad scramble through the streets of London twice — and Kristen Scott Thomas guest stars as a world-weary corporate raider who is the mistress of a particularly devastating brand of three-martini-drunk advice. It’s the episode where Fleabag turns a corner, both literally and figuratively. —AD

GLOW

Ali Goldstein/Netflix

“GLOW” — “Outward Bound”

• Directed by Anya Adams
• written by Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch

Like “BoJack Horseman” before it — and not just because they both star Alison Brie — “GLOW” is another Netflix series that seems to understand itself more with every passing season. In “Outward Bound,” the series takes its collective of wrestlers, drops them in the middle of the Nevada desert and leaves them to find empathy and catharsis in each other. The show about women’s wrestling that understands that its framing device doesn’t hem it in, but sets them free, allowing the series to build deep and complex relationships between women that don’t all boil down to jealousy or competition. The episode itself digs into some ridiculously heavy issues, including of parallel generational trauma and identity, the vast gap between freedom in men and women, the fear of losing what security we have, and all the ways our lives end up differently from how we imagine they’ll be. It’s beautiful and funny, powerful and moving, and it solidifies the series as one of the few places on TV where it’s safe to be any and every kind of woman. —LH

“I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson”

“I Think You Should Leave” — “Has This Ever Happened to You?”

• Directed by Akiva Schaffer & Alice Mathias
• Written by Tim Robinson, Zach Kanin, & John Solomon

Every episode of Netflix’s “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” is a like a tiny miracle. It’s a caustic series, one that the creators understand can only be ingested in small doses, leading to exquisitely-crafted 17ish-minute episodes designed to give the audience only as much shrieking, brain-clawing hilarity as they can handle. If that sounds unpleasant, it’s because it is, in the best possible way. The first episode of the show’s stellar first season, “Has This Ever Happened To You?,” features five different absurdist sketches, the highlight being a “Baby of the Year” pageant hosted by the inimitable Sam Richardson and boasting the infamous Bart Harley Jarvis, an in memoriam of old babies (or, you know, the elderly), and a sex scandal. It’s impossible to actually describe what makes “I Think You Should Leave” brilliant. Just trust that you should see the show for yourself to discover your new favorite/least favorite series. (There is no in-between.) —LH