BoJack Horseman
2014 · TV series · 6 seasons
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Meet the most beloved sitcom horse of the '90s , 20 years later. He's a curmudgeon with a heart of...not quite gold...but something like gold. Copper?
26 positive2 mixed15 neutralfrom 43 commenters
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46 comments on Hacker News
How do you know they are furries? The illustration could be set in a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals coexist, like the fictional worlds in movies such as "The Bad Guys" or TV shows such as BoJack Horseman or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Another possibility is that it is a medical and/or supernatural condition. They all appear to be canines. They could be werewolves, in a world where medicine and/or magic has developed a way to allow the change to just affect the body leaving their mind and personality intact.
> *depression is just a symptom of my situation and not some true disorder+
There is a great Bojack Horseman episode in which Diane struggles with the idea of taking antidepressants for similar reasons.
If it’s depression, that’s closer to allergies, chronic inflammation or a broken bone healed wrong than vomiting after food poisoning.
I saw a quote earlier this week that I'll copy here:
> I considered renting out sound stages, flying to exotic desert locations, getting a scuba team to shoot the underwater scenes in an aquarium, commissioning custom-made Teletubbies costumes, hiring SAG actors, building dozens of miniature sets, and spending my life savings on making this video. But using AI just seems slightly easier.
Making short films with AI is still incredibly effortful. If you're being careful and diligent, it takes days to "shoot" and edit the entire shot list for a 5-7 minute short.
Would you say that the creators of today's animated TV shows, in mechanizing production with Toon Boom Studio, have stripped the beauty away? I still found "Bojack Horseman" to be a salient dramedy.
Would you say that Pixar, in using motion capture and algorithms to simulate light, physics, and movement, is cutting away the journey?
This is a new adventure and new level of abstraction we're embarking upon.
I'm already thinking about the next way points: real time mocapped improv for D&D campaigns and live community theater fantasy and science fiction productions.
These are tools that bring us to new places, that enable us to tell new stories. Previously you'd have to win Disney budget approval to tell a story matching your vision - now you don't.
The no-dialogue thing is an industry trick. It can allow for animation to start prior to the vocals being recorded and therefore provide some wiggle room in the production process. Simpsons did something similar with the couch gags which were detached from the plot and so could be worked on regardless of vocal progress. More recently, Bojack Horseman also had a no-dialogue episode.
I really have to wonder if the BoJack Horseman writers knew about this when they wrote the Disney trademark episode.
No worries, at least I'm subscribed to Paramount Plus.
Of course I can watch a classic episode of MTV cribs. Wait what's this, they only have the last three seasons!
What about the legendary episode where Redman shows off his authentic home!
This has to be the biggest tragedy to streaming, I can imagine in 10 years or so BoJack horseman won't be palpable to modern audiences. And since Netflix only officially released the first season on DVD, it will effectively become lost media.
Most 1080p encodes I see on pirate bay are h.265 these days.
But frankly, most of what "the scene" produces it trash. I gave up on waiting for proper blu-rays for the remaining seasons of Bojack Horseman and pirated them a few weeks ago, and all the options were compromised. The best visual quality came from a set that was h.265 encoded with a reasonable average bitrate, yet the quality still did not reflect the bitrate at all, with obvious artifacting in fades and scenes with lots of motion. I usually get much better results at only slightly larger file sizes with my own blu-ray rips.
I'm pretty sure the key difference is that I go for a variable bitrate with a constant quality, whereas most scene groups want to hit an arbitrary file size for every episode regardless of whether or not that is feasible for the content. Every episode in this set is almost exactly 266 MB, whereas similar shows that I rip will vary anywhere from 200 to 350 MB per episode.
Try this: look up the most highly rated episodes on IMDB and watch only those. Missing the crummy episodes usually does not interfere with understanding the story arc. Often, I set a minimum IMDB score that I will watch, like 8.5 or 9.0 to capture only the best. This works well with series that:
- take a year or two to find their footing or
- have a large cast (some mediocre) that get their own story lines of no consequence occasionally or
- introduce cast members that don't make it or
- implode towards the final season.
I have done this for many series that are somewhat uneven:
- The Americans
- How I Met Your Mother
- Fringe
- Orphan Black
- Halt and Catch Fire
- House of Cards (watching the ratings allows you to miss all of season 6)
- Arrested Development
- Bojack Horseman
- Veep
- 30 Rock
- Jane the Virgin
- Black Mirror
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Suits
- Six Feet Under
- La Femme Nikita
- The Blacklist
- Peaky Blinders
- The Romanoffs
- Ozark
- Westworld (sometimes dropping episodes does not matter)
- Succession
- Borgen
And all of these series have lots of strong episodes.
Series I would not do this with:
- The Bear
- Breaking Bad
- Money Heist
- The Serpent
- Fleabag
- Chernobyl
- The White Lotus
That BoJack Horseman episode on gun control is becoming more relevant every day
This is starting to sound eerily similar to that BoJack Horseman plotline, where he won an Oscar for a movie he never acted in, because he signed away his likeness and the director just used a 3d model of him because he was always too drunk to be on set.
But in all honesty though, this could be great news - imagine not needing to do recall shoots because the dialogue was bad, and you can fill in a few sentences with this technology instead. Of course, it will be abused and used to not compensate actors for their work properly.
But if it develops rapidly I could imagine games and animation using "stock voices" in their productions, just like designers often use stock imagery. I'm sure someone is happy to sign away their voice for a few grand, and provide it to a stock voice library.
Black Mirrors is just a bunch of unrelated short stories which aren't that great compared to a movie.
Bojack Horseman is pretty good indeed, but mostly because it's a comedy. The drama isn't very interesting.
I've heard that a character dies in every Game of Thrones episode, which means some characters will lack depth since they won't have the time required to develop it.
Well I don’t write blogs. Or read much. Or write literary reviews. But let’s pick two.
The odyssey is a very old classic. The framework of the adventure is still great. But Odysseus is a supremacist dick. He’s pretty similar to MCU Iron Man in terms of narrative and depth. We get the sense that it’s ok to kill the people in his home at the end because he is mighty Odysseus but I think that’s pretty lame. I could go on but it’s been too long to cite examples from memory.
A tale of two cities was another one I enjoyed a lot as a teen. The sloppy romanticism of the dude who devotes his life to a love he will never have seemed really quaint, but now seems just pathetic. I’m actually really annoyed when I see behavior like this in fiction now. It’s very frequent in token gay characters because a lot of writers seem to assume that gay people fall in love with straight people and can never get over it.
Stuff that’s resonated with me at a more thematic level recently… let’s say Parasite (Korean film), Mob Psycho 100 (anime, season 1), Over the Garden Wall, Bojack Horseman, and the midnight gospel. Not very universal, but they felt more relevant and more profound. The last one cheating a bit as it’s literally philosophical interviews.
Good literature is entertaining and conveys some greater meaning. Classics tend to do a pretty good job on this, but entertainment and thematic relevance she over time quite a bit.
The original SpongeBob SquarePants movie was a copy of the odyssey’s plot for entertainment but focused on a coming of age theme of what it means to be an adult and whether it was something to strive for. Dare I ask which of the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and the Odyssey is a better piece of literature for a 21st century kid?
I think it’s a harder question than many would give credit. But I think regardless we should be more eager to discuss thematic comprehension of art with children for the stuff they watch. Because I spent a few years in school writing essays about how every book contained the theme of “Caring” and man that was fucking dumb.
Bojack Horseman used to be top of my list, but now enough has happened in my life I find it a struggle to watch certain episodes.
Seems like it would fit right into a Bojack Horseman episode.
Readers here love to crap all over Netflix, but it's still the service I use most. Yes, the movie selection is lackluster and yes, they make a lot of mediocre shows (though often for niches where fans of that content may have few other options). But they also make some of my favorite shows of all time like Bojack Horseman, Big Mouth and Sex Education. And they've revived some of my favorite content of all time like Arrested Development, W/ Bob & David and Wet Hot American Summer (with mixed results, but still). Not to mention a lot of fringy comedy that may have otherwise never been produced, like I Think You Should Leave, Aunty Donna and Middleditch and Schwartz.
And they've brought content into the mainstream (in the US) that we otherwise may have never seen, like Black Mirror and Squid Game.
Throw in some flagship nature documentaries, a ton of stand up specials and the occasional cultural phenomenon like Stranger Things and I still feel like Netflix is easily worth the cost. And just because they produce a lot of crap doesn't negate any of the above. There is no number of Adam Sandler movies that will change how much I loved Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special.
Netflix has produced a lot of fairly solid content. Not at the level of the all-time great prestige TV shows like the ones you mentioned, but enough to keep a lot of subscribers happy for long periods of time at an accessible price. House of Cards (at least until the Kevin Spacey scandal blew up), Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, etc are a few that come to mind that I watched and enjoyed.
I think Netflix has two big issues. The first is the way they drop seasons all at once prevents the natural cycle of pre-episode hype, post-episode interviews, speculation and leaks, fan anticipation, fan arguments (ship wars, etc), etc. Fan culture can't develop around this content as easily because there's never any breathing space for fans to collectively sit with the story so far. The shows that become a cultural force like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones need us to keep coming back to the conversation every week. They have us talking about what happened last week and will happen this week with our colleagues at work and around the dinner table. How can these Netflix IPs enter stable orbit in the cultural zeitgeist when they're once-a-year events? It devalues the work, positioning it more like a movie that you watch and then forget rather than a story you become invested in over a long period of time.
Full season drops also allow people to binge a whole season of content for a single month's subscription and then immediately churn (ask me how I know). I assume they have some data-driven reasons for doing this, but it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Besides that, I think they should put more wood behind fewer arrows. They've developed a reputation for aggressively cancelling smaller shows with passionate followings which makes a lot of people not even want to bother until something has become an established mainstream success. I think of them now as the Google of content-creation, putting out a lot of solid (but not amazing) products and then cancelling them once people start to grow attached.
That is my favorite Bojack Horseman episode for so many reasons.
I think it's all a sign that you look for happiness at a wrong place (for you). I'd suggest to look at other aspects of life, in light of what makes people happy, what makes their time feel worthwhile. For example, you haven't listed your social connections at all, aside from being single. If this reflects your current priorities, I'd suggest to look for people who make you feel like you belong.
Coincidentally this is also how I personally moved my life forward, but it's not just an anecdote, lots of different sources tell me that this is what matter at the end of the day. For a random example, Season 3, Episode 4 of Bojack Horseman (Fish out of water).
Discussing only on the merits of their content, and stipulating that this is neither here nor there with respect to Netflix's long-term prospects vs. HBO:
Breaking Bad isn't an HBO show. So I assume we're just asking, "has Netflix produced any world-class content". The answer to that is yes.
The jewel in their crown, their "Game of Thrones", is clearly Stranger Things. It's undeniably successful, each new season a cultural event. I'd put Stranger Things up against any HBO show for relevance and impact. (Perhaps not for artistic excellence; but, The Wire is the best show that's ever been on television, and it's far from the most watched).
Add to that Black Mirror, Bojack Horseman, Sex Ed, the annual Flanagan miniseries (Hill House, Bly Manor, Midnight Mass), Master of None, and Big Mouth.
They're doing about as well as any premium cable channel ever has. Doesn't, of course, mean you like their content! But I have about as much faith in Netflix coming up with a new prestige show than I do in HBO, most of whose recent stuff has left me pretty cold.
a quote from the tv show bojack horseman: "The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead."
This reminds me of Bojack Horseman plot-line where they scanned every actor on set in case they die so they can recreate them in virtual for the movie.
If you want good content go watch the following TV shows (if you haven't already):
- Euphoria
- Bojack Horseman
- Atlanta
- Fleabag
New BoJack Horseman episode idea: Disney misspells trademarks in legal paperwork and is promptly sniped by FAANG
Neither of those settings help on web. You can stop the previews when you’re browsing around. And you can stop the auto play of the next episode. I have both of those turned off. The annoying one I get hit with (on web) is that when you get to the end of a whole series (or movie, I guess) they roll more or less straight into another trailer.
Bojack Horseman; I laughed, I cried, I lived...I jumped up out of my seat after six seasons to turn off some offensive trailer when it was finally over.
Apparently I am subscribed to 173 channels, here are some of those that I consider worthy of a share
Personalities channels:
- MrBeast (Likeable guy gives people money): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA
- Linus Tech Tips (Tech news): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw
- PewdiePie (Basically reddit reviews + Internet commentary): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-lHJZR3Gqxm24_Vd_AJ5Yw
- Luis Rossmann (Repair shop activist for the right of repair movement): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w)
- SmallAnt (Speedruns and challenges) https://www.youtube.com/user/Smallantone
- Viva Frei (A lawyer explains the legalese side of the news): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzGiDDKdphJ0GFvEd82WfYQ)
- Jordan B Peterson (Rational take on religious tradition) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q
- BeatEmUps (Game reviews, mostly Switch): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJyaxv7V-HK4_qQzNK_BXQ
Reviews channels:
- Savage Books (review of dialogues in media. A lot of Bojack Horseman) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyVz9-w9Ippr-j2Yz4zAcQ
- Filmento (Movie analysis and reviews) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG_nvdTLdijiAAuPKxtvBjA
- Mother's Basement (Anime analysis and reviews) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBs2Y3i14e1NWQxOGliatmg
- Super Eyepatch Wolf (in depth explorations and reviews of many niche topics) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtGoikgbxP4F3rgI9PldI9g
- Mathwiz (anime reviews): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7t2uEegomwaxngbLZiDUg
- Now you see it (movie analysis and reviews) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTFGPpNQ0Ms6afXhaWDiRw
- Explanation Point (Anime reviews and analysis) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg52OrQipnl3G5xmZGNUb_w
- Max derrat (Psicological analysis of games and random philosophy) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj8orMezFWVcoN-4S545Wtw
- My Japanese Animes (anime reviews) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRkxqq-GNo-mE5BIR43byxA
- Sideways (music and musical scores reviews) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi7l9chXMljpUft67vw78qw
Various:
- Cassie Jaye (Film-maker) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW0XocdjHAzMJmTQIboO8qw
- Karen straughan (Cultural commentary) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcmnLu5cGUGeLy744WS-fsg
- Something witty entertainment (parodies) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE_hjYd8HzRTVVXEr7jjHng
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild theories and content (other games too, but I dont care about them) - croton : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQAi3Q1KiKlOERMT6Uvnsvw
- Scottecs (short sketches) (in Italian) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqSmyuqVNwklKKlqqdMmV_A
- Mumbo Jumbo (Minecraft builds) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChFur_NwVSbUozOcF_F2kMg
- Jelle's Marble Runs (sport channel of Marble races) :https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYJdpnjuSWVOLgGT9fIzL0g
I think on demand TV has a bit of a Skinner effect. You discover something awesome every once in a while, but most of the time it's trash, and you get frustrated looking for something really good. It doesn't help that a lot of Netflix productions have 20 episodes or so, of which only about 3 are really good.
Back in the day, you'd have your Simpsons and Power Rangers and just learn to enjoy it and talk about it with all your friends.
I think algorithms are built wrong too. We'd probably click on some show with a sexy model, or a rom-com twist on a zombie flick, or some reality cooking show with celebrities, or a gritty remake of a children's show. We don't really intend to watch it. But they pique curiousity and a little disgust. The algorithms register these clicks and long views as an "interest", and gives us more of these clickbait-ish shows.
I think what would work is simply narrowed down genres, say, Animation > Children > Horror (e.g. Adventure Time) or Animation > Adult > Tragicomedy (e.g. BoJack Horseman). Past that, just arrange at random, alphabetically, and not even by popularity.
One of my favourite series, Bojack Horseman, had an episode where you hear his internal monologue. It was scarily eye opening, because I've often found my inner monologue saying the exact same things, and I can't even remember how long this has been going on for.
Link to the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P4_E3GhUv8
There's a quote in Bojack Horseman that has a similar theme:
> I guess I got a happy ending, but every happy ending has the day after the happy ending, right? And the day after that. So the wedding was so much fun. It was the happiest day of my life. But, you know, what does that say about all the days I have left?
I've always liked that quote, because it is something that gets a bit glossed over in books and movies, but is important; the first derivative of happiness after something amazing is almost invariably negative.
>and literally nothing else
Why is this a need? The minimum unit you can purchase is a month of service. You are free to subscribe and unsubscribe as many times as you want. I'm not aware of a single service that costs more than either a single movie theater ticket or a single newly released Blu-ray/DVD. So you are free to subscribe to HBO watch Game of Thrones, cancel HBO, subscribe to Netflix, watch BoJack Horseman, cancel Netflix, subscribe to Amazon, watch Marvelous Mrs Maisel, cancel Amazon, and so on. That is much more control and choice than cable subscribers had a decade ago. We don't need to make perfect the enemy of the good.
Are you saying Netflix hasn’t made quality shows that will last through 2039? I’d like to know which company you think has made close to the amount of quality shows Netflix has since 2014. Here’s part of a list I have for a content project. No company comes close to this output in recent history.
House of Cards launched February 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Orange is the New Black launched July 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Stranger Things launched July 2016 (3 seasons, 1-2 more)
—
Dark (2 seasons, 3rd is last)
Glitch (2 seasons, 3rd might never come)
Russian Doll (1 season)
Haunting of Hill House (1 season, anthology)
American Vandal (2 seasons)
Black Mirror (anthology, last season not that good)
The Crown (3 seasons)
When They See Us (mini-series, 2019)
Unbelievable (just came out)
—
Glow (3 seasons)
Kimmy Schmidt (4 seasons, finished)
Arrested Development (they tried, hard to get it all back together after years of being done)
Sex Education (1 season)
Bojack Horseman (5 seasons?) #animated
Mindhunter (2 seasons)
The OA (2 seasons)
Maniac (mini-series)
Wet Hot American Summer (2 seasons, but season 1 is the top notch one)
F is for Family (3? seasons) #animated
Big Mouth (2? seasons) #animated
—
Documentary mini-series
—
Staircase
Making a Murderer
Evil Genius
The Jinx
Wild Wild West
——-
There’s more I’m missing and I didn’t include a number of shows Netflix helps finance but isn’t the main financier or producer or original place of distribution. Shows like Glitch.
> The tone of the poster announcing the event is diametrically opposite to the topic set to take centre-stage because instead of the Grim Reaper, it features the colourful characters of the popular animated sitcom, BoJack Horseman, chatting about what seems to be, well, death.
Um, Bojack Horseman is dark. We moved on from “animation is funny happy shows for kids” a long time ago.
The article viewpoints are probably right, Netflix and Amazon need a few more hits that people trust.
The Office was a big fallback show and Netflix needs a few of those of their own. Stranger Things probably fits that.
The Witcher might change things for quality on Netflix.
Netflix shows have high production quality in terms of cinematography, lighting, sound, color, sets, on location etc. Writing and big draw actors aren't there just yet, though they have a bunch of that going and started that way with House of Cards. Stranger Things was new actors except a couple like Winona Ryder, the writing was better and it was successful. Maniac and Sabrina are also pretty good in this area. Bojack Horseman has a cult following. Dark is amazing. Black Mirror was a great acquisition. I Am Mother was pretty good and premiering Annihilation was a steal. Russian Doll was excellent. Animation like Death, Love & Robots, Voltron, Castlevania and more are solid. Those are all the model to go for. What is missing in most shows is writing and casting/actors draw to make a staple series that becomes a fallback like the article mentions.
> Consumers turn to a trusted source when they don’t know what to watch on their streaming service
> Subscriptions like Netflix and Amazon Prime offer plenty of critically-acclaimed, award-winning content. But the thing is, viewers have to pick which movies and series they’ll watch, and observers say many are getting burned out from all that decision-making.
Now with The Witcher the writing is based on a really solid book series, they have a big name actor Henry Cavill that has read the series and it looks great. It could be their Game of Thrones.
Amazon is also trying this with Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time.
These shows if they are done right, will get rewatched for a long time and draws in the mega fans that are influencers.
Netflix is doing pretty good with stand up comedy, maybe even the leader now. They paid Dave Chappelle and will forever be thanked for that by comedy content consumers.
Netflix and Amazon need some big hits like the coming epics, and they need some good staple shows like the Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99 (Netflix should have bought this), Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Friends, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and more. When they have that they equal the content competition that has that trusted good quality. They need a few more of these always watchable fallbacks.
They are both still chasing HBO, HBO is still the top in consistently good content and shows.
Personally I love the competition, some real funding and creator freedom is being unleashed, some are big hits, some are average and some not so good, but I like the amount of content and like the vibe of where Netflix is headed. Their new intro splash where the N goes into color bands is even great, matches their really colorful catalog.
Thought of something else worthwhile to add: for myself and many others, there may be some set of "abnormal" psychological factors that make it exceptionally difficult to trial yourself by fire. If you are that, I offer you this clip from one of the wisest television shows ever created, Bojack Horseman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2_Mn-qRKjA
Friends is my most watched show on Netflix, but that's because there are 10 seasons with 24 episodes each (i.e. a lot of content) and it's just something that plays in the background while I do other stuff. I wouldn't care too much if it was removed, but I would if they took away Stranger Things, Ozark, Our Earth, The Crown, Altered Carbon, Narcos, Santa Clarita Diet, BoJack Horseman, Queer Eye, all the comedy specials and lots more.
>WRT Netflix, their stated strategy was that their access to data was going to allow them to create superior content
I would argue that Netflix has and does do this except for a different definition of superior. They aren't really trying to make a single show with broad market appeal. An algorithm isn't going to help with that anyway. What an algorithm can do is find niches to serve. Netflix has done a good job of creating these smaller shows that have an intense appeal to a small number of people. Gather enough of those shows together and eventually you have everyone covered. It is basically just targeted advertising except with TV shows.
HBO might have GOT that everyone watches, but Netflix has Black Mirror, BoJack Horseman, GLOW, You, The Crown, Russian Doll, Narcos, Maniac, Ozark, One Day At A Time, Big Mouth, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and numerous other shows that have received critical acclaim and everyone probably watches at least one of those.
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
Highly subjective and therefor probably not welcome here, but since this was the comment I saw first:
My Top Netflix Shows:
- Better Call Saul
- Bojack Horseman
- Mindhunter
- Fargo
- Maniac
- The End of the Fucking World
- Master of None
- American Vandal
My Top Netflix Movies:
- Beats of No Nation
- Roma
- Annihilation
- Okja
And where I think your list is wrong:
- 13 Reasons Why
Very problematic show[1]. I found Netflix' response to the criticism lacking and season 2 doubles down on the mistake. Even if one can ignore that, I think the writing and characters are still insultingly thin.
- Ozark
Not bad at all. But also not nearly as good as Breaking Bad. If we didn't live in this gilden television age, I might've found it worth my time
- Altered Carbon
Visually very entertaining. But it's definitely pulp.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13_Reasons_Why#Social_impact
Having been on the receiving end of angry Star Wars fandom (I wrote a play that was basically creative fanfic about Obi-Wan Kenobi, but really was a deep dive into the motivations of various characters)... yeah, don't let fans anywhere near how a show actually works.
Heck, I experienced this last night. I finished the last few episodes of the new season of Bojack Horseman and was actually yelling at the screen in confusion and mild anger at a very meta season. Thankfully, I wasn't involved in the writing process, so they were able to take it in interesting directions I would never have gone.
To be fair, that's a sitcom. I think modern shows like BoJack Horseman are really good interpretations on how poorly those types of stories represented reality.
Has anyone watched the Netflix series bojack horseman? It seems to deal with this topic of burnout and mental health in a very realistic and touching way. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s about an actor who makes it big for one tv show but becomes aimless and depressed once the show was over.
> somebody in Cincinnati
I love how my old city gets mentioned randomly a lot .. like the first episode of BoJack Horseman with the Penguin.
Bojack Horseman had a whole episode partly about the lengths newspapers will go to to keep you from cancelling your subscription.
The person on the phone ended up being a ridiculously empathetic and impromptu therapist for most of the episode, but here's the punchline: https://youtu.be/Ml94NgOFxxE?t=1m22s
Apt Bojack Horseman quote incoming...
> How do you respond to allegations that factory farming is "torture" or "cruel" or "like a terrifying movie about some strange dystopian society, but in this monster story, the horrifying monsters are us"?
> Relax, Tommy, everything we do is completely legal and FDA-approved, so, therefore, it is fine.
> I have no follow-up questions
I find them better than TV, pound for pound. For example, _Backstrom_ is a shitty House clone in many senses, but is a much better detective show than _Elementary_.
They have more feedback data and often great "production values" (i.e. they spent the extra money to make it nice). It doesn't always pay off (how stupid was _Marseille_, with Gerard Depardieu at his best acting chops in years and a political story that melts into family drama in three episodes flat?).
But having 100 Netflix shows and a random assortment of failed indie movies is not better than having 10 Netflix shows and a decent film catalog. Netflix pretty much snuck up on the less attentive of us by giving us more shows (hey, I basically stayed for Bojack Horseman) and taking away feature-length studio-produced movies.
I mean, who has the time to watch a full-length movie most days.
So I kind of feel cheated, but not enough to leave yet.
> More drivers in the network makes it faster to get a ride and therefore more attractive to riders.
All else being equal. A competitor boasting "hey, we're just like Uber, but with longer waits" probably won't get far. They could compete on
* lower price (fixed rate vs dynamic pricing, like Wingz)
* higher class of the vehicle
* support certain edge cases like kid-friendly service, bilingual service or women driver (hat tip Bojack Horseman Season 3 for that business idea)
On the flipside, Bojack Horseman, an animation on Netflix just did an episode in season 3 which is deliberately dialogue free for the majority of the episode, and it comes across as a brave and interesting move. This runs counter to the rest of the show's run which is quite dense and dialogue driven.
I can't say I've ever seen an episode of animated television like it in recent times.