Time's Arrow (BoJack Horseman)

Did You Know?

• Matthew Broderick, Majandra Delfino, and Wendie Malick provide guest voices in the episode.
• The episode was written by Kate Purdy and directed by Aaron Long.
• The scene where Henrietta and Beatrice both give birth was influenced by Purdy's hospitalized great aunt who repeatedly asked for her baby.

Plot

The episode begins where the previous episode left off, with a furious BoJack driving Beatrice to a nursing home after she spiked Hollyhock's coffee with weight loss supplements, causing an overdose. BoJack grows frustrated that Beatrice cannot recognize him and tells her they are going to a "magical place where she can never hurt anyone again." Through Beatrice's fuzzy dementia-affected memories, the narrative reveals her past. After her mother Honey was lobotomized, Beatrice was bullied at school by Clemelia Bloodsworth and her posse, who called her fat and pushed her off a slide.

She then caught scarlet fever; her father Joseph initially ignored her complaints until she fainted, blamed his lobotomized wife, and later told Beatrice her throat nearly swelling shut could help her lose weight. As a young adult in 1963, Beatrice earned a Bachelors degree at Barnard College and voiced concern about social issues out of defiance toward her father. She took "pretty pills" to stay skinny and attended her debutante ball, where her father pushed her toward the awkward Corbin Creamerman.

Beatrice met party crasher Butterscotch Horseman at the bar, ditched her party to have sex with him, and later discovered she was pregnant. She married Butterscotch and moved to San Francisco, but their marriage faltered as dreams failed and the stress of the baby took a toll. Butterscotch's novel remained unfinished, and he worked low-income jobs until taking an office job at Beatrice's behest. Both smoked and drank heavily and took out their frustrations on BoJack.

Production

Series creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, writer Kate Purdy, and production designer Lisa Hanawalt aimed to "soften the edges" of Beatrice, a character previously shown as horrible. Hints of her failing memory and soft personality were incorporated earlier in the season, with some aspects added as minor throwaway lines during the writing of "Time's Arrow." Purdy drew on her own life for the scene where Henrietta and Beatrice both give birth; her hospitalized great aunt repeatedly asked for her baby, and Purdy bought her a doll, leading to the idea of a primordial connection between mothers and childbirth.

The episode's extras were difficult to animate because many were designed without faces to emphasize Beatrice's failing memory; after some back and forth, blurring their faces was chosen as the simplest solution. Hanawalt likened the use of a "static scribble" to a similar sequence from the episode "Stupid Piece of Sh*t." Animation director Aaron Long had many conversations with the animation staff about accurately portraying dementia through visuals, and the episode broke some of the show's rules to do so. The slide scene, conceived as "like a million feet tall" during storyboarding, was later made "twisty" by an animator to represent Beatrice's twisted, demented memory.

Reception

Critics universally praised "Time's Arrow," with many ranking it among the season's and series' finest episodes. Les Chappell of The A.V. Club awarded it an "A," calling it the year's most simultaneously anticipated and dreaded television episode. Polygon's Julia Alexander declared it "TV's best episode of 2017," while Lenika Cruz in The Atlantic highlighted its powerful portrayal of female characters.