Will ‘BoJack Horseman’ win Best Animated Program on its 1st try after being snubbed for so long?
In a manner similar to last year, the Emmys could find themselves playing catch-up in the race for Best Animated Program. Like in 2018, “Rick and Morty,” Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman,” has scored its first nomination, despite having a strong cult following and immense praise from critics for several years but several snubs from voters.
If its going to win here, the show will have to beat back three previous winners and a fellow newcomer from the streaming service. Let’s take a closer look at the the five contenders vying to take home this year’s honor.
“BoJack Horseman” has made it in this year with the fifth season episode, “Free Churro.” The episode is a long monologue by Will Arnett as the titular character giving the eulogy at his mother’s funeral. The episode starts with a cold open of BoJack’s father, Butterscotch (also voiced by Arnett), picking up a teenage BoJack from soccer practice and going on about how BoJack is lucky that he can learn from his mother that he can’t depend on women or anybody except himself. At the funeral, an adult BoJack muses about several subjects in the wake of his mother’s death: the toxicity of the relationship he had with both his mother and father, the sense that everyone in the family was drowning, how sitcoms never have truly happy outcomes because there’s always more show, how losing a parent is a lot like that show, “Becker,” how an apologetic Jack in the Box employee showed more kindness to him in one moment than his mother did during her entire life and the enigmatic meaning of his mother’s final words when she turned to BoJack and said, “I see you.”
The episode is a knockout. While it doesn’t have many jokes, it does have the most emotional weight of any nominee in this category’s history. So much of that has to do with Arnett’s amazing performance. You feel every bit of his anger, bitterness and frustration that he has over his parents’s cruelty and longing for at least one positive moment for him to reflect on. The episode appeared on many year-end lists ranking it as one of the best individual television episodes of 2018, often in the top tier. That being said, it’s the first nomination in this category for “BoJack” and to go for an episode that takes place entirely in one room and with one actor could be a bridge too far for some Academy voters in the animation branch.
The biggest competition “BoJack” may be facing is this year’s kid-friendly nominee, “Adventure Time,” which is nominated for its series finale, “Come Along With Me.” A thousand years in the future, two friends, Shermy and Beth, discover Finn’s robotic arm. They seek out BMO to explain it and BMO recounts the story of the Great Gum War. In the present, Finn, Jake and Princess Bubblegum prepare to do battle against Gumbald and Fern. A trip to a nightmare world prevents this battle from taking place but a bigger problem arises when GOLB attacks and also consumes Ice King, Betty and Finn. BMO helps to free the Ice King and Finn and Betty merges with GOLB and departs the Land of Ooo. Fern dies and asks that Finn and Jake bury him where their treehouse used to be. In the future, Shermy and Beth discover the tree that Fern sprouted. Shermy finds a sword embedded in the tree, pulls it out and hoists it above him, much like Finn does in the show’s opening sequence. Since the show debuted in 2010, it has been nominated every year in the Best Short-Format Animated Program, winning in 2015 and 2017. In addition to this, the show has won six juried awards for Individual Achievement in Animation, showing that the love for this show in the animation branch runs deep. Hell, it even picked up a Peabody Award in 2015. Add to all that the widespread praise that this finale received from long-time fans (critics and viewers alike) and this looks to be a very strong contender in this year’s lineup.
Another Netflix contender is in the hunt for this category and that would be puberty-driven comedy, “Big Mouth.,” which scored its first nomination in the category after getting nominated last year for Best Original Music and Lyrics for “Totally Gay.” The show, based on the experiences of show creators Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg during their pubescent years, is up for the much-talked about episode, “The Planned Parenthood Show.” During a sex-ed class the students explain to their teacher, Coach Steve, all the different services that Planned Parenthood offers through a series of skits in an effort to debunk outrageous myths about the organization. The vignettes include a science-fiction tale of a medical team that performs cancer screenings, a “Bachelorette” style reality show for a young woman choosing what type of contraception to use, a Woody Allen-style telling of a man’s decision to get a vasectomy, a woman remembering her decision to get an abortion to the tune of “Groove is in the Heart” and a black and white thriller about an STD called Blue Waffle. The episode was extremely well-received and ended up on many year-end lists of the best episodes of 2018. The episode has an added edge to it because of how timely the episode is with future of reproductive health hanging in the balance. The fact that there is so much misinformation out there about Planned Parenthood gives this entry an added feeling of importance that none of the other nominees can claim.
“Bob’s Burgers” is back with its eighth consecutive nomination in this category and this year they’re nominated for the season nine opener, “Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now.” The episode centers on Tina bumping into a boy named Damon who’s rushing to the auditions to find a replacement for Boo Boo in the boy band, Boyz 4 Now. Convinced that they are destined to be together, Tina dresses as a boy to infiltrate the auditions and find Damon, since girls are forbidden. When she gets to the audition she finds herself falling for every boy that she comes into contact and eventually realizes that her family is right to call her “boy-crazy,” though Tina prefers the term, “boy-focused.” Back at the restaurant, Teddy asks the family to look after an incredibly adorable baby rat that steals the heart of the entire Belcher family, but this runs into a speed bump when Hugo stops in and suspects the family of harboring something suspicious. The show has won this category twice (2014 for “Mazel-Tina” and 2017 for “Bob, Actually”) and this episode got a lot of strong reviews from long-time fans, so it’s never one to be counted out. However, the strength of this year’s competition might be too much for the show to overcome.
Rounding out this year’s nominees is the longtime lion of the Animated Program category, “The Simpsons.” The cultural behemoth returns for its 28th nomination in this category. They’re hoping to score their 11th win here with this year’s submitted episode, “Mad About the Toy.” While Grandpa Simpson is babysitting, a chance encounter with a bunch of plastic green army men causes him to freak out. It’s discovered that Grandpa was the model for the toys but never received any royalties. Grandpa recalls that he ran out of the shoot before he could sign the contract because the photographer made a pass at him. Realizing that he may have ruined someone’s career, Grandpa sets out to find the photographer in hopes of apologizing and making things right. He reunites with the photographer who tells Grandpa that it was better that he was true to himself and the two spend the day together before Grandpa returns to Springfield. This past season was the 30th one for the animated TV family and the episode was decently received, especially for its highlighting of old attitudes towards homosexuality and putting Grandpa in the position to try and atone for it. But it also doesn’t feel like the kind of strong episode that could take down several front-runners that feel far more primed to take the prize. Still, the fact that it still gets nominated over the likes of “South Park” and “Archer” as well as being the most awarded program in the history of this category shows that the program can never be completely counted out.
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