Margo Martindale ain't afraid of nothin': 10 recurring joke characters who make BoJack Horseman special
Back in the 2010s, there was a very famous TV show, one that captured The A.V. Club's imagination for six seasons. As BoJack Horseman turns 10 this week, we’ll be looking back at the engrossing animated comedy with a series of essays and interviews. This is BoJack Horseman Week.
For all that BoJack Horseman can never truly escape the orbit of its black hole of a title character, it contains a whole galaxy of amazing, bizarre characters who dot the Hollywoo starscape. And while some of these briefly glimpsed weirdos, sex robots, and co-stars move in and out of the focus of the narrative over time (notably, BoJack's various love interests), many lurk around the edges for the entire run of the show, adding texture to its efforts to be both a Simpsons-esque rapid-fire Hollywood satire, and a show about depression, addiction, and the ways they can mix and interact in the souls of dangerously damaged people.
And so, this list: An effort to chart the BoJack universe through ten characters who could, for better or worse, be described as "recurring joke characters"—even though BoJack is rarely that simple of a show. While laying out our criteria for inclusion, we settled on a few rules: These characters could not have a direct, important impact on BoJack's story. (Hence the omission of fast-talking screwball comedy escapee Paige Sinclair, despite our deep affection for Paget Brewster's ability to zip out snappy putdowns and moxie-laden asides; as the journalistic engine who brings about Bojack's final meltdown, she's just too central to the plot.) And they must appear in at least two different seasons of the show. (Alas, Dr. Boing Boing.) Beyond that, we've tried to pull from the series' entire run, and placed the characters themselves in a loose ranking of personal preference/how hard they made us feel…something in their multiple appearances on the series. So, without further ado (but due deference to those list-making masters over at Girl Croosh), we embark by visiting one of the best names ever granted to a character in media:
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