Welcome to my food-themed reviews of Bojack Horseman!
I have watched the pilot episode of Bojack at least five times, but until yesterday, I never looked at its relationship with food. What role does food play in a show like Bojack Horseman? A surprisingly large one. Bojack Horseman is a show about outwardly successful people and their attempts to squash their demons in a pile of excess and vice. It’s actually explicitly stated further into the season when Diane’s ex tells her, “there's a darkness inside you, and you can bury it deep in burritos as big as your head…”
Food certainly plays a big role in Bojack’s life, as seen from the first moments of the series. The pilot opens with an unfortunate Charlie Rose interview, where our antihero is most certainly not “nailing it”. The interview features a few clips from Bojack’s once-popular show, Horsin’ Around, and includes a shot of him eating the entirety of massive ice cream sundae, to the dismay of the three children it was meant for. As Bojack’s lack of self control is an ongoing theme in the series, we often see instances like this, where he eats an insane amount of (usually sweet) food and suffers consequences. Even in this episode, his breakup with Princess Carolyn is intensified by a waiter demanding he pay ten dollars for the usually-complimentary bread after wolfing down nine baskets. He is mortified when this gets pointed out to him. An ongoing joke of the episode is also how every time there’s a party, Bojack ends up eating cotton candy until he vomits.
In the pilot, we see Bojack, in a nod towards his equine background, makes himself a smoothie of carrots, vodka, and pills (most likely horse tranquilizers). Bojack is a horse, we can’t forget that. He loves sweet things, and he’s huge. As he tells Todd in this episode, “it takes a lot of beer to get me drunk.” This is true. A whole pizza is a large amount of food, but Bojack weighs over 1,000 pounds.
It’s an interesting representation of Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane in the pilot. Diane is so neurotic and bizarre in her first interaction with Bojack- is she trying to loosen him up, make him comfortable? Or is she just nervous? And they make Mr. Peanutbutter such an asshole. It makes me wonder if perhaps we’re seeing them more through Bojack’s perspective in this episode. Diane, in his mind, is this quirky beautiful nerd who he instantly relates to, and PB is an obnoxious blowhard idiot. Both are far more nuanced than that, but we don’t get that in the pilot. (And that pile of cotton candy vomit after Bojack learns they’re a couple still makes me groan with disgust.)
That said, Bojack and Diane’s first conversation is really kind of touching. Bojack is so candid with her. My heart kind of breaks when he tells Diane she’ll probably get sick of him. He means it. For some reason, he just instantly drops all that bravado with Diane, and although he certainly still shows off for her over the series, this first scene is very telling.
On a lighter note, “too smart for the room? It’s a salsa joke, people.” never fails to make me laugh. Love a good salsa joke. That whole scene is great. Let’s be real. So is the whole episode. It’s a stellar introduction to the characters as well as the tone of the series.
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On another, even lighter note, each Bojack review will include a themed recipe related to the episode. Check it out.
A Horse of a Different...Cruller?
These more-ish doughnuts are
made sweet and carrot-y, just like Bojack would want.
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For the crullers:
½ cup butter
1 cup flour
½ water
½cup carrot and ginger juice
1 tsp sugar
1 pinch salt
4 eggs
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For the glaze:
2 cups icing sugar
¼ cup carrot ginger juice
1 tsp cinnamon
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Oil, for frying
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First, make the pastry for the doughnuts. In a pot, cook butter with juice and water until the butter is completely melted. With the heat on low, add your flour and use a rubber spatula to incorporate everything into a dough. Cook, moving constantly, for a minute or so, until the dough is cohesive and leaves a sticky film on the pot.
Remove dough from heat, transfer to a bowl, and let cool slightly. Add the eggs, one at time, while beating the dough. It should hang from your spoon like a raggy ribbon when it's ready.
Heat a big, sturdy pot with a large amount of oil. ​
While it heats, pipe out your crullers. Fill a piping bag with the dough and fit it with a star-shaped nozzle.
Place 25 small squares of baking paper on your bench. Pipe a circle of dough onto each one.
When the oil is ready, fry the crullers by sliding them into the oil using the baking paper. The paper will release as soon as it hits the oil and you can remove it with tongs.
Cook the doughnuts in batches until golden.
Cool them on a wire rack.
While the crullers cool, combine the glaze ingredients.
Once the crullers are at room temperature, dip them into the glaze and return to the wire tray.
Serve once the glaze has set. These are best the day of.