“What is acting? Anyone?” asks BoJack — Professor Horseman, if you will — as he rehearses for his first lecture at Wesleyan University. “Acting is about leaving behind your old self and becoming someone completely new.”

As he cycles to class, wind blowing through his red scarf and recently greying hair, we hear festive opera music playing in the background. This is the first minute of the new, and final, installment of episodes in Bojack Horseman Season Six.

“Becoming someone completely new,” he sighs to himself.

It is the new year, signalling new beginnings and a new BoJack Horseman: fresh out of rehab, clean and broken away from his old, toxic, self-sabotaging ways. Just how emotionally invested we are in BoJack’s personal growth is a testament to the five and a half seasons of inventive and layered character development. We feel genuinely proud of him.

This sense of light-hearted optimism and positivity, however, is very short-lived. Two “Hollywoo” reporters are working on an exposé, investigating BoJack’s role in the death of Sarah Lynn. While BoJack tries earnestly to stay on his path of recovery, his past sins continue to haunt him. The humour quickly fades away, and, as the necessary reckoning tragically unfolds, the tone turns somber and melancholic.

At one point, BoJack expresses his helplessness and frustration at the fact that no matter how hard he tries to work on himself, he feels that people are out to get him.

“This place was supposed to be a fresh start for me. Rehab was supposed to be a fresh start,” BoJack laments. “But no matter how many starts I get, there's always the same ending. Everything falls apart and I end up alone.”

There are many such moments of genuine empathy for BoJack. But the show doesn’t let us dwell on the melodrama and feel bad for him. Instead, it masterfully walks the tightrope of maintaining profound compassion while emphasizing accountability. This is perhaps the show’s greatest achievement: while it seemingly perpetuates the many tropes of Hollywood’s white male anti-hero stories, it also mocks them, even drawing attention to our complicity in enabling them. And so, this may not be the end we want, but it's the one we need.

As usual, the final eight episodes of the show dedicate substantial screen time to the other characters, offering some closure to each of their conflicts. Todd struggles to grow up and settle down, Princess Carolyn struggles to balance her professional and personal life, Diane tussles with depression and writer's block in some of the most evocative and powerful scenes of the season, and Mr. Peanutbutter struggles to find himself amidst his people-pleasing tendencies. Each of these characters’ conflicts are treated with utmost sensitivity, and the season seamlessly switches between their narratives with flair.

Ultimately, beyond the politics of #MeToo, cancel culture and accountability, the show remains, at its core, a wonderfully complex exploration of the human condition and the cyclical, mundaneness of life. After six seasons, each character is still stuck wrestling with the same demons as they were at the beginning. The anthropomorphic animals, pastel-colored animations and razor-sharp satirical humour, all serve to make this existential message more palatable and easy to swallow: life just goes on, and on and on — an endless struggle, an endless battle against ourselves, our baggage and the trauma we carry with us everyday. Sometimes, you can’t just “turn yourself around.” Life’s not the hokey pokey.

Perhaps that’s why BoJack Horseman ends just as it began six seasons ago, with someone changing the Hollywood sign — any guesses what it becomes now? — Bojack eating cotton candy and feeling out of place at a party, and most iconically, BoJack and Diane having a deep, meaningful conversation on the roof of a house.

“Life’s a bitch and then you die, right?” BoJack asks Diane.

“Sometimes,” she replies, “sometimes, life’s a bitch and then, you keep living.” And that’s what it’s all about.