I stopped watching through "BoJack Horseman" because one particular scene took me out of the story, the one where the random guy at the airport tells Diane to smile. I felt the writers were pushing an ideology too hard.

Then I saw the scene happen in real life. Sort of. Some customer who was already acting like a jerk told my female co-worker to smile. She wasn't even interacting with him at the time. I don't know whether he was being sexist or just a generalized rude customer, but while she rightfully told him off, she mentioned that men are never told to smile, only women. I didn't bring up that I was also once told to smile by a female customer. Another male co-worker also said the same happened to him. I guess some people just go around telling random people what facial expression to have.

So does that mean I've changed my mind and that scene was actually good? No, just because it happens in real life doesn't mean it's good writing. However, I did take it as a sign that I should give "BoJack" another chance.

And the next episode was...

...uneven. It was the game show episode and I started laughing around halfway through, when the little schoolhouse came down on BoJack. There are some clever ideas in there, like the TV executive who can't follow the show she's making, but can only react to how people online respond to it.

This episode wouldn't have made me stop watching the way the previous one did.

But I did have one little problem with it.

There's a scene where the TV executive, Wanda, threateningly tells Mr. Peanutbutter that on network TV, all problems must be neatly wrapped up in under a half an hour. Mocking this isn't exclusive to "BoJack" -- even "DuckTales" (2017), a show I really like, had an episode devoted to making fun of how older episodic shows wrapped up conflicts. Making fun of lazy, cliche writing is one thing. But it's like these writers are against having silly, lighthearted conflicts in a sitcom, or giving the audience any satisfying conclusion at all. Also, it's not really true. Older sitcoms had conflicts that lasted longer than one episode. You know the very popular trope of the "Will They/Won't They Couple?" The whole idea is that the couple's problems span multiple seasons and sometimes, the entire run! It just seems like the modern writers congratulating themselves for being better than older writers. I'm just very aware of the writers when I watch modern media, which makes it harder to get invested.

So am I going to keep watching? I don't know, but at least I don't feel I had the bad taste in my mouth that I did before.