Breaking Down ‘Fuller House’s Relationship With Its Harshest Critic, ‘BoJack Horseman’

When it was first announced that Netflix would be launching a Full House spin-off series, the internet had one of two reactions — excitement or ruthless mockery. Fuller House premiered in late February, and most critics gleefully lived in the barbed mockery camp. However, according to Netflix’s streaming rating, general audiences loved the series. This decisive paradigm, between unconditionally loving Full and Fuller House and despising them, is one of the biggest reasons that makes BoJack Horseman’s existence on Netflix so interesting.

To be far, BoJack has been in the Netflix Original family for far longer than Fuller House. BoJack premiered in 2014, and Fuller House is a 2016 addition. However, BoJack Horseman is and always has been one of the most ruthless and consistent critics of Full House. The entire premise of the series echoes the beloved ‘80s and ‘90s sitcom. The titular BoJack is a failed Bob Saget and John Stamos fusion, an actor who used to be universally beloved for starring on a family sitcom but is now unwillingly falling into obscurity. The animated sadcom loves to contrast the brightly-colored set of Horsin’ Around, BoJack’s show within a show, with the dark and cutthroat behind-the-scenes world of Hollywoo. From its canned studio audience laughter and its set with two stairways, BoJack is packed with jokes about Full House, and more often than not, those jokes aren’t kind.

Take the character of Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal) for example. Think of Sarah Lynn as BoJack’s Olsen twins and Jodie Sweetin hybrid — a young, cute child actor in the spotlight too soon and whose life spiraled out of control too quickly. One of the biggest plot points in the series is how Sarah Lynn’s meteoric rise to fame led to her tragic downfall. It’s a plot line that questions the ethics of exposing children to a job and industry most adults can’t handle while taking a barbed look at Full House. Sarah Lynn’s intense popularity is similar to the Olsen twins’ empire of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but her intense drug problems are pointedly reminiscent of Jodie Sweetin or any number of former child stars who later had drug problems (think Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, or Hillary Duff). In BoJack, Sarah Lynn is a tragic figure, and more often than not, it’s the show’s Full House substitute that’s to blamed for her horrible life, not Sarah Lynn herself.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In the show’s latest season, one of the orphans from Horsin’ Around, Bradley Hitler-Smith (Adam Conover) pitches a new show idea — a species-swapped reboot where one of the orphans now has to raise three little horses. Sound familiar? Throughout most of the season, characters go out of their way to tell both BoJack and Ethan that Horsin’ Around and its new spin-off are garbage. At one point, BoJack’s publicist literally calls the Full House twin series “a piece of shit.” It’s harsh. But, as Vanity Fair’s interview with BoJack’s creator points out, it’s because the animated series is unwilling to hold back that the series can add pathos to its Fuller House mockery. As the piece explains, Bradley’s reasoning for starting the poorly-titled Ethan Around that adds some real heart to the plot line:

For the last 20 years, I’ve been telling people I didn’t need the trappings of fame. That I was better off, happy with my little B-plus life and my little B-plus hardware store, and little B-plus Olympia, Washington. But it’s a lie.

Both BoJack’s creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, and Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, have spoken about the oddity of having Fuller House and its cynical critic on the same service. In an interview with Decider, Bob-Waksberg clarified that the Fuller House mockery comes from a place of love as well as a desire to make fun of the overwhelming amount of revivals that have been popping up. “We’re not necessarily criticizing Horsin’ Around, although we are in several ways,” Bob-Waksberg said. “But it only comes from a place of deep respect for those old cheesy sitcoms in a similar kind of thing. We’re going to tell this story, because it feels like a thing that’s happening right now, and it would be happening with Horsin’ Around. It feels kind of dumb to not touch it at all.”

Similarly, in an interview with Flavorwire, Sarandos pointed to both of those shows as proof of Netflix’s dedication to build programming for all branches of its audience. The Netflix head explained out that audiences who love Fuller House are likely not going to watch BoJack and visa versa. So is it weird that both Fuller House and its most pointed, cynical, and outspoken critic live on the same streaming service? Yes. Is that fact going to change the quality of either program? No. We should look at the existence of both Fuller House and BoJack as a refreshing reminder that in 2016, we can have both kinds of TV — light-hearted sitcoms and genre-bending masterpieces.

[Where to watch BoJack Horseman]
[Where to watch Fuller House]