'BoJack Horseman' Season 6: Diane finally finds happiness in the freedom of letting go with a satisfying arc
Spoiler alert for the final season of 'BoJack Horseman'
Back in Season 1, one of the first few life nuggets that Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie) shares with the once-beloved-now-troubled star BoJack Horseman (Will Arnett) is that you are responsible to create your own happiness and find your peace.
How can you be responsible for finding your own happiness when you can't even be responsible enough to make your own breakfast, BoJack immediately retorts.
And while he completely disregards her advice, it turns out, Diane comes through with it herself. In the final season of a show that followed the fall of a once-famous 90s sitcom star, Diane Nguyen seems ultimately at peace.
Over the course of six seasons, Diane had struggled to find happiness. She was constantly concerned about the questions in life refusing to retire to the possibility that she must remain stuck in this convoluted labyrinth of malice and misery.
Diane struggles a lot to get herself out of the labyrinth in the final season. She lives with Guy (the warm, honey-smooth voice of LaKeith Stanfield) in ice-cold Chicago and is still working on her book.
She wishes to write a memoir that will document all her pain, all the suffering that she has been through all her life. And when the book is ready, only then will she be able to resolve her past.
But being on anti-depressants, Diane finds her mind wandering off, unable to stay stable in order for her to pen down something of substance.
According to Diane, if she fails to commit to this memoir and complete it in its original idea, then all the suffering, the trauma that she had faced all her life would be going to waste. If she cannot write this book, what has she really gained?
Diane had put a ridiculous amount of pressure on herself about writing the book. At one point, on one of her wandering musings, Diane found herself writing a very interesting tale of a young female mall detective that was immediately imprinted on Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) and Guy.
However, Diane staunchly believes that she is not meant to write this book and thinks that facing her childhood trauma again will facilitate writing the memoir.
She gets off her medication and when that fails miserably, she gets back on them - wiser now as she has accepted that she needs them. And that is not particularly a bad thing.
Diane knows that she has always been the smartest person in the room — her wealth of knowledge is at the foundation of her misery. And so, if she channels this knowledge in just the right manner, she can be happy.
However, in the final season, she comes to the conclusion that somehow, she already feels better. As expressed in a conversation with Mr Peanutbutter (Paul F Tompkins), Diane feels lighter and better now.
Living away from Los Angeles and everything that had brought her down, she is no longer wallowing in her sadness. And sure the cold gets to her sometimes, but so much about her life in Chicago is warm that she doesn't miss her old self at all.
When Diane lets go of the pressure she wrongly put on herself, she found what she was looking for — happiness. With her character arc taking this satisfying turn, 'BoJack Horseman' does complete justice to the character who could be deemed as the one moral compass of the show.
All episodes of 'BoJack Horseman' are currently streaming on Netflix.