Chapter Text
She was halfway through a paper studying the effectiveness of bees with teeth combined with penis flatteners when Dave strutted up to her desk. “Morning, PC. How's it hanging?”
“Oh. Fine, Dave, just fine.”
“I put your mail on your desk and you have an appointment later with the Director of Point Calculations.”
“Ugh.”
Dave’s voice grew lower and he leaned toward Princess Carolyn. “Listen, we got the files for the new crop of incoming, and the Big Guy thinks it's time for you to fly solo.”
Her eyes widened. “I get to design it myself?”
“You've been an apprentice long enough. You're ready.”
“...Oh, Dave, I'm gonna work so hard,” she insists. “My design is gonna be absolutely perfect.”
He chuckled. “Okay. Easy there, rookie. Starting immediately, you'll be out of my department. You'll be reporting directly to the front office.” He pats her on the shoulder. “This is your shot. Good luck.”
With wide, excited eyes, she stared up at the lone chair at the front of the room, and the sign right above her saying ARCHITECTS ONLY. This was her shot.
Her shot is ruined.
With narrow, cynical eyes, she stares around at the residents of her neighbourhood. “All I ever wanted was for this neighborhood... my first neighborhood to be perfect. Somehow I blew it and... well, you're all suffering, and for that, I'm deeply sorry. This is truly the saddest day of my life.” She walks out of the room.
There’s a long, painful silence.
“Okay,” says BoJack. “I guess I'll speak first. Mr. Peanutbutter and I are the mistakes. We're the ones who misled everybody and dragged you all into this mess, so... we should go to the Bad Place.”
“Agreed,” says Diane.
“Yeah,” says Sarah Lynn.
“Okay, I thought you were gonna at least pretend to fight me on that, but whatever.”
“Hang on,” protests Mr. Peanutbutter. “That judge guy just said everyone here has done bad things. Let's look at this ethically.” He pauses. “You guys helped me and BoJack, right, but we're bad, so you helping us was bad. It's basic consequentialism: the morality of an action is solely judged on its consequences.”
“... Great,” snaps Diane. “The one time you actually remember something from class.”
“Maybe I was brought here by mistake, but since we've been here, I just tried to stay out of everyone's way. Diane’s done worse stuff than me. She dumped me!”
“Is dumping you evil now?!” chokes Diane. “Besides, I dumped you because you murdered Todd!”
Sarah Lynn stands up and clears her throat unnaturally loudly. “Okay, we’ve got it. BoJack and Peanut-bother are leaving.”
“Okay, you know what?” Mr. Peanutbutter turns on Sarah Lynn, glaring. “You’re kind of a bitch.”
“Excuse me?!” she chokes.
“You’re not perfect! None of us are perfect! You’re just as bad as me -- you spent your first week here telling everyone in sight to ‘suck a dick, dumb shits!’! And when you were alive, you were just another slutty pop star that people liked because you were sexy! But of course, you have the right to go into the architect files and prove that I’m bad.” He sighs. “Why are you so determined to make me look bad?”
Sarah Lynn’s face falls. “Mr. Peanutbutter --”
“No, tell me.”
She hesitates. “...Because … I’m jealous.”
“Of what?” he chokes. “Todd?”
“No! Of -- Of everything. Everything comes so easy for you.”
“Oh, and it doesn’t for you? You were a world-famous pop star and actress who got into literal Heaven. What more do you want? What more could the universe possibly owe you?!”
“I…” She folds her arms over her body. “I want to feel good about myself. The way you do. And I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can.”
Diane clears her throat loudly. “Guys, let’s not get too heavy here.”
“We’re deciding which of us should get eternally tortured, how can this not be heavy?” asks BoJack. He groans. “Okay, Peanutbutter, you and me, outside.”
He half-pulls, half-drags him off to the side, to talk privately. “I'm not going,” insists the dog. “I don't wanna.”
“I know you don't wanna, dumbass. I don't wanna either, but let's face it. Diane and Sarah Lynn are better people than we are. We tried to improve ourselves, and ...we did a good job.” He pauses. “Well, I did a good job. You mostly fell asleep in class or made fart noises with your hands.”
Mr. Peanutbutter eagerly makes fart noises with his hands. “I could never do that on Earth. This place truly is paradise.”
“Look at them,” snarls Sarah Lynn. She sighs. “Whispering like they’re talking shit. I bet they’re plotting against us.”
“No way,” insists Diane. “They wouldn't do that.”
“You still like Peanutbutter, don’t you?”
“...Yeah,” she admits.
BoJack clears his throat. “Okay, team meeting. Mr. Peanutbutter has agreed that the two of us should go.”
“Bye, Diane,” says Mr. Peanutbutter. “Sorry for everything. After I'm gone you can go ahead and give Sarah Lynn my acting awards.”
“Thanks,” mutters Sarah Lynn.
He turns to Todd. “I love you so much, baby. Promise me you'll visit.”
“I will not,” says Todd. “It is literally impossible for me to do that.”
BoJack, nervous, turns to Diane and Sarah Lynn. “Well, it's been real, guys.” He pauses. “Sorry, that's how I ended most of my serious relationships.”
“I don’t know what I expected,” says Sarah Lynn.
Diane gulps. “I feel like I failed you.”
“No!” He places a hand on her shoulder. “Don't ever think that. I was dropped into a cave, and you were my flashlight.”
Sarah Lynn sniffles. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, you sexy skyscraper.”
She cringes. “Can you not?”
Ignoring her, he turns to Mr. Peanutbutter. “All right, ready to go? Let's grab Princess Carolyn.”
There’s a knocking at the door.
“Come in,” says BoJack automatically.
Herb Kazzaz nervously enters the room. “Hi, guys. Sorry to interrupt. Um, I'm going to the Bad Place. I've taken one of the slots.”
BoJack’s face falls. “What?”
“I've been there, I know I can hack it. Actually, I have kind of a rapport with some of the fire monsters.”
“Herb, that's crazy,” protests Diane. “You belong here.”
“There's another reason.” He hesitates. “I… like you, BJ. And you like me back, maybe, but we can never work out after how you betrayed me when I needed you most. Being here will always remind me of you, which means that this... will never really be my Good Place.” He clears his throat. “I'm going, so you only have to choose one more person.”
He makes a swift exit and closes the door softly behind him. BoJack stares at the door. “Okay, that means... that means that…” He frowns. “What does that mean?”
“It means... I get to stay here with my husband forever!” yells Mr. Peanutbutter.
Judah paces around outside BoJack’s house. “This is a real mess,” he observes emotionlessly. “No matter what they decide, I'm afraid you're going be in rather hot water with your boss, so to speak. I wouldn't be surprised if retirement were on the table.”
Princess Carolyn’s face falls. “Retirement?”
“Of course,” he says somewhat sarcastically. “What do I know? That was a rhetorical question. I'm The All-Knowing Judge of All Matters in the Afterlife. But I have to be honest, this is your mistake.”
“Morning, PC.”
She didn’t look up from her plans. “Morning, Val.”
Val reached the coffee pots and groaned. “Which one's which? I always forget.”
“Black is regular, orange is anti-matter.”
She poured some of the liquid from the orange pot into her cup. “Working on your first solo design, right? How's it coming?”
She hesitated. “Do you ever get the feeling we could be doing it all... differently? I mean, it's always the same. We get the names, come up with the design, they arrive, we move on to the next one. We never even get to be there... to see how fun it is.”
“Yeah, I guess, but don't rock the boat here, pal, just try to do a good job.” She took a sip from her cup. “Mm. French vanilla? Regular anti-matter's fine, why flavor it?”
Princess Carolyn hesitated. After a pause, she crumpled up the blue paper of her designs, and threw it aside. Then, in neat writing at the top of the white page underneath, she wrote Neighbourhood 12358W, “The Good Place”: A Bold New Plan.
She barely resisted the urge to laugh aloud.
BoJack sighs. “All right, nerds, let's just get this over with. I'll go to the Bad Place with Herb, and you three can stay.”
“Yes!” yells Mr. Peanutbutter, hugging Todd. “We get to stay, baby! We did it!”
“Wait, no.” Diane stands up. “You're not going. I am.”
His face falls. “What? Why?”
“Herb’s leaving because he associates this place with you. If you’re in the Bad Place with him, they might somehow put you together, get you to torture each other. If I go, he’s safe from that, at least.”
“Yes!” yells Mr. Peanutbutter, hugging Todd. “We get to stay, baby! We did it!”
BoJack frowns. “No, dude, this is bonkers. I am going. End of story.”
“No, I'm going,” interrupts Sarah Lynn. “End of everything.”
“What?” chokes BoJack. “Now you're trying to replace Diane?”
“No. I'm going to replace Herb. Diane and I are going to go together, which means that you and Herb and Mr. Peanutbutter can stay.”
“Yes!” yells Mr. Peanutbutter, hugging Todd. “We get to stay, baby! We did it!”
“I can’t let Herb be tortured,” she explains. “He was like a father to me.”
“Then Mr. Peanutbutter and I can go, then he won’t be tortured!” protests BoJack. “Or at least, he and I. He won’t be happy here and I don’t deserve to be here, so if we both go then --”
“No,” interrupts Diane. “I'm going with Herb!”
“No,” insists Sarah Lynn. “I'm going with Dane!|
Mr. Peanutbutter clears his throat. “Todd and I are staying, just FYI.”
“Shut up, robot lover!”
“Hey, that’s racist!”
“Not a robot,” interrupts Todd.
Sarah Lynn groans. “Oh, I swear to God, you…”
The three descend into an argument of yelling contradictions as loudly as they can, and it quickly devolves into a meaningless cacophony of noise. “...Guys?” asks BoJack, taking a step back from them. “...Guys?”
God damn it, he thinks. How did this get so complicated? He closes his eyes, trying to think, trying to just get away mentally from the endless noise. Man, this is torture.
His eyes shoot open. He glances at Diane. She’s repeating her point from earlier.
“If Herb and BoJack are together, they’ll be used to torture each other.”
He stares at them.
“... Holy motherfucking shit,” he says aloud.
Everyone turns to him. “What?” asks Diane.
“Oh, man. Wow!” He laughs aloud. “Okay, okay. Uh, whoo! Hey, PC! Judah! Come on out!”
Princess Carolyn enters the room, Judah right behind her. “Is everything okay?”
“Right as rain, PC, my girl. So, Diane and I are gonna go to the Bad Place.”
Diane frowns. “What?”
He turns back to her. “Trust me, I've got this.” He turns back to Princess Carolyn. “That's our decision. Let's hit it.”
Princess Carolyn rubs the back of her neck nervously. “Well, what about Herb?”
“No, it's me and Diane. Call the train.”
There’s a long, ominous silence.
“Point of order,” says Judah. “I don't accept this offer. The real mistakes were Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack--”
“Gah, gah, gah, gah! You said any two of us. It's me and Diane. Let's do it to it. Princess Carolyn!”
The door bursts open and a snow leopard walks in. “I just found an obscure precedent in the rules that might just save everyone --”
“Buzz off, Sebastian! Don't need it.”
“...Oh, okay. “ With a nervous chuckle, he exits.
BoJack looks Princess Carolyn dead in the eye. “Ready when you are, boss.”
Diane gulps. “BoJack, what's going on?”
“It took me a while to figure it out,” he explains, turning back to face the others. “but just now as we were all fighting and yelling at each other and each one of us demanding we should go to the Bad Place, I thought to myself, ‘ Man, this is torture.’ And then it hit me.” He turns back to Princess Carolyn, grinning. “They're never gonna call a train to take us to the Bad Place. They can't , because we're already here. This is the Bad Place.”
Princess Carolym remains silent for a long time, before letting out a truly wicked laugh. “Oh, man! I can't believe you figured it out.” She continues laughing. “Oh, God! Y-you ruined everything, you know that? Oh, man. BoJack, you really suck! I was so close to pulling it off!” Her speech devolves into a series of inane groans and stammers, before she wickedly pushes a potted plant off a table, grinning deviously as it shatters.
“Wait a sec,” protests Sarah Lynn. “He’s right?”
“Yeah, he figured it out.”
Diane frowns. “No, this doesn’t make any sense. This is paradise.”
“Oh, it looks like paradise,” explains BoJack. “but it's actually a filthy dumpster full of our worst anxieties. I'm surrounded by people who are literally better than me. Just me being here forced Diane into an ethical shitfest. Sarah Lynn tortured Mr. Peanutbutter by trying to get him to help Princess Carolyn, Mr. Peanutbutter tortured me because I was sure he would blow our cover, which was torture for Diane, because she was responsible for me, which made Mr. Peanutbutter seem like the perfect boyfriend because he’s almost the opposite of me, and that tortured them both because they’re not compatible.”
There’s a long, painful silence.
“See?” he continues. “We've been torturing each other since the moment we arrived, and everything PC has done has made at least one of us miserable. She played us like a fiddle .”
Mr. Peanutbutter tilts his head. “Doggy doggy what now?”
The door swings open and Herb runs in. “BJ, don't go!” He grabs BoJack’s hands. “I don't care if you hurt me, I love you. It's the only thing that makes any sense to me in this crazy world, and I think we should stay…”
Princess Carolyn waves a hand dismissively. “No, stop, Tawnie. They figured it out.”
Herb turns to her, confused. “They…”
“They know this is the Bad Place. BoJack figured it out.”
Herb remains silent for a long time. Then, he grabs the air near his head as though holding an imaginary zipper, and in one swift motion removes the suit. The demon underneath has tan skin and black hair underneath a pale yellow beanie with the word HAT on a label near the bottom. She groans. “Man! This was supposed to be my big moment. I just rehearsed that speech for, like, three hours.” She turns to BoJack. “Damn it, BoJack, you are the worst, and you can all suck it.” She storms out of the room.
“Wait,” asks Sarah Lynn. “So if that wasn’t Herb, then …”
“Still alive,” answers Princess Carolyn carelessly. “The cancer part is real, but he’s got years left.”
Judah dusts down his robes. “Do you remember what I told you when you predicted you could do this for a thousand years?”
“The time has come to innovate.” She glanced around at the table. “The human afterlife can be more fun. For us, obviously, not for the people we're torturing. Who cares about those dummies?” There was some scattered laughter. “I present to you the perfect recipe for my proposed experiment.” An assistant rolled a board to the front of the room, with four photos creating a diamond shape and some unintelligible writing between them: a brown horse with a white diamond on his forehead in a pose that makes it look like he’s halfway through a sneeze, a light-skinned Asian human with long blue hair and glasses, a yellow Labrador with sunglasses on top of his head, and a white human girl with sea green eyes and brown hair. “Four people, perfectly suited to make each other miserable. I'm going to design an afterlife where they torture each other.”
“We've tried this,” observed Judah flatly. “Humans are very reticent to torture each other. Even getting them to do simple things like pulling out each other's teeth is like…” He paused. “I can't think of the right analogy. What makes you think that you can get them to do this?”
“Because they won't even know that they are doing it,” she explained. “I'm going to make them think that they are in the Good Place, and to make sure that they drive each other insane, I will be there, posing as a Good Place architect. I even stole a Todd we can use.” She was met with scoffs and laughter. “It can work!”
Judah scoffed.
She sighed. “Look, we can just send them all to the hot spike pits with the lava and the bees and the lightning that tears off their flesh. Let's try something new. I cannot predict everything that's gonna happen, but we'll improvise . We'll... we'll be on our toes. It'll be exciting. I think that we can get them to torture each other... for a thousand years.”
“I think you'll be lucky to get six months out of this insane gambit.” He leaned forward. "But take me through it. How would this work, exactly?”
“Oh. Yes, all right, so…” She clears her throat. “This is a fourteen-million-point plan.”
A lava monster walks into the room. “Um... oh, sorry. I thought we reserved the conference room.”
“No, Janet, we have it until 3:00.”
The lava monster begins her exit. “Sorry. Sorry, everyone.”
BoJack’s eyes widen. “So, Sebastian and Charley and Judah... everyone else in this neighborhood…”
“Except for you four,” explains Princess Carolyn. “Everyone in this neighborhood is one of us. After I came up with everyone's characters, we'd just create fun scenarios designed to torture you.”
“How can I be over it?” protested Diane. “We haven't discussed it or even spoken for days.”
“Well, it sounds like you've had a really nice vacation from your full-time job. Get your story straight, bitch!”
Princess Carolyn giggled to herself, ears pressed against the door to listen. “Okay. They're at each other's throats already. This should put them over the top. Amelia, you play Mary-Beth, a professional conflict resolution officer.”
Amelia grinned. “Ooh.”
“Tracy, you're her wife, Dr. Indira... a psychologist.”
Tracy laughed. “”Maybe we can get them to swing with us.”
“That's perfect, perfect!” She managed to quell her giggles. “Shh, shh, shh.” She knocked on the door. “Hey, guys? It's Princess Carolyn!”
She sighs fondly. “That was really a fun time. Then it all started to go off the rails.”
BoJack’s eyes widen. “When I confessed. You had no idea I was gonna do that, because honestly, I had no idea I was gonna do that.”
“Yeah,” she explains. “that came out of nowhere. I mean, after that it was just a crazy scramble for all of us. You know, I definitely underestimated how effective Diane was gonna be, teaching you to be good, and obviously, we didn't anticipate that Todd would fall in love with Mr. Peanutbutter.”
“Hang on,” says Sarah Lynn. “That part is real?”
“Oh, yeah. Todd isn't one of us. No, he's sort of a... foundational mainframe for all of the neighborhoods, good and bad. And apparently, this Todd is in love with Mr. Peanutbutter. I mean…” She laughs. “What a world, huh?”
“Wait,” says BoJack fornwing. “I don't get something. I know why Peanutbutter and I were sent here, but why Sarah Lynn? And why Diane?”
“Oh, yeah,” agrees Mr. Peanutbutter. “Didn't you raise, like, a thousand dollars for charity, or whatever?”
“Uh, sixty million, actually, so… Oh.” Her eyes widen. “But it didn't matter... because my motivations were screwed. I didn't care about helping the people I raised the money for. I just wanted to prove my parents wrong, stick it to stupid-ass Joelle, and get people to love me. My only real goal was to bang Ryan Gosling at the Met Ball. Which I did.”
“But wait,” asks BoJack. “why is Diane here?”
“Well, uh…” She gulps. “There's something you don't know about me. I read an article saying that growing almonds was bad for the environment, and yet I continued to use almond milk in my coffee…”
“No, dingus!” yells Princess Carolyn. “You hurt everyone in your life with your rigidity and your unforgivingness!”
“...Oh, shit!” Her eyes widen. “You're right. Every friend, every boyfriend was driven nuts because I couldn't let anything go. I missed my mom's back surgery because I was annoyed about something she said fifteen years ago! I made everyone miserable.”
Princess Carolyn sighs. “I mean, all this hard work, all the planning, all for nothing. This really sucks.”
“No, it doesn't.” BoJack grins. “This is great . You saw us all on Earth... a selfish alcoholic, an idiot dog, a tortured writer, a hot, rich fraud with legs for days... Side note, I might legit be into Sarah Lynn.”
“Again,” says Diane. “She is literally young enough to be your daughter.”
He ignores her. “You thought we would torture each other, and we did for a little, but we also took care of each other. We improved each other, and the four of us became a team. So, the only thing you succeeded in doing was bringing us all together.”
Princess Carolyn’s eyes widen. “Oh, BoJack. That's it! My big mistake was bringing you all together, introducing you all to each other straight away. Next time, I'll get some demons to be your ‘soulmates’ so you have an excuse to be away from each other.”
BoJack’s heart skips a beat. “Uh, next time?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna erase your memories, you know, make a few changes and start over again. Hopefully. Just gotta get the boss man to sign off. Wish me luck.” She walks off with her fingers crossed.
BoJack looks around at the others. “Guys, we need a plan.” He turns to Sarah Lynn. “Quick. Sarah Lynn, anything?” Sarah Lynn stares at him blankly. He turns to Diane. “Diane, I need ya. You're the smart one.”
“I-I can't,” she stutters. “I-I can't.”
“Mr. Peanutbutter?” The dog shrugs blankly. “Ugh!”
She runs up to Judah. “What do you say? Take two, huh?”
“I don't know,” says Judah flatly. “I mean, what is this? All this work for four people?
“Look, for a first attempt it was actually very promising. Let me... let me just tinker a little, try again.”
He hesitates. “Okay. But I feel the need to inform you that this is your final chance. If your experiment fails again, you will be punished.”
She gulps.
He frantically paces around the room. “Guys, she is going to erase our memories at any second and all of this will have been for nothing.” They remain silent. “Ugh! You're useless!”
He hesitates, then grabs the book on the desk. Tim Scanlon’s What We Owe To Each Other. He tears out the first page, which has nothing but the title in italics at the top of the page. “What do I write? What do I write? Ooh! Come on, brain.” He scribbles something, then folds up the page. “Todd?” Todd appears next to him. “You can't eat anything, right?”
“Correct,” confirms Todd.
“Open up.”
Todd opens his mouth, and BoJack shoves the paper into it just before Princess Carolyn re-opens the room. “All right, let's try again, shall we?”
“You know what, bitch?” He turns to her defiantly. “Do your worst. We figured it out once, we can do it again, because you know what, Princess Carolyn?” She’s preparing to snap her fingers by now. “You’re a stupid piece of --”
He blinks.
Panic grips hold of him for just a second as he struggles to make sense of his surroundings. He’s in a waiting room of some sort, presumably. He’s sitting on a comfortable armchair, glancing around the room. Both of the walls to his sides have wooden doors in them, closed doors, and there are some potted plants on stools in the corners of the room. Aside from that, it’s a perfectly boring room; the walls are painted white, and the one directly in front of him has the words Welcome! Everything is fine. painted in large green letters.
Few things communicate that something is terribly wrong like the words “everything is fine”. Yet, for some reason, he smiles.
The door to his left swings open. A young woman, a pink cat with a curl of hair at the top of her head, smiles at him. “BoJack? Come on in.”
He obeys.
She leads him into an office and sits behind a cluttered desk. He sits across from her.
“Hi, BoJack,” she explains. “I’m Princess Carolyn. How are you today?”
“I’m great,” he lies. “Thanks for asking. Uh, just one question: Where the hell am I, who the hell are you, and what the hell is going on?”
“Right.” She clears her throat. “So. You, BoJack Horseman, are dead. Your life on earth has ended, and you are now in your next phase of existence in the universe.”
“...Cool.”
He gained many points from his nonexistent relief trip to Cordovia, apparently.
Soulmates are real. People he’s destined to be with. His is a dark-skinned woman named Ana Spanakopita. He opens his mouth, to tell her that he’s not meant to be here, and she explains that she’s more interested in sex than talking. His protests that they’re soulmates fall on deaf ears.
A bing noise makes him jump, and a young human-looking man appears behind him. The man is wearing a yellow beanie over his dark blue hair and a red hoodie. “Who are you?” he chokes.
“I’m Todd.” He holds up a piece of paper. “I think this is yours. After I was rebooted, I found it in my mouth.”
“...What?”
Todd is gone before he can protest. He unfolds the piece of paper. At the top of the page in a printed italic font, it says in small letters, What We Owe To Each Other. In the middle of the page in scrawled pen that he recognizes as his own handwriting, it says, BoJack- Find Diane.
“...Who the hell is Diane?”
He folds up the paper and puts it in a pocket -- the inside pocket of his jacket, because he has some vague sense that he can’t let anyone find out about it. But, he fully plans to continue drinking without fear of hangover and eating an absurd amount of cotton candy and having sex with Ana.
Princess Carolyn tells him there’s a welcome party tonight by a famous person. She adamantly refuses to specify who, saying it’s a ‘surprise’. God, he hopes it’s Secretariat.
He’s in Heaven, somehow and he’s in no danger of being found out. Everything is fine.
No, it’s better than that. Everything is great.