Chapter Text
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 takes a deep breath. “Cool, I, uh, have some questions.”
“Thought you might.”
“How did I die?” On instinct he presses a hand to his forehead, because that’s usually what he has to do when he wakes up in a strange place with no memory of the previous night. “I, I don’t remember.”
“Yes, uh -- in cases of traumatic or embarrassing deaths, we erase the memory to allow for a … peaceful transition.” She grimaces. “Are you sure you wanna hear it?”
He nods.
“Alright, so you were at a bar and you were very drunk. The bartender advised that you stop drinking for the night, and you got upset and started throwing things. You were kicked out and dragged to your car, which you decided to drive home, for some reason.” Her voice is dry and somewhat annoyed.
“Oof.” That pretty much sums it up. “So I died in a car crash?”
“No, sorry, there’s more.” She shuffles some papers on the desk. “When you predictably crashed into a truck advertising an erectile dysfunction pill called ‘Engorgulate’, you survived with basically no serious injuries. You were shaken, though, and you had one more drink to ‘steady your nerves’.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Then you died of alcohol poisoning. Funnily enough, the first EMT to arrive was an ex-girlfriend of yours…”
“Okay, I -- I get it.” He clears his throat. “So, who was right? I mean, about … all of this?”
“Oh, who was right?” She gives the impression of an overworked business woman -- he supposes celestial beings must be a little overworked. “Well, Muslims are a little bit right, Hindus are a little bit right, Jews, Christians, Buddhists -- everyone was about five per cent right. Except Joey Pogo.”
He blinks. “Who’s Joey Pogo?”
“Joey Pogo,” she explains, in the tone of one trying to break bad news to a child. “Is -- uh, will be a teen pop star in the late 2010s with drug problems. One night, he’s going to get really high on mushrooms, and his best friend’s gonna ask him, ‘Hey, what do you think happens after we die?’, and Joey will just launch into this long monologue where he’ll get like ninety-two per cent correct.” She laughs. “We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. That’s him, up there, actually.” She gestures toward a photo of a teenager on the wall. “He’s pretty famous around here.”
“So…” He gulps. “Maybe my biggest question, am I -- I mean, is this…?” He points vaguely upwards. “Or…” He makes a thumbs down gesture.
“Well, it’s not the Heaven-or-Hell idea that you were raised on.” She glances over some papers again. “Or rather, it’s not the Heaven-or-Hell that you would have been raised on if your parents had spiritual beliefs beyond imaginary friends being part of a communist conspiracy. But generally speaking, in the afterlife, there’s a Good Place and a Bad Place.” She leans in closer. “You’re in the Good Place.”
He breathes a sigh of relief.
“You’re okay, BoJack. You’re in the Good Place.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Sure is!” She stands up. “Well, let’s take a walk, shall we?”
“So this is how it works,” she explains as they walk through paved streets of a bright and sunny neighbourhood. “The Good Place is divided into distinct neighbourhoods. Each one contains exactly three hundred and twenty-two people who have been perfectly selected to blend together into a blissful harmonic balance.”
“Do all the neighbourhoods look like this?” asks BoJack.
“No,” she answers proudly, gesturing at various buildings. “Every neighbourhood is unique. Some have warm weather, some are cold, some cities, some farmland… but in each one, every blade of grass, every detail has been precisely designed for the residents.”
“There’s…” He looks around. “A lot of stores that exclusively sell honeydew.”
“Yeah, that’s the one thing we put everywhere. People love honeydew, I don’t know what to tell you.”
BoJack opens his mouth to protest, then closes it. “So … who’s in the Bad Place that would shock me?”
“Oh, basically everyone,” says Princess Carolyn dismissively. “It’s incredibly rare to make it here. Most people, especially most people in your industry, don’t make it. But your sitcom Horsin’ Around helped millions of children, so you made it. You’re a good person, BoJack.”
BoJack cringes. “...Yeah…”
“You’re gonna have a million more questions, I know. But right now, better grab a seat.” She leads him out into the town hall, where everyone is seated in rows of chairs in front of a screen. “The movie’s about to begin.”
He takes a seat and the screen turns on. It displays, on a glowing white background, a pre-recorded video of Princess Carolyn herself. “Hello, everyone, and welcome to your first day in the afterlife! You were all, simply put, good people -- but how do we know that you were good, how are we sure?” She pauses. “During your time on Earth, every one of your actions had a positive or negative value depending on how much good or bad that action put into the universe.” She smiles. “Every sandwich you ate, every time you brought a magazine, every single thing you did, had an effect that rippled out over time and ultimately created some amount of good or bad.” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “You know how some people pull into the breakdown lane when there’s traffic, and they think to themselves, ‘Oh, who cares, noone’s watching?’” She winks. “We were watching. Surprise!”
The audience laughs. BoJack laughs with them.
“Anyway,” continues the video of Princess Carolyn. “When your time on Earth has ended, we calculate the total value of your life, using our perfectly accurate measuring system. Only the people with the very highest scores, the true cream of the crop, get to come here, to the Good Place. What happens to everyone else, you ask?” She waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
BoJack gulps.
“The point is,” she continues. “You are here because you lived one of the very best lives that could be lived. So welcome to eternal happiness -- welcome to the Good Place! Sponsored by -- babies holding hands when they sleep! You know the feeling you get when you see two babies holding hands? That’s how you’re gonna feel every day.”
The audience claps. BoJack remains silent.
He’s just been introduced to his irritatingly small house when he hears a knock on the door. Upon answering it, he finds himself facing an Asian woman with long, midnight blue hair. She’s wearing square glasses and a green jacket with two orange arrows pointing toward her abdomen, over a white undershirt and jeans. “Hi,” she begins, and the second the word’s out of her mouth she looks apologetic. “I, uh -- I just wanted to come see you because Princess Carolyn told me you were here and I was such a fan of Horsin’ Around and it was a very formative part of my childhood and --”
“Woah.” He holds up a hand to stop her monologue. “Nice to meet you too.”
“Sorry!” she squeaks. “I’m Diane. Diane Nguyen.”
“BoJack Horseman, but you obviously already know that.” He shakes her hand. “So, where are you from?”
There’s a flicker of something in her eyes before she answers. “Los Angeles, California.”
“Wow, I lived there too! We must have just missed each other.” He narrows his eyes. “But where were you … born?”
“In Boston,” she answers. After a long pause, she adds, “My parents were Vietnamese.”
“Wow,” he breathes aloud. “Your English is amazing.”
“Thanks,” answers Diane through gritted teeth. “It’s my native language. I grew up in Boston.”
If there’s an apology in order, BoJack certainly doesn’t notice or acknowledge it, and Diane takes a deep breath and swallows down any annoyance. “BoJack.” She takes another deep breath. “I didn’t have a great home environment growing up, and your show helped me survive. And now I’m actually meeting you. It’s…” She takes another breath. “It’s overwhelming.”
“...Diane,” he replies hesitantly. “You’ll stand by my side no matter what, right?”
“Of course I will,” she answers, blushing.
“Promise me. Say you’ll never betray me for any reason.”
“BoJack.” She places a hand on her chest. “I swear that I will never say or do anything to cause you any harm.”
“Good.” He exhales. “Because Horsin’ Around was the only good thing I did, I’m a stupid piece of shit, and I did nothing but hurt people in my life. There’s been a big mistake. I’m not supposed to be here.”
There’s a long, painful silence.
Diane blinks. “Wait, what?”
“I’m a stupid piece of shit,” he repeats urgently, tone low and conspiratorial. “I have done nothing good except that sitcom, I’m rude to everyone I talk to, I hate honeydew, I betray my closest friends all the time, and I lied about ‘getting’ Radiohead.” He gulps. “I’m not meant to be here.”
“That’s … that’s impossible,” Diane insists. “Your show basically saved my life! I’m probably not the only kid who loved it. You’re BoJack Horseman -- of course you’re a good person.”
“You haven’t seen the other shit I did,” he snaps. “They got the sitcom right, but basically nothing else. I mean, someone royally screwed up.”
“So, uh…” She frowns. “If the sitcom was your only good thing, what did you do the rest of the time? I mean, the show ended eleven years before you died -- you must have picked up some other acting gigs?”
“...”
There’s a long, painful silence.
“Well,” he explains, gesturing vaguely. “I was going to produce a new show called The BoJack Horseman Show, but I died while it was still in the early planning stages.”
“How early?”
“It was a vague idea of my head that I sometimes imagined actually happening in a bizarre fantasy scenario where it was all an elaborate excuse for me to have sex with an attractive woman.”
“...Great.” She groans. “Okay, so, if you didn’t do anything career-wise in the last eleven years, what did you do? I mean, what are these awful things you did that make you so convinced you’re a bad person?”
“Well…” He hesitates. “There was a lot of questionable stuff, but a big one was when I let my best friend get fired, because if I didn’t there was a small chance that I would get fired.”
Her eyes widen. “You threw your best friend under the bus?!”
“Yes,” he says. “But, in my defense, I only did that because a while before that, I threw my other best friend under the bus, and if I got fired trying to do the right thing for Sharona then Herb’s life being ruined would all be for nothing, you know? So really, two wrongs did make a right.”
“Okay,” says Diane. “But that’s worse. I mean, you -- you do get how that’s worse, right?”
There’s a long, painful silence.
BoJack doesn’t get how that’s worse.
“Maybe it’s a test,” suggests Diane, as BoJack nudges his honeydew with a fork at one of the many cafes. “Maybe if you go to Princess Carolyn and tell her the truth, you’ll pass the test and you’ll get to stay.”
“No way,” he insists. “I can’t risk going to the Bad Place.”
“Okay, well,” she suggests weakly. “Maybe it’s not actually like, all that bad. Let’s just get some information first. We’ll ask Todd. Hey, Todd?”
“Hooray!”
The voice from behind him makes BoJack turn sharply. He finds himself staring at what looks like a young man, with blue hair hidden behind a yellow beanie, wearing a red hoodie. “Gah!” yells BoJack.
“How can I help you?” asks the stranger.
“What the hell?!” chokes BoJack. “Who are you?!”
“I’m Todd.” He smiles. “I’m the informational assistant here in the Good Place.”
“He’s like this … walking database,” explains Diane. “You can ask him about the creation of the universe or history…”
“Oh!” He looks at Todd. “There was a girl who lived in Los Angeles, in around 1988. Her name was May Clarke. Is she a lesbian?”
“No,” answers Todd politely.
“Really? Huh.” He sighs. “I guess she just didn’t want to have sex with me.”
“That is correct.”
“Well, that’s fine,” he insists, waving a hand dismissively. “I wasn’t that into her anyway.”
“Yes, you were.”
Diane clears her throat. “Okay, Todd, I have a question.”
Todd turns to Diane. “Okay.”
“What is the Bad Place like?”
“Oh, sorry,” he answers with a wide smile. “That’s the one topic I’m not allowed to tell you about. I can only play a brief audio clip of what is happening there right now.” He opens his mouth wide, and produces a noise that sounds like infinite screams, the cackling of an open fire, growling and roaring, mechanical buzzing, and someone saying, “The bear has two mouths!”
Todd closes his mouth. There’s a long, ominous silence.
“Well,” snaps BoJack. “It doesn’t sound awesome.”
He sticks close to Diane as they walk through grassy fields. “All right, we need a plan. I say we just lie low and hope that they don't notice that I’m a dick.”
Diane grimaces. “I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you. I just don't like being dishonest, and I can't advise you to be dishonest either.”
“Come on,” he begs. “I'm just asking you to fudge a little bit. You must've told a few white lies in your life. I mean, what was your job?”
“I wanted to be a writer,” she snaps. “And I was close to getting a publishing deal, too. But I died unemployed because I got fired from Starbucks for being too honest about how I feel about the company.”
“God dammit!”
“I'm getting a stomach ache.” She groans. “I'm in a perfect utopia, and I'm... I have a stomachache. This is awful. I-I, uh... I think I have to tell Princess Carolyn about this.”
“Tell me about what?”
“Princess Carolyn?” She jumps in shock. “Uh, hi.”
“BoJack,” explains Princess Carolyn. “I wanted to make sure you got to meet Sarah Lynn and Mr. Peanutbutter, since you knew them in your life.” She gestures toward the two familiar faces trailing behind her.
BoJack groans internally.
“BoJack!” yells Mr. Peanutbutter, while Sarah Lynn continues to do something on her phone. The dog grabs BoJack into an annoyingly tight hug. “Fancy seeing you here! After I saw that news article about the alcohol poisoning, I was sure I’d never see you again.”
“...Yeah.” He frowns. “When did you die?”
“2007,” explains Princess Carolyn. “A while after you did, and Sarah Lynn was after him. Time doesn’t really move here like it does on Earth, so we managed to get you all together. We thought it would make the whole thing extra special, if you could be with your best friends from your life!”
“Great,” says BoJack through gritted teeth.
“Oh, hi,” says Sarah Lynn, after Mr. Peanutbutter has released BoJack. “Can I just say I hate your house? It's just so tiny and dumb . It's like a little child's plaything, like for a family of stupid-ass mice or for a fancy-shmancy little dog. The architecture sucks. Just like you.” She leans forward and presses the triangle at the end of his muzzle with her finger. “Boop.”
“Oh,” says BoJack, still through gritted teeth. “You booped me.”
“I did.”
“That's fun.”
Princess Carolyn clears her throat. “Sarah Lynn and Mr. Peanutbutter are having a little welcome party tonight, and they've invited the entire neighborhood.”
“Yeah, ‘cause my music’s the best.” She makes a crude hand gesture. “See you tonight. Until then, suck a dick, dumb shits!”
He stares around in amazement. “No way.” He groans. “My entire house could fit in this room.”
Diane pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay, uh... help me out here. Tell me one good thing that you did on Earth, just one truly kind and decent act, so that I can feel better about helping you out.”
BoJack remains silent.
She groans. “Let's forget about good. Um, just tell me something neutral about yourself. Like, tell me about the day before you died. What do you remember?”
BoJack considers this.
He was just trying to complete his regular grocery shopping, while drunk, when some stupid dweeb shoved an annoying pamphlet into his face. “Hi there. Do you have a second to talk about the environment?”
“Do you have a second to eat shit?” snapped back BoJack. He finished drinking his vodka and carelessly threw the bottle in the general direction of the bin.
“...You missed.”
He scoffed. “Pick it up if you're so horny for the environment.”
“...I don't remember anything specific,” says BoJack finally.
Diane’s face falls.
“Look,” he snaps. “I might not have been a saint, but it's not like I killed anybody, okay?! I wasn't an arsonist. I never found a wallet outside of an IHOP and thought about returning it but saw the owner lived out of state so just took the cash and dropped the wallet back on the ground.”
“Okay,” says Diane. “that's really specific, and that makes me think that you definitely did do that.”
“All I'm saying is these people might be good, but are they really that much better than me?”
They go around asking the other partygoers about their lives. One man spent half of his life in North Korea fighting for women’s rights and the other half in Saudi Arabia fighting for gay rights. One woman recounts a story of how she dug up over a thousand unexploded land mines from the area surrounding the orphanage. They’re halfway through hearing about how one resident donated both of his kidneys to a man he’d met on the bus ten minutes ago when BoJack groans loudly. “Oh, forget it. Heading to the bar!”
Several drinks later, Diane gently pulls him into the small crowd that’s gathered for Princess Carolyn’s speech and stamps his foot. “Shut up,” she hisses, while he attempts to rant about honeydew.
“Thank you, thank you,” says Princess Carolyn. “You all know that I am the architect of this neighborhood. But what you don't know is... Golly, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but, um, oh, what the heck? This is actually the very first neighborhood that I have ever designed. I had been an apprentice for over two hundred years, and my boss has finally given me my first solo project.”
Everybody claps.
Todd walks through the crowd, pushing along a cotton candy machine. BoJack begins to take an absurd amount and shove it into his mouth, prompting Diane to take his shoulders and pull him back. “Okay, easy.”
“What? It's for everybody, right?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“And you deserve a perfect world,” continues Princess Carolyn. “because every single one of you is a good person.” She seems to stare directly at BoJack. “That's it for me. Back to you, Sarah Lynn.”
She takes a step back. Sarah Lynn, still on her phone, says, “Suck a dick, dumb shits.”
Mr. Peanutbutter steps forward to give a speech. “Bravo, Sarah, great job! Thank you. Um, and I would just like to quickly say if any of you would like to play tennis tonight, we have thirty-six regulation grass tennis courts, for some reason.”
BoJack groans. “Mr. Peanutbutter, what a condescending dick.”
Diane frowns. “Okay, okay, okay, let’s not --”
“Am I right, though?”
“No, you’re not.” She groans. “What about Sarah Lynn? Don’t you think she was being a little rude?”
“What? No! Sarah’s, uh… she’s my prickly-muffin, y’know? She’s a saint.” He glares. “It’s, it’s Peanut-bother that’s the evil asshole.
“Okay,” says Diane gently. “I think it's time to go home.”
BoJack bursts into a fit of laughter. “Wait, wait, wait. I just have to go upstairs real quick and steal a bunch of acting awards.”
“Okay, don't do that.”
BoJack pauses, then goes upstairs to do exactly that.
He’s still ranting about how evil Mr. Peanutbutter is when Diane pulls him into his home. He pauses the rant to complain about how hard it is to access his bedroom due to the lack of stairs, and Diane takes the opportunity. “I actually think Mr. Peanutbutter’s pretty nice. And … kinda cute, if I’m being honest.”
BoJack blinks.
“I mean,” she adds hurriedly. “You are okay with that, aren’t you?”
“Oh yeah,” he slurs in response. “I’m fine with that, really, I am…” He stops mid-sentence to vomit an absurdly large amount of cotton candy onto the wooden floor.
Diane narrows her eyes. “Did you eat too much cotton candy?”
“No. He hiccups. “Yes.” He wipes vomit from his mouth and flicks it carelessly away. “Whatever, it's goddamned heaven. I'm sure they have plenty of cotton candy.” He clambers into bed. “Mr. Peanutbutter is a real butthead, huh?”
Diane doesn’t answer. She instead exits the room and comes back a few moments later holding a wad of clothing. “Found some pajamas.” She leaves them on the bed and turns to leave. “Diane…” he moans after her. “Diane, Diane?”
She irritably turns, an eyebrow raised at him.
“I'm sorry that you had to deal with…” He gestures vaguely. “...this…”
She sighs. “It's okay.”
“It's not, though.” He sighs. “Do you think anybody cared that I died? Maybe someone did. I don't know. I was an only child. My parents hated each other when I was a kid. They’re both shitty people, so when they die, they’re probably going…” He makes a crude farting noise. “to the Bad Place.” His eyes widen. “Heh, maybe they're gonna be used to torture each other. It would work.”
Diane chuckles.
“I bet way more people cared that you died. 'Cause you're a nice person.” He clears his throat. “You're a nice person, Diane... Newman.”
“Nguyen,” she corrects.
“Ngu… New one.”
“Nguyen.”
“Neh... say it again.”
“Nguyen.”
“No,” he insists, frowning. “say what you said before.”
“I did. It's Nguyen.”
“You just changed it."
“I didn't change it, it's my name!”
He takes a deep breath and tries one more time. “Nev-you. Never gonna give you up.” He gasps. “That's a thing! I did it.”
He’s woken early the next morning by screeching caws and a crash of thunder.
He wakes up remarkably fast, because the hangover filter makes the transition from sleep to waking easier than it was most of the time when he was alive. “That can’t be good.”
He scrambles out of bed, and he can just hear something among the screams and chaos outside -- something coherent. Something with words.
Never gonna give you up,
Never gonna let you down,
Never gonna run around and desert you
“...Oh shit.”
Never gonna make you cry,
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
He runs outside, and every step he’s dodging a giant beer bottle rolling down the street, or an abnormally large pile of vomit with the smell and texture of cotton candy, or the telescopes inexplicably falling from the sky. He runs away from Princess Carolyn, who is explaining that the music is actually part of a very popular Internet prank, while struggling to explain away the other oddness. He keeps running until he sees Diane.
“Diane, Diane!” He pants for air and stares at her outfit, which is the same as it was when they met but in bright yellow and navy blue. “What's going on? Why is there weird shit everywhere? Do you hear Rick Astley playing? Why is everyone wearing blue and yellow?”
“...You're not. You're... you're the only one who's not.” She gulps. “BoJack, this is all happening because of you!”
“...Ah, damn me.”
They make a swift journey back to BoJack’s annoyingly small house, where Diane sits blankly in a bean bag while he paces. “Okay, okay. We don't know this is because of me.”
“BoJack,” she snaps. “This place is a perfectly made Swiss watch, and you are a wrench in the gears. Actually, you're a hammer, just smashing the gears into dust.”
“Oh, hang on,” he protests. “Not everybody here is perfect, okay? Mr. Peanutbutter is totally condescending. And there are a couple of, you know, chunksters.” He poses with his arms forming a circle around his stomach in a mockery of fatness.
“Oh, come on!”
“No judgment. I'm just saying! I'm not the only one with flaws. So how can we be sure this is my fault?”
Diane groans. “You hogged all the cotton candy and threw it up, and now there’s cotton candy vomit everywhere. You drank too much, and now there’s giant beer bottles in the street.”
“Okay, fine, turns out there are many ways to know that it was me.”
“Let's just face it, BoJack, you don't belong here.”
“...Well, then this system sucks!” He waves his hands around in an overdramatic show of anger. “What, one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on . I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay . I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati.” His eyes widen. “Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.”
Diane hesitates. “Look, apparently it doesn't work that way. I'm sorry, BoJack, but there's nothing anyone can do.” “
“Unless... there is something we can do.” His eyes light up. “Unless you could teach me.”
She frowns. “Teach you what?”
“How to be good. You wear glasses, so you’re a nerd, right? So you know about ethics and bullshit.”
“...Faulty logic, but continue.”
“No one knew I was a problem when I arrived. Things only started getting crazy after I was an asshole to everyone at the party.”
Diane hesitates.
“Please, give me a chance. Let me earn my place here. Let me be your ethical guinea pig.”
There’s a loud knock at the door. “Hey, guys!” It’s Princess Carolyn’s voice. “Uh, emergency neighborhood meeting, now!”
“We'll be right there!” calls Diane.
BoJack groans and gestures toward his pyjamas. “If I walk out of here in these clothes, I'm toast.” He looks her in the eye. “My soul is in your hands. What's it gonna be?”