Diane's depression finally seems to be lifting, so she's hoping she can finally write her book. It's just so hard to concentrate with all the noise everywhere and boyfriend Guy constantly butting in. ... But is that really the problem?
Diane as a character has been complicated. There are times where I've sympathized with her because of her emotional struggles, other times have thought she comes off as overly demanding and distant to people.
This episode however, makes you understand more than any other in the entire series who Diane really is, and why she always acts so erratically.
Constantly she's focused on making her book as full of depressing details about her life as possible. After all, many see it as some form of therapy. If you can convey all the bad things that have happened to you into written words, it will actually mean something, not just be meaningless abuse. Hence, "good damage". But every time she tries to write, she gets distracted by a lot of other intrusive thoughts, and hear her father's voice berating and belittling her for not getting anything done.
Surprisingly, she does manage to come up with a fun detective story, which both Guy and Princess Carolyn are impressed by. But she thinks it's childish nonsense and try to get them to ignore it. She still wants to write about the psychological abuse she's suffered.
So in short, Diane's been so focused on making her pain known that she doesn't realize that's not where her strength lies. Making the world a little lighter place is what her calling truly is, which Carolyn makes her realize by the end. To her, it's an inspiring story for her own child.
Meanwhile, we get to find out how the old-timey reporters found Charlotte Moore and pushed her on the Sarah Lynn case. This entire subplot is extremely uncomfortable from start to finish, but neccessary. 'Cause now we get to see it's not only the reporters that got the story to come out, her daughter Penny Carson also see it as a opportunity to finally give BoJack the punishment he deserves.
She gives Penny a few days to think it over, but since she doubts she'll change her mind, she calls BoJack in advance to warn him that everything he tried to keep a secret will be public soon.
At the end, we see just a few more seconds after BoJack's panicked breathing as he processes the information he was just fed. His anxiety attack makes him collapse, leaving Todd deeply concerned. The optimistic tone from the first couple episodes of the season is almost gone by now.
The show has always made good use of the animation medium whenever they want to communicate really intense feelings, and the crude squiggly-like drawings remind me of BoJack's perpetually negative thoughts in Stupid Piece Of Shi't (one of my favorites). Using innocuous drawings like those a child would have made really makes the overall point impactful, especially considering most of the trauma Diane suffered stems from her childhood.
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