By Victoria D’Andrea

THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER & BOJACK HORSEMAN

Like the prodigal son, I return home after 9 months with little money, many stories of the wonders of the world abroad and an amount of repentance for the excesses of the past year.
I too was welcomed with open arms by all those who waited for me at home, but this is where our stories diverge.

While my friends and family forgive and rejoice in my presence (definitely not exaggerating for the sake of the comparison) my body has decided to punish me by making me bedridden for most of the 5 days I had thought ample to get bored of my hometown.

Yet, while I had to forgive the company of those friends I had ignored for close to 2 years, I found the lord had granted me another favour. Apparently Netflix has finally made its way into Italy and into my father’s television, meaning I can use this time to catch up on some series (and of course connect those dots).

Now, one of our tasks for this holiday was to watch something that I would never usually come across. However, the only type of movies I will not watch are horrors and I’m sorry, not even for Marc will I cross that threshold.
So, I ended up watching something that until this point I had shied away from: Bojack Horseman. This had been a long time coming, as many of my friends recommended it to me and at this point there are not that many good adult cartoons that I haven’t seen yet.

Actually, this was not the first time attempting this. I had actually tried to go through it, but I had found the first episode too depressing to go through. Now, a few years down the line, I thought I might as well try again.

I really, really loved it.

At the end of those amazing 5 seasons, I have to wonder: it is bad that I now laugh at something that before I couldn’t even bear to watch?

This really troubled me for some time, and I’ve come to two likely conclusions: my first theory is that after a few years I had heard so much good stuff on the program, I was ready to love it simply because of peer influence. Not very encouraging for me, as I like to think that I have never been one to give in to peer pressure or be too influenced by others’ opinions. But my second option is worse. Maybe I have changed for the worse, losing all that was left of my youthful optimism and reaching a cynical peak. Hard to believe it now, but I used to be an incredibly cheerful and talkative person.

I blame television.