#side note but I love trina's arc tackling her homophobia

[kunosoura]

you know it's crazy how bojack horseman did the whole "oh I had no idea the truth I mean he's had problems but I didn't know how bad things were" for the audience themselves by making bojack a point of view character and thus making the narrative that forms around him more or less reliable. as a simulation of the way people get blindsided by finding out terrible things people they love have done.

this next part is only related if you're on my general train of thought but it still sticks with me how like falsettos yes the musical falsettos does its two act structure thematically like act one is about how marvin is horrible. like his ridiculous desire to maintain a nuclear family and his patriarchal power leads to a terrible situation where he's keeping his ex wife his gay lover and his son miserably living in close proximity to each other resulting in a crumbling living situation that culminates in him physically assaulting his ex wife and him throwing out his boyfriend for talking back too many times. like he's DESPICABLE. but the denouement is him reconnecting with his son to reassure him, if nothing else, that he's his own person, that he can learn from Marvin's mistakes and grow to be better than Marvin ever was.

and then act two hinges on you still being able to find marvin deeply sympathetic! his ex wife remarried and the two are civil for their son's sake and he's trying to rebuild his life, making new friends who help him grow and even reconnecting with his ex-boyfriend to try again. he rebuilds his life and becomes a person who is better than what he was neither letting himself forget it nor be defined by it, and it's cut horribly short because life isn't fair for gay men in the 80s even if you're a bougie white guy. yeah we grieve for whizzer because he's a lovable character with a tragic end but in the lens of the play that's Marvin's grief we're feeling. marvin's pride that his son turned out so kind and considerate and unlike him, marvin's contentment having found other lgbt friends who are there for him when times are impossibly hard, marvin's deep grief at losing the man he loved right when they reunited and were working so hard to do things right this time.

it's such a risky gamble from the perspective of like we're trying to sell this show as a production and turn a profit to have a first act that makes your main character almost impossible to like and a second act that doesn't work unless you can sympathize with him. like an exercise in not letting you forget anyone's humanity, even the abusers. except for the reagans