Hollywood’s Empty Pools: The Hidden Depths of BoJack Horseman’s Art and Existential Blues

In the sun-drenched hills of Los Angeles, BoJack Horseman’s mansion stands as a glittering monument to his faded fame—complete with infinity pools, modernist furniture, and walls adorned with multimillion-dollar art. But one piece in his collection, a reimagined David Hockney "pool painting," isn’t just a status symbol. It’s a mirror reflecting the hollowness beneath Hollywood’s shimmering surface—and BoJack’s own existential crisis.

David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), parodied in BoJack’s study, epitomizes the California dream: eternal sunshine, azure waters, and a life frozen in perfection. Yet in BoJack Horseman, the pool morphs into something darker. The animated version replaces Hockney’s human subjects with horses—BoJack gazes at his own distorted reflection, trapped in a loop of self-loathing and longing. Like Hockney’s original, the pool symbolizes both aspiration and isolation. It’s a paradox: a place of leisure turned purgatory, where BoJack drowns in privilege but starves for meaning.

Hockney painted Los Angeles as a utopia of light and liberation, but his pools always hinted at something unresolved—a swimmer just out of frame, a fractured relationship beneath the ripples. BoJack Horseman takes this tension to its nihilistic extreme. The show’s L.A. is a neon-lit wasteland of empty parties, fleeting fame, and performative happiness. BoJack’s mansion, with its Hockney-esque pool, becomes a tomb for his guilt and regret. The water sparkles, but it’s stagnant.

The pool’s duality—surface glamour vs. submerged despair—mirrors BoJack’s psyche. He’s a man (horse) who built his identity on external validation: sitcom royalties, celebrity flings, and art he buys but never truly sees. The Hockney parody underscores his failure to connect, even with himself. Just as Hockney’s poolside figure strains to decipher the distorted swimmer, BoJack spends six seasons chasing self-awareness, only to realize he’s been staring at a funhouse mirror.

In an era obsessed with curated Instagram lives and "hot girl summers," BoJack’s pools feel eerily relevant. They ask: What happens when the party ends, but the pool stays pristine? Hockney, now 86, still paints pools as sites of joy and experimentation. But BoJack warns us: Without introspection, even paradise becomes a prison.

In this age of filtered perfection and polished personas, BoJack Horseman’s pools act like prisms, revealing the spiritual struggles beneath our celebrity-driven, social media-saturated lives. But rather than drowning in existential despair, let’s use BoJack’s tragedy as a catalyst for self-discovery.

Identity isn’t a zero-sum game. We can reject society’s narrow definitions of success and happiness, embracing our imperfections, contradictions, and even absurdities. In this sense, BoJack’s struggles become a clarifying mirror, forcing us to confront the unmet emotional needs lurking within.

In this exploration of life’s meaning, BoJack shows us that true self-worth doesn’t lie in others’ opinions—it lies in how we reconcile with ourselves. Even when life feels like a absurd joke, we can choose to meet it with humor and resilience. As the series’ closing lyrics echo, “Mr. Blue, Know that you're sore and sick and sad for some reason,...I told you that I love you，Please believe me.”

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