renehta:

Rick Sanchez, Don Draper, and BoJack Horseman are three examples of a popular male character trope: the intelligent, talented, toxic, disconnected, detached man who fails to connect with others and is consistently and wildly self destructive in his quest to fill an emotional void with anything but human connection.

The problem with this character archetype is that a lot of people, a specific subset of men in particular, miss the entire point of the character.

They’re so easily sucked in by the flashy veneer of masculine bravado on the surface of these damaged characters that they fail to understand why the characters are presented this way: you do not want to be like them. You are not supposed to identify with them or find them relatable, you are not supposed to sincerely root for them, they are antiheros.

In spite of being the protagonist Rick, Don, and BoJack are almost never the “good guy” in any given scenario, they are almost always selfishly motivated, and explicitly harming innocent people for their own gain.

Idolizing and lionizing these characters as an ideal or something to aspire to entirely misses the concept of the characters, and worse, celebrates behavior that is explicitly shown to be toxic.

If you identify as “a Rick” then the entire concept of the show has gone completely over your head.