| “ | Look, take it from someone with his own shitty parents. Family is a sinkhole, and you were right to get out when you had the chance. | ” |
Live Fast, Diane Nguyen is the fifth episode of Season 1 of Netflix original series BoJack Horseman. Live Fast, Diane Nguyen, along with the rest of Season 1, premiered August 22, 2014.
Synopsis
A business trip for BoJack and Diane takes a detour; Todd runs a scam that gets him in trouble.
Plot
BoJack and Diane travel to New York to meet with Pinky Penguin, where he has relocated to avoid creditors while waiting for BoJack to finish his book.
During their meeting, Diane receives a call from her brother about their father's passing. She is unfazed, much to BoJack's surprise, and she asks BoJack to come with her to Boston to pay respects before heading back to Los Angeles.
When Diane arrives at her family's home in Boston, her family is revealed to be crass, rude, and obsessed with sports. So much so, that they had not taken the time to arrange a funeral or remove their father's corpse from the living room.
Diane resigns to taking responsibility for their father's funeral, while BoJack meets the family and readily makes friends with them since he had previously wished for brothers having grown up as an only child. Meanwhile, Todd realizes he is home alone at BoJack's house, and unwittingly begins to showcase the house as David Boreanaz's house to paying tourists.
After Diane makes arrangements to throw her father a funeral, none of her family shows up, and her father's corpse is absent. It turns out her family is lounging at a bar and had chummed their father's corpse with the intent to throw his remains in the face of their hated baseball rival team's star, Derek Jeter.
Calling Diane a big shot for getting upset at their low expectations, BoJack tactlessly defends Diane by bluntly describing her career and living situation, saying she is not a big shot. Diane then flies into a rage and drives off with the truck holding her father's chummed remains. In Los Angeles, Todd has now grown his tourist business to proportions out of his control thanks to Princess Carolyn's scheming, helplessly laundering the tourism money through illegal channels.
BoJack finds Diane at the city dump, where he consoles her by telling her the ways he appreciates her. He reassures her that she does not need to find closure or appreciation from her family since they are horrible to her and that she should concentrate on moving forward and focusing her life on where she's living and simply don't go back to her family.
He ends by saying her father can no longer hurt anyone and proceeds to knock the barrel of Diane's father's chummed remains out of the truck and tumbling into the city. The barrel narrowly collides with Derek Jeter himself but instead knocks out an old lady Derek Jeter was helping across the street.
The episode ends with BoJack leaving a voicemail for Herb, saying they should talk. He then refuses an anonymous call out of annoyance, which was Todd using his one phone call from prison.
Cast
| Actor | Character | |
|---|---|---|
| Will Arnett | ... | BoJack Horseman / Butterscotch Horseman |
| Amy Sedaris | ... | Princess Carolyn |
| Alison Brie | ... | Diane Nguyen / Koala |
| Paul F. Tompkins | ... | Mr. Peanutbutter |
| Aaron Paul | ... | Todd Chavez |
| Raphael Bob-Waksberg | ... | Additional voices |
| Larry Clarke | ... | Additional voices |
| Adam Conover | ... | Tour Guide |
| Chris Cox | ... | Derek Jeter |
| Ira Glass | ... | Himself |
| Melissa Leo | ... | Diane's Mother |
| Mike O'Malley | ... | Artie Nguyen |
| Patton Oswalt | ... | Pinky Penguin / Gary Nguyen / Bob Maggot |
| Dave Segal | ... | Robin Paparazzi |
| Stanley Tucci | ... | Herb Kazzaz |
Trivia
- A running joke in this episode is that no one knows what show David Boreanaz is on/what he is famous for. He first became known for playing Angel on the supernatural television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed by its spin-off series Angel. He later gained even greater notoriety playing FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth on the Fox primetime series Bones for twelve seasons between 2005 and 2017.
- The name of the episode is a play on the phrase "Live fast, die young," because Diane's name sounds like "die young."
- Diane is revealed to be 34 at the time of this episode.
- "At Fenway" by Brian Evans plays during the scene when the bucket of Diane's father's chummed remains rolls through the city.
- In a flashback, BoJack's father is reading a paper about Richard Nixon meeting Elvis Presley, who in the show's universe is a Hound Dog, a reference to his song of the same name.
- This episode makes several references to the film Good Will Hunting in this episode:
- Much of the episode takes place in Boston, which is also the location of the film.
- BoJack tells Diane's brothers about reaching for the same grapes as Ben Affleck, who stars as one of the main characters in the film.
- BoJack and Diane have a conversation about moving on in life on a pickup truck at a dump before leaving Boston, similar to a scene with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (at a construction site) before Damon's character leaves Boston.
- Todd's scam will have consequences in The Light Bulb Scene.
- Bojack mentions "The Munich Olympics" as one of the things that never existed to Diane, referencing the 1972 Munich Olympics, which was made infamous by the massacre of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches by the Black September terrorist group.
Gallery
