Been rewatching Bojack, imagined this conversation. Enjoy!

So stupid. The way he went out was so incredibly stupid. His stupid novel got reviewed by a stupid newspaper so he put out a stupid challenge and some stupid guy responded, so they did a stupid duel, and he tripped on a stupid root so he hit his head on a stupid rock and died stupidly.

"My husband is dead and everything is worse now." Beatrice's sole sentence of eulogy at the funeral rang in Bojack's head as he sat in silence with his mother in the car, heading back to her hotel.

"They were playing your dumb show in his hospital room." She finally started up a conversation.

"Which dumb show? Old one or new one?" He asked in annoyance.

"In the episode I saw, you walked in on your daughter in the shower." She lit a cigarette.

"The old one. That episode got us into the TV Guide Cheers and Jeers column. We did not get a cheers." He looked out the window again.

"You always could play the fool, Bojack."

"Do we have to have this conversation now? On the way to Dad's funeral?" He turned to her again before taking a deep breath and looking back out the window.

"There was so much more I wanted to say to him."

"Well...you can forget it now." She replied.

They sat in silence for a short time again before Bojack turned to her once more, hesitating to ask his question, but feeling the need to do so anyway.

"Did you...ever actually love Dad? Why did you marry him?"

He thought the questions would catch her off guard, but she wasn't fazed a bit, apparently not surprised that he would ask things like that.

"...Yes, at one time I did. A very brief time mind you, but time nonetheless. Once my mother had her...operation, my father was in charge of deciding what my life would look like. Conservative and misogynistic, the only thing he wanted me to do was look pretty and marry someone from an affluent family so that he could strike up a new business deal. And after a few suitors that I didn't exactly work well with, I met your father at my debutante, he was crashing it."

"That sounds like him."

"He had a smart mouth, and he was clearly out of place considering the environment, but playing the renegade to show my father up was enough for me. Before long, I found out I was pregnant, and he convinced me to keep you, marry him, and move out here so that he could work on his shitty novel."

"So you rushed in?"

"...Yeah."

"Then why didn't you ever get a divorce?!"

"Not this again, Bojack. A divorce was the easy way out for me. I wanted to prove to myself...that I could survive marriage with someone like him."

"Well...congratulations. You did. Are you going to feel any better now that he's gone?"

"...No. He's already done his damage. And so have you."

He wanted to get mad. She always told him about how he ruined her and he was the cause of all of her problems, and he always took it, but for once he wanted to tell her off. He couldn't do it. Instead he asked her another question.

"Do you really hate me? Or is it all a facade to make yourself more miserable?" He asked with a bit of poison in his delivery.

She glanced at him, taking another drag of her cigarette.

"I don't know. The more I looked at you, the more I saw you as the sole object of everything that went wrong with my life. That if I hadn't had you, everything would have been so much better. But I can't really say that, because I was the one who chose to run off with Butterscotch. I followed him as he left the party. It was me."

Bojack was preparing to say something but noticed that she wasn't done, as she looked at him with both sadness and anger in her eyes.

"But as you got older, you became more and more like him. I can say 'I love you' easily, but I don't think I can ever actually mean it. Because even though he's gone, you're still here, and you remind me of him every time I see you."

"...Maybe if you hadn't given up on parenting I wouldn't have turned out a washed up alcoholic."

"It's not just about parenting, Bojack. Your father's blood runs in your DNA. Whatever you put your mind to, you're going to find some way to ruin it, whether you're looking to or not."

The car pulled over to the hotel, and Beatrice opened the door, stepping outside.

"Is that what you meant? That I'm becoming more and more like him every day?" He asked in a depressed tone.

"Yeah." She finished her cigarette and dropped it, stepping on it to put it out.

"I'm happy that you're at least not putting all of your energy into writing a book like he did, but...at the same time, you're just going to collapse at something else. And you can say that my family's genes make up part of you too and that it's not all hopeless, but it is. Because your father made me into a different person, and my father turned my mother into a different person. Toxicity runs on both sides, and you were just unfortunate enough to be born into it. Don't get married, Bojack. Don't ruin another family."

He sighed, rubbing his face as the car started moving again, going to take him home. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his own case of cigarettes and lighter, stopping and looking at what he was doing.

'Prove her wrong. Don't become her.'

But it was too late. Just as he spoke those words in his head, he lit one and started smoking.

End.