Why was Diane mad at Mr. Peanutbutter when he created the Belle Room for her at the end of season 4 of BoJack Horseman?
The final scene of season 4 can be regarded as one of the most profound in the whole series. It not only exposes the problems between Diane and PB, but also reflects the kernal of Diane’s personality.
The most significant reason Diane chose PB is that he is the only person in her life at the time who respects and appreciates her.
What was Diane like when she meets PB?
Her writing piece was accepted by a small press. She was thrilled, but everyone around her react nonchalantly.
At the same time she met PB.
PB respected and appreciated Diane regardless of what she did, because PB is, by nature, such an “enthusiastic” person. But for Diane, PB’s respect gave her everything she wanted.
As a teenager, Diane’s family never respected her despite her bashful wish to be accepted by the scum that was her family.
If we were friends with Diane, we might try to convince her that those people are despicable, that she shouldn’t take them seriously.
But for Diane as a child, or for every child, there is a desire to be accepted by our family. It’s not even an expectation, it’s something that ought be there.
So Diane’s lack of respect as a child forces her to become a people-pleaser. People-pleasers like her need to sacrifice themselves and their own interests to gain others’ approval, so as to make up for the lack of respect subconsciously. Therefore, even if PB’s respect for her satisfies her on the surface, their relationship is still deformed.
After a series of endeavors, Diane is unable to achieve her desired achievements in LA, becomes a ghostwriter, and works as an assistant for a hypocrite in Cordoba.
At this time, she desperately craves respect from others, so PB’s presence satisfied her spiritual needs, but she doesn’t realize that PB doesn’t know what he appreciates about Diane.
PB is just a person who is willing to appreciate others, but the achievement that Diane pursues in her values is meaningless to PB, because PB’s life principle is:
This is a typical LA attitude to life: shallow and happy, hedonism in gaining attention through exposure.
Diane thus becomes very passive in her marriage. From PB inviting everyone to give her a surprise during their engagement to her birthday surprise party, she is always angry because PB does not understand what she wants. PB feels that being watched and having fun with people is something Diane would enjoy the way he does.
The screenwriters introduced the Zoe and Zelda paradigm in the fourth episode of season one. These two names refer to two common personalities: the optimistic Zelda and the pessimistic Zoe.
In the show, pessimists like BoJack and Diane, who are at odds with LA, are classified as Zoe, while optimist LAers like PB, are clearly Zelda.
So even if PB’s lack of understanding and sloppiness are the immediate reason for Diane’s dissatisfaction, it is largely due to the context – people who are accepted by LA are Zelda like PB – that spawned the divergence between Diane and PB.
However, Diane wants PB to really get to know her, so she convinces herself that the only person in her life who respects her understands her passion and efforts. She looks for evidence to achieve this effect, aka, “squint at her marriage”:
And Belle Room is the moment when she lets go of her illusions.
The Belle Room is an imaginary place, so it belongs only to her.
But what Diane loves is not the Belle Room itself, but the feeling of wanting but not getting.
That’s a little counterintuitive.
The normal mindset is: I want it, I get it, I’m happy.
But Diane is not a happy person by nature, as her ex-boyfriend said:
Diane wants to be a Zelda like PB, to enjoy simple, shallow happiness, which is one of the reasons she subconsciously choose PB.
She wants to fit in. It would be a way for her to prove herself. The family she hates doesn’t accept her, so she wants to seem like she fits into the shallow environment of LA, even if it was largely artificial.
That’s why, on her return from Cordoba, she doesn’t dare go home to see PB, but instead go to another Zoe — BoJack.
Diane wants to prove herself by helping refugees. This is what makes her different from people in LA. She thinks this is her way of self-realization.
After her failure, she subconsciously feels she has been humiliated in LA, a city where everyone could achieve their “value”. Worst of all, her partner is a “LAer”.
In fact, her family makes her lose this ability to “fit in” very early. Before this shallow and happy city accepts her, she could not accept her happiness in the first place.
One of the most important factors was her brother’s “pen pal” prank.
The pen pal was one of the few times Diane expresses her feelings at home, one of the times she feels happy and let the people around her notice.
But this happiness eventually falls apart in her brother’s prank.
The incident becomes a thorn in her character, making her fears something good would happen to her, because her happiness would eventually be used to her greater detriment.
So Diane is never really happy. She will always see the worst end. She dares not be happy for fear of harm.
But telling PB the Belle Room in her imagination is another time for her to express herself, and the ending is not what she wants either.
She thus admits to herself the fact that PB could not understand her deeply.
At the end of the day, Diane is representative of what BoJack said:
Her family makes her believe, subconsciously, that she isn’t worthy of happiness while keeping her from seizing it. This leads her to simply be sad and her ineptitude to become a Zelda. When something wonderful approaches her, she cannot accept it.
Yet she resents herself for being unable to respond to the grand gesture and simple joy PB provides her, so she says to PB: I’m sorry.
But by her own admission, she doesn’t like the feeling of a dream coming true.
Diane lost the ability to accept love as she grows up without love. She is unwilling to accommodate this reality, struggling to change but was repeatedly bound by her own shackles.
That’s why I personally admire Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s and his screenwriting team. In addition to their stellar ability to capture the gritty reality, they are capable of achieving narrative consistency. This is an important element of literary arts. Poetry, fiction and plays all require textual coherence and consistency. Consistency here means that everything that a character does has a pattern, a unique set of ideas, values, decision-making process, etc., that the readers cannot find without further reflection, and that the author has to conform to that pattern by making the character behave in a consistent way, without explicitly stating this pattern of behaviour, in order to capture the reader in words and to give them space to wonder and ponder.
Without these series of Diane’s confused behaviors, no audience would pay attention to Diane’s subconscious and the depth of her personality. Every scene and sentence these amazing writers wrote does not just exist in isolation to please the “lonely” audience.
