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 show 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. At 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 misses colliding with Derek Jeter himself, but instead knocks out an old lady Derek Jeter was helping across the street (who he then robs).
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.
"Live Fast, Diane Nguyen" contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Melissa Leo is essentially recreating her Oscar-winning role from The Fighter.
- A Day in the Limelight: This episode focuses on Diane and her family.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Diane asks BoJack if it's stupid to want her abusive family's approval, he replies that it is, because "Do you really want those guys to be proud of you?"
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Diane distracts BoJack with a kaleidoscope for at least ten minutes.
- Boomerang Bigot: Diane's brothers mention that they can't get jobs because they're all being taken by immigrants. Diane points out that they are immigrants.
- Burying a Substitute: Diane's father's body is stolen from his funeral. The mortician suggests Diane to buy one of their "replacement bodies".
- Do Wrong, Right: Princess Carolyn berates Todd for not properly doing his David Boreanaz scam.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- The homeless person is visibly uncomfortable making Diane cry; he just desperately needed the money that her brothers had bribed him with.
- Even BoJack looked uncomfortable and shocked when Diane's family decide to watch a baseball game in a bar and not caring that Diane drove away with their father's chummed corpse after throwing a tantrum for how they treated her.
- Furry Reminder: BoJack sticks his head out the car window and whinnies Diane's name when he gets bored with the kaleidoscope.
- Hard Truth Aesop: As BoJack states, closure is "a made up thing by Steven Spielberg to sell movie tickets." Real-life drama doesn't just wrap up in a neat little packages.
- Jerkass Has a Point: BoJack told Diane that wanting closure from her family was stupid. He asks why would she want to impress her family, who are douchebags, and mentions how Diane has every right to leave and not see them again because of how they treat her.
- Pet the Dog: Tommy is the only member of Diane's family who treats her kindly and knows that she is smart. He's the only one happy to see her when she's home and tries to calm her down when she reaches her Rage Breaking Point.
- Rage Breaking Point: Diane ended up having this when her family made her spend her money to grind up her father into chum and went to a bar to watch a game.
- Running Gag: No one can accurately recall anything David Boreanaz starred in.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: After a lot of coaxing and bullying from her family, Diane prepares a proper funeral for her father only to have them chum her dad in order to toss it in Derek Jeter's face.
- Ship Tease: BoJack's and Diane's bonding moment at the dump.
- Suddenly Shouting: When BoJack tells Pinky that he wants a different ghostwriter, the almost bankrupt penguin goes from calmly talking to BoJack to snapping at him in an enraged tone.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: Diane's family, especially her mother, give Diane a hard time about being more educated and living a more glamorous life on the West Coast and "being too good" for the rest of them.
- The Dog Bites Back: When Diane finds out her family didn't even attend the funeral but went to a bar to watch a baseball game, she reaches her "Rage Breaking Point" and throws a tantrum at the bar where her family ended up. She ends up driving away with her father's remains in while yelling at her family "suck a dick, dumb shits!".
- This Is Reality: BoJack tells Diane that she shouldn't try to get closure because it's "something Steven Spielberg invented to sell movie tickets."
- Visual Pun:
- Diane isn't the black sheep in the family, because they already have a literal black sheep as an adopted son, who is actually accepted by the family.
- The bird on the back of the funeral home pamphlet is a mourning dove.
- White Sheep: Diane is the only member of her family that makes something out of her life while they languish in complacency.
