"Be nice to the actors. For many of them, this is the high point of their career."
"What is acting? Anyone? Acting is about leaving everything behind and becoming something completely new."
— BoJack
BoJack begins class at Wesleyan for Intermediate Scene Study, with the episode shot as a series of vignettes about his progress over the course of his first semester. A major through-line however is his attempts to connect with Hollyhock, who seems unusually emotionally distant...
Intermediate Scene Study with BoJack Horseman contains examples of these tropes:
- Bad "Bad Acting": Justified in that who he's dealing with are college sophomores, but two students in his class take the cake: One for being enormously and pointlessly overdramatic, and the other for doing the same old man voice for every character he plays, regardless of age. Both end up showing this off at BoJack's AA meetings.
- Bait-and-Switch: Todd's storyline ends with him re-making a marshmallow so he could get a bigger reward, and a Willy Wonka-esque gentleman shows up and "gives" him Wesleyan University... only to be shown to be a test patient for LSD, and the orderlies drag him back to their testing room.
- The Bus Came Back: Charlotte returns for the first time since Season 2, and she's not happy.
- Captain Obvious: The research student who put Todd and Ruthie through the marshmallow test was testing to see if children like marshmallows. Her colleague's response says it all.
- Conflicting Loyalty: Sam is tempted by Princess Carolyn and BoJack to choose between staying at Wesleyan and getting a degree, or go to Hollywoo and become famous. He eventually chooses Hollywoo.
- Crying Wolf: The third student who crashes BoJack's AA meeting and whom he started ranting on was actually there to ask for help and was presumably unaware of the other two's hijinks. Whoops.
- Foreshadowing: BoJack realizes he marked the whiteboard with a sharpie instead of a dry erase, an indicator that BoJack's mistakes aren't going to go away. At the end his mistake with Penny comes back when her mother calls him.
- On that note, why did Charlotte call BoJack, when she severed ties with him back in Season 2? And why did she talk about reporters talking to her daughter Penny? Next episode reveals both questions.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The sign on Wesleyan's campus has repurposed their lyrics to "Stuck in the Middle With You" for a pun.
- Furry Reminder: BoJack's dog student gets excited, panting and jumping back and forth between him and Princess Carolyn when she tries to get him as a client and BoJack tries to convince him to finish his studies, essentially making the moment a Disney Dog Fight.
- The Gift: In BoJack's class, one student's talent apparently stands out above the rest, which Princess Carolyn almost immediately notices on her first visit just by looking at him. BoJack begrudgingly admits he's the best student he has, and just didn't want to admit it until he did a scene from Doubt.Princess Carolyn: He has the look to make a grown woman feel like a 13 year old girl, and a 13 year old girl to feel like a grown woman!
- Gretzky Has the Ball: It takes BoJack a while to understand rugby, probably because it at least resembles American football.
- Here We Go Again!: Mr. Peanutbutter makes another reckless decision without listening to his fiancee when she starts to voice her concerns.
- Oh, Crap!: BoJack's face the moment he sees that his former friend Charlotte is calling him.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The last time BoJack ever interacted with Charlotte, she threatened to kill him if he ever contacted her or anybody in her family again after his near-incident with Penny. The fact that she called him, after viciously cutting all ties with him, indicates that something serious is going on that is [more than likely] his fault.
- Pun: As BoJack is watching Hollyhock play rugby, he thinks that she scored a goal. A fellow watcher in the stand, a female snowy owl, tells him that Hollyhock actually got a try, and told him to "try" again. This prompts BoJack to start reading more about rugby for future matches.
- Rule of Symbolism: BoJack writes his name on the whiteboard in what turns out to be a sharpie that is hard to be erased — just like BoJack's many mistakes will have repercussions for the rest of his life.
- Shout-Out: One of BoJack's students has Newgrounds on their laptop, likely because several crewmembers that worked on BoJack had a background on the site.
- Spit Take: Gaz, BoJack's accountant who calls him in concern of the money he’s spent on rehab, asks him if he's working on a movie. When BoJack replies that he's actually a college professor now, Gaz reacts with this trope as he's drinking water.
- Synchronous Episodes: With "Good Damage".
- Take Our Word for It: Sam, one of the students in BoJack's acting class, is by far the most talented student according to BoJack himself and Princess Carolyn is determined to get him into Hollywoo. However, unlike most of the other students, we never actually see him act, and his mannerisms—those of a real-world, non-anthropomorphic dog—certainly don't suggest deep thespian talent.
- Wham Shot: BoJack picks up his ringing phone to find Charlotte is contacting him. BoJack is terrified.
- Wham Episode: Doesn't seem like it at first... right up until the very end when Charlotte calls, demanding BoJack deal with the reporters that are hounding her daughter over what he did.
- You Know What You Did: For both Charlotte and Hollyhock:
- Hollyhock's distancing is as kind a version of this as possible; she openly gives him plenty of outs on interacting with her, and finally just tells him they're in a fight. It's clear she knows way more than she's letting on, and is just being nice to BoJack.
- In the end Charlotte calls him and a much straighter version of this occurs, in the end once BoJack makes it clear to her that he really doesn't know what she's talking about. She just tells him that he better find out and hangs up.
