Addiction is not a temporary process. It’s a lifelong sickness that people grapple with every single day of their lives in ways big and small. It’s one of those expansive parts of existence that can sometimes be difficult to translate to filmed media for a variety of reasons. But it can be done. Over the years, various movies and TV shows have successfully explored addicts, their psychologies, and the struggles of living day-to-day with this disease. One of the greatest modern examples of this kind of storytelling is BoJack Horseman, an animated Netflix program that followed its titular horse character (voiced by Will Arnett) as he grappled with alcoholism.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are subpar movies and TV shows that, even with the best of intentions, end up just using the process of addiction to inform hollow melodrama. Unfortunately, the new Zach Braff movie A Good Person fits this mold, which is an interesting development considering Braff had two highly amusing guest appearances as himself on BoJack Horseman. Showing up on this superior exploration of addiction didn’t help Braff’s work on A Good Person, alas. The disparity in overall quality between these two productions is apparent in a wide variety of ways, but that gap is especially discernible in how BoJack Horseman and A Good Person each carve out “satisfying endings.”
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How Does ‘BoJack Horseman’ End?

Image Via Netflix

For the sake of this argument, the “endings” of each project (one a TV show, the other a movie) will consist of the final episode of BoJack Horseman and the last 10-ish minutes of A Good Person. In the former case, the ending comes in the installment “Nice While It Lasted.” Here, BoJack Horseman is in the middle of a 14-month-long sentence in prison. He gets released for one weekend to attend the wedding of his former agent, Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris), and her former assistant, Judah (Diedrich Bader).

The episode is divided into four sections, each one focused on BoJack having an extended interaction with one of the show’s most notable supporting characters. As he talks to the likes of Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins) and Princess Carolyn, viewers get the sense that a chapter in these people’s lives is ending and a new chapter, full of uncertainty, is about to begin. This feeling is especially apparent in BoJack’s discussion with ex-roommate Todd Sanchez (Aaron Paul). Here, BoJack is incredibly vulnerable about his addiction worries, as he notes to Todd that the routine of prison is good for keeping his mind occupied. Still, BoJack worries constantly about what happens when he gets out of there. “What if I relapse again?” BoJack Horseman wonders. “Then you’ll get sober again,” Todd replies.

‘BoJack Horseman’ Understands That Addiction Is Not a Quick Process

The specter of addiction lingers over this scene, but so too does the inevitable passage of time. Just as BoJack is a radically different person than he was in the very first episode of the show, so too are his friends drastically changing. Emphasizing these long-term shifts reinforces how lengthy struggles with addiction are. They can often be the one constant or remnant of the past in an otherwise unfamiliar world. The way the BoJack Horseman characters have changed is solidified in the final 9-minute-long scene of the entire program, in which BoJack and Diane (Alison Brie) sit on a roof together and talk beneath the stars one last time.

Diane has lots of complicated feelings about the past and her time in Los Angeles, including being a part of BoJack’s life for so long. “I think there are people that help you become the person that you end up being, and you can be grateful for them even if they were never meant to be in your life forever,” Diane wistfully remarks at one point in their conversation. In a show full of talking animals and wacky gags involving character actress Margo Martindale, BoJack Horseman hits upon a profound truth here. Some friendships can be both immensely impactful and temporary. Things change. BoJack is so worried that, once his life shifts from prison to everyday reality, he’ll succumb to addiction again. Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But here’s a reminder to him and the audience that change isn’t innately bad.

The bittersweet uncertainty of the future and complicated gratitude for past experiences fills up the screen as the opening lyrics of Catherine Feeny’s “Mr. Blue” plays over a shot of BoJack and Diane looking up at the sky. That’s it. That’s the end of BoJack Horseman.

What Happens at the End of ‘A Good Person’?

Image via MGM

Much like BoJack Horseman, A Good Person ends with its protagonist, Allison (Florence Pugh), finding solace for their addiction in an isolated environment. Here, though, it’s a rehab center. We see Allison get more comfortable and treat her addiction to opioids over the course of one speedy montage, which concludes with Allison giving a teary speech about how she’s in such a better mental state to her fellow residents and mom. Before, Allison was racked with an inability to get through a single day without pills after a car accident that killed her fiancée’s sister and her partner – Allison was driving. Now, it looks like Allison can make it another day.

At the rehab center, Allison’s ex-fiancée Nathan (Chinaza Uche) visits her, with the two sharing a tender conversation that seemingly ties a bow on their past, though Nathan still says he hopes they can be a part of each other’s lives in some ways. A distracting standout element of this scene is how Braff’s direction and Dan Schalk’s editing cannot just let the words in this conversation carry the sequence. Constant abrupt cuts and awkward close-up shots keep intruding on the intimacy of this exchange. Especially egregious is a humorously clumsy moment where Allison’s referral to how Nathan lost his hearing in one of his ears after getting beaten by his drunken father, Daniel (Morgan Freeman), inspires a cut to a five-second close-up of Nathan’s hearing device before cutting back to the conversation. Whereas BoJack Horseman’s final conversations between characters demonstrated patience, this potentially poignant exchange between two of A Good Person’s lead figures just exhibits ham-fisted visual cues.

Bad Filmmaking Choices Disrupt the Intimacy of ‘A Good Person’

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This kind of thoughtlessness and subpar filmmaking permeates the final scene of the movie, which concerns a wake dedicated to the now-deceased Daniel. Though he wasn’t a great father, Daniel proved to be a helpful mentor and surrogate father figure to Allison as she came to terms with her addiction. Unsurprisingly, this means she’s now taken up a leadership role at this event commemorating the life of Daniel. At this shindig, Allison wanders through various rooms to check in on guests and make sure everything is going smoothly. While doing these rounds, she wanders into the kitchen at one point to see Nathan talking to her mom. Both she and the audience hear Nathan explicitly say he and his girlfriend just broke up a few months ago, a clumsy bit of expository dialogue that robs the sequence of any emotional immersion.

This ending caps off with Allison wandering to the basement and seeing Daniel’s massive model train collection and exhibit. Here, she finds a letter from Daniel addressed to her, which implores Allison to stick around and function as a surrogate mom figure to Ryan (Celeste O’Connor), the daughter of the sister who was accidentally killed in that fateful accident. Previously in A Good Person, Allison went from being an object of disdain to Ryan to being a friend and then, over the course of one fateful night in New York City, helping to crystallize all the problems Allison was struggling with. Now, A Good Person suggests they’ll be in each other’s lives long-term. The final shot of A Good Person is Ryan leaning her head on Allison’s shoulder as they sit together on Daniel’s porch, a sign that she is going to stay in this domicile.

‘A Good Person’s Ending Doesn’t Work Because Nothing Has Really Changed

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What I find especially galling about the ending of A Good Person is how tidy it is. Daniel may be gone, but that’s about the only tragedy or even suggestion of conflict here. Everything’s back to normal, with Nathan and Allison presumably preparing to restart their romantic relationship like nothing ever happened. This narrative has now stretched on for almost two years and consisted of everything from a massive car accident to an extensive rehab stint, yet these people and their worlds aren’t evolving.

The ending of A Good Person didn’t need to show Allison being shunned by everybody for being an addict or dramatically relapsing. However, there are no hints of how living as an addict is impacting her life nor do we get insight into who she is as a person. What’s so ingenious about that BoJack Horseman episode is how structuring the episode around four wildly varying conversations allows the audience to see BoJack perceived in four strikingly different fashions. It’s an approach that ensures he isn’t just defined by his sobriety or addiction. When the topic of addiction comes up, it’s in a more creative manner, like how the nebulous possibility of succumbing to alcoholism, rather than being tempted by a physical bottle of booze in the here and now, now dominates BoJack’s anxiety. It’s a great, subdued way of depicting how this psychology can be a struggle to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Even just a quick shot of Allison attending the AA meeting that she and Daniel met at towards the start of the movie could’ve been a great way to suggest how she’s coping with addiction one day at a time. Instead, the focus is on maintaining the status quo of Allison’s life, which just undercuts her as a protagonist and the interior lives of the supporting characters. Just as addiction is something you deal with every day, it’s equally eternally true that people grow and change. BoJack Horseman’s ending was a reminder that people we’d grown accustomed to always seeing being together in episodes weren’t always going to be in each other’s lives.

‘A Good Person’s Happy Ending Comes at a Price

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A Good Person ignores this truth in favor of a “happy ending” that rings false. After engaging with so much darker material throughout its runtime, trying to cop out with such a cornball ending feels like a cheat, not to mention an undermining of what it’s like to live with addiction. Ironically, in the pursuit of giving moviegoers “warm n’ fuzzy” emotion, A Good Person’s ending just comes off as creepy. Daniel’s final letter to Allison is just peer pressuring her into being a mom figure while Nathan is loudly talking about how single he is to his ex-fiancée’s mom. Zach Braff’s screenplay for A Good Person constantly struggles to paint its characters as believable human beings, but trying to force such a cozy ending just takes this fault to a new level.

It’s not easy to make stories about addiction and it’s especially difficult to make satisfying endings in art when you’re dealing with addiction. The long-term nature of this sickness makes it seem counterintuitive to the concept of concrete endings to standard narratives. BoJack Horseman’s finale ingeniously solved this problem by rooting its ending in the innate uncertainty of the future. By contrast, A Good Person didn’t even attempt to confront this problem and instead tried to do a cookie-cutter happy ending that further undercut an already shoddy movie. Addiction isn’t easy to translate to filmed media, but it can be done well with projects like BoJack Horseman…and boy can it always be done so poorly in productions like A Good Person.