Most people remember Todd Chavez as the guy asleep on BoJack’s couch, the one yelling about his rock opera and getting told to clean up his mess. Comic relief.
Filler between the sad horse scenes. I used to see him that way too.
Then I rewatched the series and landed on a theory I cannot shake: Todd Chavez is the quiet heart of BoJack Horseman, and he is the only main character who grows up without burning his life down.
Here is my case, built on what the show put on screen, including the single most important line in the entire series. A line the writers handed to the couch guy.
Who Is Todd Chavez?
Todd is a human in his twenties and one of the five main characters in BoJack Horseman. He is voiced by Aaron Paul, the same actor who played Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad. The backstory is simple. He crashed a party at BoJack’s house about five years before the series starts, and he just never left.
Quick facts:
- Species: Human
- Voiced by: Aaron Paul
- Signature look: red hoodie, grey jeans, and a yellow beanie
- Running gag: BoJack constantly telling him to “clean up your shit, Todd”
- Ends the series: running a daycare and, for once, happy
On paper he is the slacker. In practice he works harder than anyone once something grabs his interest, and he spends most of the show doing favors and running errands for people who barely notice.
That gap between how the world reads him and who he really is turns out to be the whole point of the character.
My Theory: Todd Is the Healthiest Person in Hollywoo
Every other main character on this show is chasing something toxic. BoJack chases relevance and approval. Mr. Peanutbutter chases attention. Princess Carolyn chases the win. Diane chases meaning she can never quite catch. Todd chases none of it.
He stumbles into fame, money, and even political power, and every single time he walks away from it.
That is my read on him. Todd is the one person in Hollywoo who does not measure his worth by what the industry hands him. It sounds like a joke until you notice how many of his throwaway lines are quietly self-aware.
When he says it is nice to just be included in a sentence someone says, that is not a dumb line. That is a guy who knows he gets overlooked and has made peace with it anyway.
The theory in one line: On a show about people who cannot stop hurting themselves, Todd Chavez is the only one who keeps choosing kindness over ambition, and it is the reason he ends up okay.
The Line That Defines the Whole Show
Here is the moment that sold me. In the Season 3 episode “It’s You,” Todd finds out that BoJack slept with Emily, the woman Todd has real feelings for. The usually forgiving, endlessly patient Todd finally breaks. He tells BoJack he cannot keep doing awful things and then feeling bad as if that fixes anything.
Then he delivers the sentence the whole series is built around: “You are all the things that are wrong with you.” Not the alcohol. Not the drugs. Not his childhood. Him.
Think about what the writers did there. They took the thesis of the entire show, the idea that BoJack has to stop blaming his past and own his choices, and they gave it to the comic relief.
That is not lazy writing. That is the show telling you who was paying attention the whole time.
It also ends their friendship, and it is one of the rare times Todd swears, which the series reserves for the moment each relationship with BoJack truly breaks.
Why it lands: BoJack spends six seasons hoping someone will tell him he is not a bad person. Todd, the friend he treated worst, is the one who loves him enough to tell him the truth instead.
Todd’s Asexuality and Why It Mattered
Todd’s other defining arc is his asexuality. He first says it out loud at the end of Season 3, admitting he does not think he is gay or straight, that he might be “nothing.” In Season 4 he grows into the word asexual, starts going to an Asexual Alliance meetup, and slowly finds a community that fits.
This mattered far beyond the show. Todd is one of the first openly asexual main characters on a major series, and the writing around his identity got a lot of praise for handling it with patience instead of turning it into a lecture.
What I love is how ordinary the show made it. Todd is confused, then curious, then comfortable, at his own pace.
For a lot of viewers, seeing that spelled out on screen was the first time the word felt real.
The Schemes: Governor, Clown Dentists, and a Sex-Robot CEO
Todd’s business ideas are the comedy engine of the show, and they are gloriously stupid. A few of the real highlights, since the details matter:
- Governor of California. Yes, this happened, but not the way you might remember. In Season 4, a drone-throne accident drops Todd onto a ski race that decides the governorship, and he wins by pure luck. He then resigns almost immediately, because he never wanted the job, which leaves the whole state without a governor.
- Cabracadabra. A ride-share app for women, built with Mr. Peanutbutter and his ex Emily. It becomes a real hit.
- Henry Fondle. Todd builds a sex robot to avoid dating Emily the normal way, and the robot accidentally gets promoted to CEO of a company.
- Clown dentists. He decides kids will love the dentist if the dentists are also clowns. The clown dentists go feral in the woods, so his next idea is a haunted attraction where you flee from them.
One correction to the record while we are here. Todd’s rock opera, Newtopia Rising, was not a triumph.
In Season 1, BoJack secretly sabotages it because he is terrified that Todd’s success will mean Todd finally moves out. That sabotage is one of the earliest signs of how much BoJack quietly depends on the guy he pretends to tolerate.
The schemes look random, but they are really the show’s way of poking at startup culture, celebrity, and capitalism. And notice the pattern: Todd keeps tripping into money and power, and he keeps letting it go.
The Family He Was Given and the One He Chose
Todd’s real family is a sore spot. His stepfather, Jorge, is the kind of man who lectures him about what the Chavez name is supposed to stand for while offering almost no warmth.
Their relationship comes to a head in Season 6, when Jorge shows up because Todd’s mother needs a kidney, and the reunion is as awkward and sad as you would expect.
So Todd builds his own family instead. There is Emily, his high school ex. There is Maude, the asexual girlfriend he meets through the ace community, who understands him in a way nobody else does. And there is Princess Carolyn, who first hires him to babysit her daughter Ruthie and then keeps him close.
By the finale, Todd is running a daycare at her company and calling the babies his “work associates.” It is the softest, happiest landing of anyone in the show, and he earned it by being the one character who kept showing up for people.
Why Todd Wins
Here is a small detail I love. Todd wears the same red hoodie and yellow beanie for the entire series. Everyone else changes with their status and their moods.
Todd does not. You can read that as lazy character design, or you can read it the way I do: he is the one person who never needed to become someone else to be worth something.
The outfit is the theory in a nutshell.
That is why I think Todd Chavez is the secret center of BoJack Horseman.
The show’s most miserable characters are the ones obsessed with legacy, fame, and being loved. Todd chases none of that. He just tries to be decent, stays curious, and forgives more than anyone should.
He is the show’s quiet argument that you do not have to have your life figured out to be a good person, and you do not have to be a good person to deserve one more chance.
If you want to see how he fits with everyone else, I mapped the full ensemble in my BoJack Horseman characters guide, broke down where his story peaks in my picks for the best BoJack Horseman episodes, and dug into his old roommate over on my Mr. Peanutbutter and Diane Nguyen profiles.
Watch the series again with this in mind.
The couch guy was the healthiest one in the room the whole time.