The show’s running gag about “Hollywoo” gets a hilarious treatment. They don’t translate it directly. Instead, Princess Carolyn says, “We are in Hollywood… uh, I mean, Tbilis-Doo.” It shouldn’t work. But it does.
Beyond the Laughter Track: Why “Bojack Horseman Qartulad” Hits Different in Georgian
One fan favorite from Season 3 shows a billboard for “Secretariat.” In the Georgian version, the subtitle jokes that the movie is “produced by the Rustavi 2 news team”—a dark nod to Georgia’s own tumultuous media landscape. Bojack Horseman Qartulad
There is a Georgian word: “წყენა” (ts’q’ena). It means a specific kind of sorrow, resentment, and melancholy you hold for someone you still love. The English script uses 20 words to describe this. The Georgian Bojack says one word, and you feel it in your bones.
Georgia has a history. It has survived revolutions, wars, and the collapse of empires. There is a cultural understanding of “sadness as a default state” that Americans simply don’t have. The show’s running gag about “Hollywoo” gets a
In English, Bojack’s despair is clinical. In Georgian, it is folkloric.
Bojack Horseman Qartulad isn’t just a translation. It’s a reinterpretation. It proves that no matter what language you speak, a horse walks into a bar, orders a bourbon, and stares at the void. But it does
The voice actors for the Georgian dub (who remain criminally under-credited) faced an impossible task. How do you translate “That went better than most of my Christmases” (a reference to his traumatic childhood) without losing the rhythm? The answer, it turns out, is leaning into Georgian fatalism.
And in Georgian, the void stares back in cursive.
For English speakers, Bojack Horseman is a masterclass in wordplay, puns, and rapid-fire Hollywoo(d) satire. But for a growing cult audience in Georgia, the show exists in two forms: the original English, and the legendary, almost mythical (ქართულად).