The reveal at the end of “Ruthie,” the ninth episode of BoJack Horseman’s fourth season, hits so hard because it’s one that viewers perhaps should have seen coming. After all, this is a show that has always held contentment and security just outside its characters’ reach. Yet the promise of a happy ending for Princess Carolyn, and the vividness of her fantasy, was too seductive to dismiss. The worse her day got (“You’re a real tough broad. Except for, you know, the uterus area,” the doctor says after informing her about her miscarriage), the more desperately she—and viewers—needed Ruthie to be real.

Princess Carolyn’s tragic tale is a fitting companion to the other standout BoJack episode from this year. The season’s penultimate chapter, “Time’s Arrow,” tells the harrowing life story of BoJack’s mother, Beatrice, as filtered through her dementia. In part because of the show’s brilliant animation and formal experimentation, these two episodes make for glorious TV, taking full advantage of the medium to make their studies of female interiority feel like epics. Both “Ruthie” and “Time’s Arrow” keenly understand the ways in which their protagonists’ struggles are shaped by their experiences as women, and they illustrate in heartrending fashion how hostile realities can force people to seek out the comfort of stories.

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In its fourth season, BoJack Horseman took a notable inward turn, often rendering the psychological turmoil of its characters in strikingly visual fashion. Another excellent episode, “Stupid Piece of Sh*t,” enters the head of the show’s misanthropic star and exposes the depths of BoJack’s self-loathing: His inner voice berates him 24/7 for being stupid and worthless, as grim cartoons of his thoughts play out in his mind. (Later, BoJack’s putative teenage daughter Hollyhock tells him she hears a voice like that, too.) The episode “lovin that cali lifestyle!!” shows Hollyhock’s eating disorder–driven amphetamine overdose from her perspective—distorted voices, flickering lights, hazy colors—before she passes out.

But “Time’s Arrow” is, even by this measure, a formally ambitious feat. Where the narrative trick of “Ruthie” isn’t apparent until the end, “Time’s Arrow” throws viewers off balance a minute in. BoJack, a supporting player in these two episodes, is driving his elderly mother Beatrice to a nursing home. Though Beatrice has a long history of emotionally abusing her son, she’s now suffering from severe Alzheimer’s and keeps calling BoJack “Henrietta” for some reason.

Suddenly, she has a moment of lucidity. “Time’s arrow neither stands still nor reverses,” she proclaims from the passenger seat. “It merely marches forward. Isn’t that right, Henrietta?” The camera pans to BoJack, who’s no longer BoJack but a woman with her face scribbled out. “Yes, Mrs. Horseman,” Henrietta says, and the camera zooms out to show a much younger Beatrice. The background fades to white. Beatrice steps out of the car, now transformed into a small girl. Time’s arrow has, for a moment, reversed.

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What follows is a difficult-to-watch unspooling of Beatrice’s life—via memories that, because of her disease, melt and morph mid-scene. Characters’ faces are erased or violently scratched out. Words on signs rearrange themselves. The show doesn’t try to excuse Beatrice’s eventual abusiveness, but her painful past does offer context. Her father made his grieving wife get a lobotomy after their son was killed in World War II (silhouettes of Beatrice’s zombie-like mother haunt the episode). As a girl, Beatrice nearly died from scarlet fever. Her cheerily misogynistic father wouldn’t let her eat ice cream (to protect her figure), and would scold her for spending too much time with books. “Reading does nothing for young women but build their brains, taking valuable resources away from their breasts and hips,” he explains.