Ma Nguyen is a minor character in BoJack Horseman. She makes her first appearance in Live Fast, Diane Nguyen, in Season 1.
Physical Appearance[]
Ma Nguyen is a human Vietnamese woman with a grey beehive hairdo. Her face has wrinkles, and she has obvious bags under her eyes. She also has noticeable stomach folds.
She is depicted wearing a red sports jersey with a blue v neck collar and blue and white sleeve striped sleeve cuffs with a single white stripe at the top and blue stripe at the bottom.
She also wears a yellow skirt with pink flowers. For jewelry she wears a gold necklace, gold bracelets, and gold teardrop earrings. Her makeup is a deep red lipstick and heavy light blue eye-shadow.
Personality[]
Ma Nguyen is verbally abusive and a nagging woman who abused her daughter Diane. She also has an addiction to smoking and alcohol and enables her sons to act badly towards Diane as well.
She is similar to Beatrice Horseman in terms of her bitterness towards her marriage and life in general. This is seen by how apathetic she is when talking about her husband's death.
Background[]
History[]
Ma Nguyen is Diane's mother, she is an abusive and nagging woman, who abused her daughter Diane.
She is an alcoholic and heavy woman, similar to Beatrice Horseman, she allows Diane's brothers to follow her bad habits. Ma practically enables them to follow in her footsteps by taking them to the bar and buying them alcohol.
Ma also allows her son, to be emotionally abusive to her daughter Diane, on a regular basis; and greatly plays favoritism towards them over Diane. Despite this, Diane bends over backward to please her and keeps coming back even when she knows better.
She blames others, for her children being so screwed up, rather than her own horrible parenting.
From the second Diane walks inside her home, Ma Nguyen criticizes and scolds her daughter constantly, and seems more focused on doing so; then grieving over her late husband. It is implied her marriage was rocky.
She is seen as very apathetic towards her husband's death saying his dying wish was to be chummed and thrown towards Derek Jeter. She acts in a very nonchalant way when talking about this.
Season 1[]
In Live Fast, Diane Nguyen, BoJack, and Diane travel to New York to meet with Pinky Penguin, where he has relocated to avoid creditors while waiting for BoJack to finish his book.
Diane leaves the room to answer her phone BoJack tells Pinky she's not working out for him because he believes she's too functional and not damaged enough to tell his story.
Pinky then frantically asks him what he's talking about and tells him his book needs to be on shelves and making money by October.
Diane then comes back into the room and says she received a call from her brother Tommy about their father's passing. BoJack and Pinky give their condolences and say they are sorry. Diane says her father was old and also the worst. She is unfazed, much to BoJack's surprise, and she asks BoJack to come with her to Boston to pay respects before heading back to Los Angeles.
Diane admits to BoJack she was pretty lonely growing up too saying her family made her life miserable and then they never forgave her for leaving on their way to the Nguyen family home. BoJack then questions if Diane is like the black sheep and she tells him that her brother Gary is the black sheep and he was adopted. Diane then says she's just the member of the family that nobody likes and her dad was the worst of them all.
BoJack then questions this, saying Diane previously told him she and her father used to sit on the roof and look at stars together. Diane then explains that was an old writers' trick she used simply to get him to open up. BoJack then tells her that hurts his feelings. Diane then says the truth is that she used to go down by the city dump and dream she was Chelsea Clinton but with her hair.
They then reach the Nguyen home and Diane hands BoJack a kaleidoscope to play with and he tells her he's not five, however, he quickly gets mesmerized by the bright shapes and colors.
When Diane arrives at her family's home in Boston, her family is revealed to be crass, rude, and obsessed with sports. She walks in the door and her brother Tommy comes running out from the kitchen announcing she's home and calling the rest of her brothers. Her brother Marty is way too distracted to acknowledge Diane's presence in the house and he tells her he is watching the game. Diane then tells him it's the game from '86 and he's seen it a hundred times.
Diane's brothers Artie and Tommy tell her their father is "wicked departed." Diane's mother then comes out from the kitchen and starts berating her daughter as soon as she sees her. Diane explains she is only there to give her condolences and her mother says it's convenient that she is "in and out like a Protestant on Christmas." Marty then tells the family to stop fighting during the game as it is "bad juju."
Diane's mother then says Diane then says she thinks she is too good for the family as she now lives in fancy California. Diane's mother then tries to make her feel guilty for leaving and Diane says this was a huge mistake as she heads for the door. Tommy convinces her to stay as they need help with the funeral arrangements.
To Diane's shock and horror, the brothers then reveal their father's corpse is on a chair with ice and they explain to Diane they didn't know he was dead and just thought he was hungover.
BoJack finally gets bored with the kaleidoscope and calls out for Diane. Inside, Diane and the family are arguing. BoJack then decides to get out of the car and go inside the house. BoJack then asks if anyone can speak Engish and the brothers get excited over having a famous TV star in their home.
In Boston, BoJack manages to bond with the brothers and Diane calls a funeral service to pick up the body of their father. BoJack asks them if they want to play touch football later which they enthusiastically agree to. They then tell BoJack about the "Cryanne video" where they wrote letters to Diane from an imaginary pen pal named Leo and then hired a hobo to take Diane to homecoming and got Diane's reaction on tape.
BoJack remarks that's a good prank and Diane says she was humiliated. Tommy then says it's nice they can all laugh about this and Diane says her therapist thinks the same thing. Diane then tells them she's going to the funeral home and asks the brothers if they want to come and they refuse. Diane then takes BoJack with her to the funeral home.
Diane and BoJack then go to Maggot & Sons Funeral Home where Diane explains to Bob Maggot that her father was "a mean, sadistic alcoholic who actively delighted in seeing [her] fail." Bob then offers her the "Piece of Shit Dad" package, which Diane responds would be too good for her father. Bob then offers her the "Piece of Shit Dad package would be too good for him package." Diane then agrees that's the one.
Once they are alone BoJack advises Diane she could loosen up a little and maybe she could learn a thing or to from her brothers. Diane then tells him if she was like her brothers she'd never get anything done.
After Diane makes arrangements to throw her father a funeral, none of her family shows up, and her father's corpse is absent. It turns out her family is lounging at a bar and had chummed their father's corpse with the intent to throw his remains in the face of their hated baseball rival team's star, Derek Jeter.
Calling Diane a big shot for getting upset at their low expectations, BoJack tactlessly defends Diane by bluntly describing her career and living situation, saying she is not a big shot. Diane then flies into a rage and drives off with the truck holding her father's chummed remains.
BoJack finds Diane at the city dump, where he consoles her by telling her the ways he appreciates her. He also apologizes to her for what he said about her to her family at the bar. She responds with "Well, it's all true isn't it?" He then hands her a letter from "Leo" the same penpal her brothers made up to play a cruel prank on her when she was a teenager, claiming he found it at the bar. In it, "Leo" tells Diane he appreciates how she's always organized to go places, chews gum on airplanes so that her ears don't pop, and brings her own bags to the grocery store.
BoJack then reassures Diane that she does not need to find closure or appreciation from her family since they are horrible to her and that she should concentrate on moving forward and focusing her life on where she's living and simply not come back to her family.
He ends by saying her father can no longer hurt anyone and proceeds to knock the barrel of Diane's father's chummed remains out of the truck and tumbling into the city. The barrel narrowly collides with Derek Jeter himself but instead knocks out an old lady Derek Jeter was helping across the street.
Season 3[]
Ma Nguyen, in a flashback from 2007 in the episode The BoJack Horseman Show, is seen berating her daughter Diane over the phone.
Trivia:[]
- Ma Nguyen is a very similar character to Beatrice Horseman in terms of verbal abuse, smoking and alcohol addictions, and bitterness.
- Like her husband, her real first name is never revealed.
- All her sons adore her, are extremely loyal, due to her enabling ways.