It’s spring in New Jersey, and the students of Bridgeton Middle School are contending with the fallout from their St. Valentine’s Day massacre, along with hassles any adolescent might face: test anxiety, sexual insecurity, navigating the niceties of incest, being Home Aloned. That’s right: Big Mouth is back, bigger and mouthier than ever, just as shameless and even more magical.
On paper, the first acts of episodes like “Girls Are Angry Too,” “Obsessed,” and “Rankings” sound like standard cautionary tales: A sexist dress code prompts the girls to protest, a tween can’t bear to part with his new phone, the boys evaluate the “hottest” girls. In a few episodes, for a few minutes, it feels as if creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin, along with their writers room, might be running dry, as their characters start off mouthing well-trodden rhetorical points.
But like the damp, demanding imaginations of its protagonists, this show never runs dry. Instead of following the didactic beats of a Very Special Episode, Big Mouth excels in setting up situations and reveling as they spiral in every messy direction. In “Girls Are Angry Too,” which gets the season rolling, the action begins with few surprises as Jessi (Jessi Klein), Missy (Jenny Slate), Devin (June Diane Raphael), and “the filthy tweenage girls of Bridgeton Middle” counter their teacher’s scrutiny with a Slut Walk. But the accompanying musical number barely gets going before the simplistic arguments and jaunty lyrics blow up in an explosion of frustration and anger. It’s a hilarious, lightning-fast descent from fun fantasy empowerment into cruel vulnerability, and an uncanny mimicking of the emotional, physical, and social roller coaster of puberty.
Some of the situations Big Mouth presents are familiar, and some questions are universal: Is it okay to have a crush on your best friend’s ex? Is it okay to want to kiss girls and boys, “and anyone in between”? Is it okay to covertly film your family members for viral fame? Is it okay to kiss your cousin? Is it okay for two children to get married? IS IT OKAY TO PULL YOUR EX-GIRLFRIEND’S BOYFRIEND OUT OF HIS WHEELCHAIR? Some of these dilemmas are more universal than others, and some have clearer answers.
In the words and voices of Big Mouth’s writers and their outstanding assembly of voice actors, what all these questions have in common is their complexity. Even the most absurd, abstract scenarios feel not just personal, but intimate… and intimacy can be uncomfortable. Big Mouth fearlessly pushes that intimacy, and that discomfort, in episodes like “How To Have An Orgasm,” where hormone monster Maury (Kroll) talks Andrew (John Mulaney) into a pantsless photo session, with the resulting frames of blurry, blushing boy parts popping up unexpectedly in his family’s shared cloud—and in corners of the viewer’s screen.
Occasionally, that complexity breaks down. The introduction of new student Ali (Ali Wong) feels like the speech it is, and her impromptu lesson on the meaning of “pansexual” oversimplifies the relationship between private parts and gender identity. But her very existence as a character puts Big Mouth ahead of most television representations of sexual expression. Jay’s continued exploration of his enthusiastic bisexuality (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas with insatiable intensity and poignant hesitation) is as irrepressible as a math-class boner, and Matthew (Andrew Rannells) meets again, and again, with his crush from “My Furry Valentine” (Aiden, voiced by Zachary Quinto)—but crucially, each tween’s sexual orientation is no more defining than their growth spurts or, uh, other spurts.
With its rich, pervasive raunchiness, and its willingness to plumb the depths of adult relationships as well as the complex “politics of childhood,” Big Mouth is unabashedly and unreservedly for adults, and accordingly it dances on the edge of feeling out of control. But whether you’re on a roller coaster or on the emotional tightrope Big Mouth walks in its most difficult moments, it’s more fun to feel out of control than to be out of control. A late-season subplot shows how well Big Mouth’s writers judge the distance between shameless and reckless, letting us wonder just how dark the subject matter will get before showing its excellent judgment and ability to create profound tension without manufacturing gratuitous drama.
Big Mouth takes time in its third season (with at least three more confirmed) to reach beyond its familiar, filthy world. There are plenty of detours: a lyrical trip to the past with the ghost of Duke Ellington (Jordan Peele), a spring break vacation to Florida (a.k.a. “America’s glory hole”), a dive into the seediness (and preposterously prescient male paranoia) of 1994’s Disclosure. Keep your ears pricked for the voices of Martin Short, Carol Kane, and Queer Eye’s Fab Five, as well as new cast members like Thandie Newton, whose Hormone Monstress has a gravelly, avid voice that rivals even The A.V. Club’s 2018 TV MVP, Maya Rudolph. But these new episodes never lose sight of the characters at their squirmy, compassionate heart.
One of the season’s most satisfying tangents involves Jay’s palpable delight in a niche show (about a Canadian man on an emotional and sexual journey through Canada’s sex-positive stage-magic community) is contagious, because we all know what it’s like to find a show that feels personal. Big Mouth can feel like that—like it was crafted just for you. That’s because it embraces every subject, every shame, every isolating, embarrassing impulse as if it were a universal experience. This show is unabashedly frank about our appetites, and not just the sexual ones. Like Jay’s increasingly deft attempts at close-up magic, Big Mouth keeps pulling off a neat piece of prestidigitation. It shuffles together the thrills, pressures, humiliations, horrors, and unmatched joys of youth and love and self-loathing and dawning self-knowledge, then with a simple piece of misdirection, it shows us just the card we need to see.
41 Comments
Ever since finishing Season 2 I’ve been anxiously awaiting this show’s return – I’m just worried that I’ll blow the whole load in one sitting tonight!
Not to be picky, but the show isn’t set in NJ, it’s set in Westchester and I know this solely because I’m from Westchester as is Nick Kroll originally, lmao.
Still stuns me (in a positive sense, of course!) how relatable this show is to both so many of my friends and so many folks online – I’m still coming to appreciate how growing up as an unaware ace really did make middle and high school a radically different experience on my end. Big Mouth has been a wonderful window into the heads of the vast majority of people I’ll ever come in contact with, and I’m so glad it exists. Can’t wait to dive into this season tonight!
Three more seasons? What are they going to do when the kids age out of their roles?
Hopefully the audience never notices. Or, if all else fails, they can digitally de-age Nick Kroll using the same technology from IT: Part 2.
Coach Steve spin-off.
You mean Coach Spinoff Internet TV Character Coach Steve
If one thought the second season, despite a few notable high points, was much more poorly constructed than the first, what would they think of season 3?
I know what I’m watching this weekend!
Fuck yes. I love this show.
can we drop the ugly animation trend already? like when they did that archer crossover with bobs burgers. imagine if it always looked like that.
Then that show would lose a lot of its charm?
how so? the thing is the background designs are great. but then the ugly ugly characters.
We get it, you need to sexually fantasize about the cartoon characters you watch
Super realistic animation can be off putting to me, about the only animation I can’t really stand is the vibrating squiggly lines that they used to do in that one show and early episodes of Home Movies
Wasnt that just because it was the 90s and they had zero budget? Probably would have made it in flash today.
Dr. KatzBoth of which featured Jon Benjamin
They did that in the Archer style, though. Are you saying Archer’s animation is ugly?
no, imagine if bobs always looked like this.Or that episode where they had guest artists for each scene. Some of those were great.
Then it’d be less appealing.
If Bob’s burger’s always looked “realistic” like Archer it would be creepy as fuck.
I would hate that. I find the style of Bob’s Burgers far and away much more appealing than Archer’s style. But with that said, I’m not a fan of Big Mouth’s style so… these things aren’t exactly objective.
But that wasn’t “Archer on Bob’s Burgers”. It was Bob’s Burgers appearing on Archer. Thats why the animation style is Archers.They didn’t change up the animation at all.
The animation looks fine, I don’t see the issue.
I really wanted to like the first two seasons, but it just came across as woke Family Guy in the end. No matter how much I appreciated the compassionate perspective, the jokes never really hit for me, especially when it came to the coach character. I kind of have some curiosity about the implications of Maya Rudolf becoming Nick Kroll’s hormone monster at the end of the last season though. I’m guessing this season doesn’t have that character come out the closet as trans or anything because that would have been all over the marketing for this season if so (and in the wake of Transparent my guess is a show like this wouldn’t have a cis actor play a trans character). That said, I’m leaving this comment here in the off chance that I’m wrong, since I’m interested in how the show would carry a plot like that.
I love how no matter what the subject is there’s always one person who has to come along and let everyone know they’re just not interested in the thing they’re bothering to share their opinion about
I mean, it’s not like we’re in the comments section for Nick Kroll’s funeral. The article is a review of a TV show, so it makes a lot of sense that I’d leave a comment about my own personal feelings on that show. You’re free to disagree, but it’s not really a non-sequitur for me to say that I’ve chosen not to watch a new season of a TV show because the first two seasons didn’t really do it for me.
It’s spring in New Jersey, and the students of Bridgeton Middle SchoolCome on. They very clearly live in Westchester. This show is about as New York as it can get. (It’s based on Nick Kroll & Andrew Goldberg’s childhood in Westchester.)
Bridgeton… is in NJ though?
Ah yes, the famous New York City suburb of the predominately African-American Bridgeton, New Jersey located in South Jersey, much closer to Philadelphia.They can use made up names that are also the names of real places in other locations.
this show is so good and it should be what they are showing kids in middle school. I think they really nailed the bisexual component, and how frustrating it must be coming out as bisexual.
I assume Maya is going to steal the show for a third straight season.
Connie is the best! Maya Rudolph must be goofy as hell in real life to pull off that voice with any modicum of seriousness lol
Thought the show took place in Westchester?
I still really liked the season, but I thought it was hurt by not having very much Coach Steve. He’s a reliable source of absurd humor, and without his presence the more serious storylines don’t pop out as much. I mean, on a structural level it’s good that they’re not over-relying on the wacky comic relief character for jokes, but the downside of that is, fewer uproarious jokes.
Oh, I thought they used Steve the perfect amount this season, even lampshading how they’re just crowbarring him in for a quick joke and then he’s gone. IMHO they overused him in S2 and he really wore out his welcome for me. This season made me feel that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way and they’re responding to it.
Yeah I agree that Steve was used just enough, I loved him in season 2 but that would’ve gotten old fast. I also wasn’t crazy about the talking phone but they dropped that pretty fast
Coach Steve and those goddamn pillows ruined season 2
Yeah I agree the pillows were a bit much. the monsters/ghosts are one thing: they seem to be “real” and different kids see them. But when the kids start interacting with inanimate objects that may or may not be in their imagination it gets weird.
What is with this site and the Coach Steve love? Dude is the most fucking annoying character on the show.
The end of the season really hit me hard, when Andrew tells Nick he bears no ill will, but can’t be friends with him because he’s not a good person. I had a lifelong friend where that happened to recently, not one huge blowup but a number of things that just added up and I had to cut him out of my life because he just does shitty things for selfish reasons.