Big Mouth’s fifth season finds love—with plenty of room left for gross-out humor
Unsurprising for a show entering season 5, Big Mouth occasionally struggles to rediscover the right balance of humor, heart, and dick jokes
TV Reviews Big Mouth
It’s ironic that season five of the animated Netflix hit Big Mouth begins with a voiceover narration from Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney), doing a parody of Goodfellas (“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to jerk off,” he reminisces). The hapless Jewish nerd is actually more of a supporting character this season than a lead—and even more surprising, he’s arguably become the most emotionally mature kid of them all.
In some ways, this new batch of Big Mouth episodes sees the most significant evolution in the show yet, with a season that features the kids learning about love—and how easily it can curdle into its immature flip side, hate—while steadily advancing through the stages of adolescence as they approach their high school years. But in all the ways that matter, Big Mouth stays true to the spirit and style that has guided it all along, with gleefully foul-mouthed brio and outrageous scatological and sexual humor that continually rides the fine line between ain’t-we-stinkers silliness and crudity that can become tiresome with its “all gross all the time” zeal.
Season five finds each of its main characters, having endured the initial travails of puberty, struggling to better understand themselves and their rapidly expanding palette of feelings. But after a fourth season that largely focused on knotty questions of representation and identity, here the focus is back where it began: on sex, intimacy, and all the ways it’s easier for teenage romance to go wrong than right. And, yes, plenty of masturbation—the topic remains the show’s go-to resource for jokes, but as the premiere makes clear, the activity is old hat for everyone at Bridgeton Middle School by this point. Far more exciting—and overwhelming—is the idea of love.
Eros is not only the driving thematic concern of the season, it also serves as the impetus for the show’s newest addition to its phantasmagoria of imaginary creatures: Lovebugs. The earnest insects appear whenever someone is about to experience the heady rush of love, to fan the flames of passion… and occasionally push the kids into ill-considered romantic gestures. (A character professing his feelings via a heartfelt guitar ballad at the end of episode three is one of the more accurate, and cringe-inducing, moments of the season.) The reason for their introduction may or may not be a little mercenary—the show’s planned spinoff, Human Resources, is set to feature these new characters—but it works, especially when rejection transforms the lovebugs into their opposites, hate worms.
For once, the show mostly avoids introducing any new kids to its roster, instead focusing on our preexisting cast of pubescent protagonists. Whereas last season saw Nick (Nick Kroll) defeat his more self-absorbed side and accept his insecurities instead of pushing them away, here he has to deal with the opposite—what happens when you stew too much in your emotions, especially when they include feelings of rejection. His journey to the dark side, embracing a nihilistic edgelord attitude and nursing a woe-is-me mentality, makes him a painfully recognizable type this season.
Similarly, Missy (Ayo Adebiri), having gone through a tumultuous transition last year, is finally allowed to rebel against her inner people-pleaser. Watching her embrace her hate worm (played with relish by Keke Palmer) after her new affinity group gets hijacked by Jessi (Jessi Klein) and Ali (Ali Wong) adds a new layer of depth to the increasingly well-rounded character. These new wrinkles to the girls’ personalities—and the musical interludes that often accompany them—make their stories the standouts this season.
But Jay (Jason Mantzoukas) has come a surprisingly long way as well. Despite the wild child getting dumped by Lola (Kroll) last season, he comes to realize, through a new “sidepiece” relationship with the school jock, that he actually wants more than just physical intimacy. Cue a burgeoning realization on the part of Matthew (Andrew Rannells) that, despite a seemingly solid relationship with Aiden (Zachary Quinto), he may actually be attracted to Jay. (Matthew also gets some of the best lines, such as when he’s informed that sports “cannot be gay or straight”: “Hahaha, hilarious—and false.”)
Unsurprisingly for a show that’s entering its fifth season, Big Mouth occasionally struggles to rediscover the right balance of humor and heart—and gross-out material. This season stumbles a bit, especially in the early episodes, going over the top with a commitment to shock-value one-liners and gonzo predicaments that grows wearying. (At one point, Nick even calls out his old-man hormone monster, Rick, for being exceptionally disturbing.) But once it finds its groove around episode four, the series’ endearing mix of true-to-life relatability and absurdist extremes returns.
As usual, some of the best laughs come courtesy of the monsters themselves. While Kroll’s Maury gets the most screen time, Maya Rudolph’s Connie remains the show-stealer, making big laugh lines out of goofball throwaways like, “You can’t ruin a friendship with sex. That’s a myth!” And the show is still swinging for the fences with individual high-concept episodes. This year’s offering, which blends live puppetry sequences with a half-dozen varieties of animation for a dirty-minded Christmas special, might be the most impressive yet.
But Mulaney’s Andrew, while still a mess of a person, takes an unexpectedly soulful turn this year, adding gentleness and compassion to his masochistic kinky side, and making him a sympathetic Greek chorus of sorts as a result. The result is a Big Mouth that turns its characters inside out—nice kids break bad, previous narcissists become empathetic—while still driving toward growth and forgiveness for everyone. Not bad for a five-seasons-and-counting show that also includes an eighth-grade boy telling his new teacher, “Just promise me you’ll think of me while you’re eating out your wife.”
17 Comments
This show really feels from a different era. I think now in 2021 post covid and epstien it’s really hard for me to watch a show where a billionaires son decided it is important to draw naked 12 year olds. I think that it is odd Kroll has unlimited resources could probably get anything made and a show about kids being sexual was what he made. Idk pen15 seems to handle a lot of the subject matter more gracefully.
I feel like this show is for groomers and that nick Kroll probably plans on using it to groom children the show is so creepy. A billionaire son has the world handed to him could make anything and makes a show about children being naked. Really weird to me
i dont know how long i’d want this show to last, but its netflix, so since its already made it to season 5 it probably doesn’t have long.
I’m very excited but also a bit nervous for the show, for the reasons listed above. Season 5 is basically middle aged for a comedy show. How many hot-button topics can they hit, while also balancing the humor and various monsters they encounter? They hit a few snags with the phone plot IMO, so sometimes their ideas fizzle, but it’s a show that can bounce back easily. Also wondering how Mulaney’s situation affected the production, I didn’t think they were even filming yet. I can’t stop thinking of the school as Bridgerton Middle School, and I hope they make that reference. I’m not super excited for Human Resources, the Hormone Monsters are great but best used sparingly, the kids are much more interesting.
I still think it’s funny how we categorize series with 10-episode seasons. After season 5 Big Mouth will have produced 51 episodes, which puts it in early Season 3 of The Simpsons.
I still measure it in years somewhat, especially if a show has an ongoing story. Big Mouth isn’t super linear, but it’s not episodic either
I totally forgot that spin-off was happening.
God I got to the season finale and there’s what I’m assuming to be a shameless plug/backdoor pilot for the spinoff. I’m generally not a fan of (spoiler?) ___________________________________________________________________________________________________Creators interacting with their characters, which is what happens with a live action Nick Kroll. Overall a solid season but wasn’t crazy about that element.
Filming?
Isn’t it filmed? I was wondering why the costuming department hadn’t got ALL the awards…
I was also wondering why everyone only had 3 fingers.
right? I mean obviously we all have 3 fingers and a thumb. Like the documentary “The Simpsons”. I’m definitely from this earth and shut up that’s a normal thing to say hey how often do you swallow per minute?
Yeah, this season felt a little overstuffed. I feel like Big Mouth would really benefit from backing away from the whole “new season, new monster/creature” shtick, especially now that the writers seem hellbent on bringing so many of those characters back for cameos.I mean, maybe it all just lands a little differently after COVID-19, but there were some pretty dark story beats that the show just sort of dropped in? Especially with all of the absent/checked out parenting storylines involving Jesse, Jay, and (especially) Lola. I can see how that might make the show too much of a downer, but it feels weird to try to turn them into punchlines. Some people’s adolescent trauma is worse than others, and it it feels like that’s something the show struggles to incorporate into its cringe comedy format. (Food insecurity: just a chance to do a weird “Backdoor Santa”-type riff, even if the second half of that sentence feels very on-brand for the show as a whole.)Overall it felt a lot more disjointed than some of the other seasons, which had a more consistent tone/arc.
The stuff they do goes well beyond a normal 13 year old. I know some of it is in their imaginations/its a cartoon with monsters, but Jay/Lola living together (or basically everything they do) seems to be pushing it a bit, even in this insane universe. Also Andrew’s actions towards his teacher, of course they should keep it due to the rule of funny, but there should’ve been more consequences for that. A few of them at least should be forced to see therapists, that is ripe for material.
i just finished watching it and i really liked this season, more so than last season.
Yea last season was kinda dull.
Overall there was more of a running theme this season, and I loved what they did with Andrew’s emotional development and Nick’s parents. Last season was a bit jumbled, jumping from anxiety to gratitude(toad) and tried to tackle code switching and identity all at once. If the whole season was at the camp I would’ve been fine with that. It also got just a bit too gross for my taste.