Cover art by @tqsketchs on Instagram
By Frankie Fanelli
This review covers a series rated TV-MA and may not be appropriate for all readers.
Let me start out by saying that Big Mouth is NOT a show for the easily offended. In the same vein as Family Guy and South Park, this is an animated series definitely geared towards adults and older teens. And while a show centered around preteens turning to teenagers and navigating the turmoils of middle school and growing up could be heartwarming, this show takes the opposite road into the explicit and sometimes downright gross road that may be more realistic to the realities of the psyches pubescent preteens.
This show’s credits boast a lot of the biggest names in comedy right now, including creators Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg, and voice-actors John Mulaney, Jenny Slate, Jason Mantzoukas, Maya Rudolph, and Jordan Peele.
The show is based on Kroll and Goldberg’s childhoods’ growing up in upstate New York, and centers around best friends Nick Birch and Andrew Glouberman as they grow up in the suburbs of New York City and navigate their way through struggles like their heightened sexual arousal, influx of new hormones, and masturbation. While everyone seems to have everything figured out, Andrew feels that he is behind in his development, and that’s when his Hormone Monster (yep, you read that right) swoops in to help clarify things. The Hormone Monsters are essentially a personification of puberty itself and act as sexualized on-the-shoulder angels. Maury appears whenever Andrew or any of the other boys is doubting his urges or confused about what he is feeling, and Connie does the same for all of the girls on the show who are also navigating puberty and (unbeknownst to the boys) their newfound urges for themselves.
The show tackles the often even-less talked about topic of female puberty in a comedic way, and Hormone Monster Connie is there to coach Big Mouth’s girls through bra shopping, french kissing, and teaching them to embrace, rather than be ashamed of, their wild new desires.
While the show’s visuals and situations can sometimes seem hyperbolic and explicit to the point of being unnecessary (I definitely wasn’t expecting to see an animated, prepubescent penis within the first few minutes of episode one), the story successfully approaches usually taboo topics like the hormonal highs and sometimes downright disgusting lows of puberty and the early teenage years in a comedic and often empathetic way.
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