Big Mouth Season Two
Big Mouth is back with a new season, and it’s more unsettling than ever. Picking up with our favorite Westchester friends where we left them, the new season dives right back into the trials of the natural disaster that is puberty — making us relive it all over again, and reminding us to count our blessings that it’s over. Nick is small and insecure about it, Andrew is big and insecure about it, Jessy’s parents are getting divorced so she’s a mess, and Missy’s dealing with a bout of self-hatred. The season is a whirlwind of bodies, sexual exploration, relationships, insecurity, self-aware humor, absurdity, and, on top of all that, it’s disgusting. It’s just like Season 1, but it’s better.
This season was marked by several new changes. If you liked Coach Steve, congratulations, there’s more of him than you ever could have imagined. If you think body-positivity and feminist messaging are cool and important for the show to deal with it, you’re in luck, they’ve made a larger effort to do so. If you thought puberty wasn’t painful enough, don’t worry, they’ve introduced a new monster, and his name is the Shame Wizard. Also, there’s a new girl in town and she has boobs which the straight boys love but the girls hate because it makes them insecure and also, why not, she’s Latina. Her name is Gina and the politics of her representation are dubious, but okay, I like Gina Rodriguez, I’ll take it.
It’s hard to know what exactly makes the show so addicting. With its content veering into uncomfortable sexual terrain, getting into the show in the first place took a concerted effort. The show is unabashedly dirty. It would be hard to overstate the role of masturbation in the show: Season 1 opens with Andrew masturbating in the same room as a sleeping Nick, and in Season 2, it’s not unlikely that at least one character masturbates an episode (I mean, I don’t know the numbers here, but I’m not going to count, you pervert). That said, there’s a vulnerability in the way sexual exploration is portrayed in the show; to the characters, it’s scary, shameful, exciting, and confusing — the truly contradictory package of emotions that accompanies puberty. Yet the experience of bearing witness to the private self-discoveries of these fictional cartoon characters can feel invasive, so much so that the very act of watching can be painful (like, “why am I watching all these children masturbating?”). There’s something unnerving and even saddening about it all, especially because the characters and their feelings are portrayed with the utmost sensitivity.
And yet, through all the second-hand embarrassment, you can’t take your eyes off the screen. The show is addictive, and watching it awakens a sickening pleasure that is deeply implicating. You were these kids, all of them, and watching their escapades is both incriminating because you did the same things and cathartic because you didn’t realize but you were still worried about it but the show reminds you it’s normal. You, like Jay, fucked a sentient pillow and now you can sleep better knowing that Nick Kroll did too. Okay, maybe you didn’t do that exactly, but you definitely did something like it and now you’re thinking about it and you feel weird because there’s probably only like one person that knows you did that and they reacted poorly when you told them which is why they’re the only person that knows and why you still feel bad about it now. Big Mouth reminds you that it’s fine, that kids do weird stuff, and we all figure it out.
In the first season, the representation of sexual exploration sometimes tends towards an over-emphasis of maleness. This comedy often privileges penises, jizz, and heterosexual horniness as the most interesting and/or ‘funny’ sites of puberty, failing to dig deep and provide nuanced humor that goes beyond male-centric experiences of adolescence. Season 2, however, begins to flesh out a more realistic woman’s perspective, dealing with female masturbation, self-image, body-positivity, and slut-shaming.
Also, Lola.
