‘Big Mouth’ Packs Up Its Dildos and Diagrams Just When We Need Them Most
Efforts by Republicans at all levels of government to make the populace more ignorant are, unfortunately, going great. As of 2023, 28 percent of American adults ranked at the lowest levels of literacy. Compared to the last decade, American students’ math scores have dropped steeply in an international test. And as if chipping away at the teaching of basic skills wasn’t enough, officials in Republican-led states have been on the march against sex education for years. Soon, you might not even be able to do your own independent study on the subject: the latest page from the Project 2025 playbook is a Republican bill to ban all pornography in the U.S. In our current era of prudishness, Netflix’s Big Mouth feels like a precious resource we should protect at all costs.
The penultimate season ended on such a tease — the first day of high school is where the show was leaving us?!?! — that the episode had to make sure we knew they knew by having Andrew (John Mulaney) comment on it: “I gotta wait a full fucking year to find out about this shit? Oh, fuck you. This is bullshit. Do not start counting down to a different show. Do not start counting down to Ozark.”
So there are plenty of cliffhangers to pay off. Jessi (Jessi Klein) is going to see how her life is going to change now that she’s chosen to hang out with the stoners, including whether she’s going to get anything going with the adorable “Camus Boy.” Missy (Ayo Edebiri) will soon find out whether her dread of high school, incarnated as a Venom-esque black ooze (Patrick Page), is worse than getting homeschooled. And Nick (Nick Kroll) is going to have to resolve his platonic love with Andrew and the other Andrew (Zach Woods) from the fancy private school Nick’s parents have sent him to. How fancy, you ask? The school mascot is the Fighting Niçoise Salads.
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“Sure, but what about all the sex stuff?!” Okay, PERV. …Just kidding, that’s the kind of sex-negative talk that will simply never be endorsed on Big Mouth. Matthew (Andrew Rannells) dips a toe into using Snapchat as a hookup app, but decides that first he needs to try a sex act on someone he trusts not to judge him too harshly. Jay (Jason Mantzoukas) and Lola (Kroll) decide to try out a new level in their friendship. “Camus Boy” gets a name — Camden (Whitmer Thomas, also on screens this week in Friendship) — and an opportunity to help Jessi take a test run at enthusiastic consent.
From the start, one of the show’s buzzier elements — along with the alt-comedy superstars in its voice cast — is the way it has personified aspects not just of puberty, but of the human experience. The characters’ assigned Hormone Monsters are only the beginning. As the show has gone on, we’ve also met the Shame Wizard (David Thewlis), the Depression Kitty (initially Jean Smart, though it sounds like she’s been recast for the final season), Tito the Anxiety Mosquito (Maria Bamford) and the Menopause Banshee (Carol Kane). It’s not all bad: Hate Worms turn into Love Bugs, and the Gratitoad (Zach Galifianakis) injects some positivity; personified body parts like Jessi’s vagina (Kristen Wiig) and Nick’s pubic hairs (Jack McBrayer and Craig Robinson) show up to affirm the kids they belong to that they’re normal.
But as grabby as these figures can be, the show’s true magic is how its wildest flights of animated fancy spin out from human-scale concerns, and that remains true in its final season. Stipulating that it’s possible my response is influenced by my experience as a former girl, I think the girls get the best and deepest stories in the final season. Missy’s successful climb from an extremely public humiliation to a position of influence in her Robotics Club is thrilling. Jessi’s use of weed, and her evolving feelings about what it adds or subtracts to her life, are portrayed in a measured tone that another era’s very special sitcom episodes about “gateway drugs” were too reactionary to attempt. Even Lola is forced to confront the possibility that other people experience emotions that her actions affect. I don’t think we previously knew for sure that Lola might be on the sociopath spectrum, but at least there’s some indication that she’s interested in working on that. The authorities don’t permit sex ed teacher Ms. Dunn (Natasha Lyonne) to give a proper lesson on enthusiastic consent, but at least she gets to put the class in a “magic duck boat” for an up-close lesson on internal anatomy and the physical changes that take place during puberty before they haul her away.
The season’s penultimate episode is an anthology of sorts: Hormone Monsters Connie and Maury (Maya Rudolph and Kroll) explain that a lot of people say the show’s like the sex ed classes they never had, so this episode is devoted to answering questions from their fans, like “What happens at the gynecologist?” (aka “the downstairs dentist”) and “Is it possible to suck your own dick?” (not even in a Looney Tunes spoof — sorry, Andrew). Some comedy shows get showered with so much praise for addressing somewhat elevated ideas that smugness ends up infecting the final product; we may call this The Good Place Effect. What this special episode particularly reminds us is that Big Mouth always managed to be important without being self-important. It’s hard to say goodbye knowing we as a culture have never needed it more.
