You may have noticed from my random reviews that my favorite thing to do is the Netflix roulette: Close my eyes, move my mouse around the Netflix home screen, and let fate decide what my next binge-watch will be. I did this a mere 48 hours ago, and once I opened my eyes, the Netflix original Big Mouth was open on my screen. I had heard various comments from friends about this show (basically all of them were positive), so I pressed play.
Let me give you a one-word summary of Big Mouth: Puberty. That’s what this show is all about. The cartoon stars a pair of best friends, Nick and Andrew, who are struggling through their middle school years, and meeting their “hormone monsters” along the way. While it can make you uncomfortable at times with its raunchy jokes, and hyper-realistic penises (Yes. Seriously), it is one of the funniest shows I have seen in a long time. It’s very similar to Family Guy in terms of comedy and appropriateness. The animations are fantastic, but extremely graphic, much like the jokes. However, everything the show discusses is accurate to the way we work as humans.
My favorite part of the entire series are the Hormone Monsters. They appear to the children once they hit puberty. Only the kid who they belong to can see them, and they act as the children’s hilarious conscience. The things they do and say are so ridiculous that it makes you think…maybe we really are like those monsters at that time of our life. It’s a great human satire. The only negative comment I have about the show is that I sometimes feel like the voice actors are a bit off. The main character, Nick, has an extremely unsettling deep voice for the character’s personality. I wish it were a bit lighter considering the main plot is about Nick wishing he would hit puberty.
Overall, Big Mouth is amazing. Good comedy, fresh plot, great characters. A lot of people have issues with shows like Family Guy and Rick and Morty in terms of appropriateness, but that’s not what the show is about. The brilliance of the show is that their extreme, brutally honest satire about human nature almost needs to be inappropriate in order for it to work. I was extremely disappointed when I realized there was only 10 episodes… I wanted more! There is, however, a season 2 on the way, so stay tuned, my friends!