For many, ‘Big mouth’ is over from character design: some supposedly ugly big-headed children talking about sex in a very explicit way It is not a tasteful dish for everyone. But those who stayed were able to discover that the series was not what it seemed and narrated the awakening to sexuality of a group of boys and girls without fuss, educating but without neglecting the fun.For those of us who grew up used to educational videos of ‘What’s happening to me?’ and similar trifles, ‘Big mouth’ was a revelation. But six seasons have passed, and the series has evolved… And it’s not clear that it’s for the better.
I’ve going through changes
In its first seasons, ‘Big mouth’ dealt with the lives of thirteen-year-olds and their hormone monsters talking about masturbation, shame, intimacy, or explaining the range of different sexualitiesbut in season 6 it has become something else entirely, which is the same thing about penis cheating or vaginal conditions like toxic relationships, broken families or the fear of being replaced.
It has not been a sudden change, but in this sixth season is when it has been questioned the most ‘Big mouth’ no longer has much to tell except that they jump back in time. In this season, beyond the fabulous episode of the embarrassments related to the vagina (on the street, the best of this batch of episodes), it is about tiptoeing asexuality, the purity test or the importance of religion in the chastity of American teenagers, but more tangentially: the series on the discovery of sexuality in the end he has decided that what interests him most is love and family.
Of course, sex is part of the backbone of the series, but at this point more as a context and background than as a central theme of it. Five years after its premiere, the series has definitively turned emotional, with mixed results. The relationship between Matthew and Jay, and how the second changes little by little denying his reality to impress his partner, is the best managed and solved in a sea of questionable creative decisions: turning Nicky’s father into a violent uncle, Andrew’s toxic long-distance relationship or Lola’s search for identity could have been solved much better if the series had focused instead on living this transition between what it was and what it wants be.
More monsters, less hormones
Although we haven’t advanced much in terms of plot (except for a couple of changes, everything ends more or less as it began), the ‘Big mouth’ team, by leaving the sex more or less aside, has the opportunity to grow the characters and not forget, as they usually do, of what has happened in previous episodes. Although he boasts of his own self-awareness -including the parody of the compilation episodes- the truth is that the series often forgets the current personality of its protagonists or what they have already experienced.
This season hits where it failed before and fails where it hit before always: for example, in episodic characters. The cat of depression, the mosquito of anxiety or Lola’s pubic hairs were great additions in previous years, but it seems as if after ‘Human Resources’ the writers have run out of ideas: here we have an Apple brooch played by Jeff Goldblum (he works, plot doesn’t) or Jessi’s angry genitalia, but they lack charisma. In the end, all the new characters with any importance come from the spin-off.
The voice cast of ‘Big mouth’ is very, very large: it has more than fifty characters that you can introduce at any time, and focus the plot so much on a character as boring as Elijah, who neither contributes jokes nor does he understand why Missy is obsessed with him to the point of promising purity or agreeing not to go beyond holding hands. Bernie is funnier (in part because she’s played by the ever-fabulous Kristen Schaal), but her parting is anticlimactic and painful. About Montel, the son of Connie and Maury, better not to talk. ‘Big mouth’ is still a good series, but it knows how to do it better.
Once more, with feeling
I’m a fan of musical episodes. Whether it’s ‘Scrubs’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or ‘Phineas and Ferb’, with a few songs you already have me on board. And yet, ‘Big mouth’, which this season has real anthems, decides to make the least charismatic and funny musical episode possiblestarring a Lola who eats every minute in which she appears and asked for a complete episode… in which it wasn’t just a walking joke.
It’s not that this season is bad, and it’s still ‘Big mouth’ with all its consequences, but It shows that the team has put much more love into ‘Human Resources’, a series that, in addition to dirty jokes, had a heart, allowed us to explore many more aspects of the human being and showed a new world full of possibilities. For the first time, the Netflix series feels stuck, continually revolving around itself and searching again for its own personality. And it’s a shame.
I am fully aware that this is a serious analysis of a series that devotes an entire episode to talking about a thirteen year old boy accidentally put on a penis trap or in which a hormone monster gives birth from the ass at supersonic speed, but in the end it is ‘Big mouth’ itself that wants to evolve, deal with more personal issues, value family and turn their characters into something more than stereotypes. The problem is that after so long he has forgotten how to love them.