This show is a lot, I know, and for those who don’t know what “Big Mouth” is, it’s the dirty version of a coming-of-age movie. For 5 seasons, we have followed Andrew, Nick, Jessi, Jay, Missy, Matthew and Lola and their hormone monsters, Maury, Connie and Rick as they tackle puberty and other related issues.
Season 5 follows their last year in middle school and it introduces new monsters: the lovebug and the hate worm. “Big Mouth” uses monsters to illustrate the different feelings people have like the Shame Wizard, the Depression Kitty, the Anxiety Mosquito and the Gratitoad. Personally, this personification for emotions is my favorite part about the show because every monster is funny and complex in their own way. They each play a part in the character’s personality and some monsters have a bigger influence than others.
In season 1, Nick and Jessi made out at the school dance, but during this season, Nick realizes that he is in love with her which makes her his first love. Love is in the air which introduces a new concept to the “Big Mouth” realm: human resources. (If you really like this show, Netflix announced that they’re making a spinoff show based on this concept called “Human Resources”). Due to the new lovers, human resources send new monsters to the kids.
Walter the lovebug is assigned to Nick who makes him create grand gestures and irrational actions to gain her attention and love. This, however, does not bode well because Jessi’s lovebug, Sonya does not feel the same way and instead, finds herself attracted to her new best friend, Ali. Jay finds himself in a complex love triangle with Matthew and Lola, and Andrew surprisingly was a non-problematic character during the whole season (despite the incident during no nut November on Nick’s couch).
After Jessi tells the whole school that Nick doesn’t make her horny, Walter turns into a hate worm who makes Nick angry and deceitful. Sonya makes Jessi blind due to her love for Ali, and she disses Missy who accumulates her own hate worm. Nick and Missy join forces against Jessi, Matthew dumps his boyfriend for Jay, Jessi gets too shy to tell Ali her feelings, Lola realizes that she loves Jay, and the whole season boils down to one anticlimactic New Year’s party at the Devin’s.
This season is definitely the most vulgar and inappropriate out of all of them, and it totally embodies the typical “Big Mouth” shock and awe effect. There were some scenes that I personally thought were more erotic than they needed to be, but I thought that the overall message was effective. Although “Big Mouth” is very sexual and in-your-face, I believe that it portrays adolescence in it’s most vulnerable and unfiltered form.