Big Mouth

This weekend, I viewed Big Mouth. Before watching it, I wasn’t expecting to be impressed at all. After watching the first episode of season one, I was pleasantly surprised, though unsure if the surprise was pleasant enough for me to come back for the second episode. The show introduces a topic that people tend to avoid discussing, puberty, and presents the matter in a medium that many people enjoy. Though the concept isn’t brilliant by any means, it still is something fresh and the execution was very well done. This particular Netflix original is a little awkward and difficult to watch, but very clever and endearing, identically comparable to puberty itself.

Big Mouth is a show about a group of characters going through puberty, judging from the content of the first episode and the titles of the other episodes. Puberty just isn’t something that people think about very often after completing the process, so to see this strange, awkward time reenacted on screen is very interesting. One thing that I was concerned with about this show was the target audience. It definitely is not a show for adolescents going through puberty though I could see how a very well grounded adolescent in that stage could benefit from such a show. I suppose that the show is for people around my age at the time that I’m writing this. Having not been too far removed from those years, I can still remember the common struggles of those times and can laugh at the horror of it all.

I’m assuming that you’re about 30 at the time of reading this blog post. At this juncture, you’re probably noticing that a lot of shows and movies center around being in college or around the age of mid-twenties. This experience that I’m having now while watching this oddly specific show is probably how you feel while watching various shows.

While I was not impressed overall with the show, there were a few things that I can’t deny appeared a stroke of genius. For example, within the first five minutes, the creators effectively established that the characters were going through puberty in multiple ways. First off, the factor that outed the premise was the fact that the main character’s “Hormone Monster” appeared and put him in a compromising situation during class. Even if that particular occurrence had been removed, there were other supporting factors that would tell the audience exactly what we were watching. First off, in a retreat from his friend Nicholas’ parents, Andrew runs into a door frame. While this scene may seem to be a simple thing to look over, the comical genius is the representation of the clumsiness that puberty brings. In the very next scene, Nicholas’ voice hilariously cracks while asking Andrew a question. These two events that happen in succession were the things that made me appreciate the creation of this show so early on. These little details were pure genius.

Big Mouth was more of an entire experience rather than a run-of-the-mill adult animation. I will probably watch another episode or two of the show just for kicks, but this show seems like it would be fun initially and lose its zest and originality later on. But for now, I’ll appreciate the one episode that I’ve seen.