‘Big Mouth’ is Funnier and Angrier in Season 2

How do you top a season of television that featured near child nudity, constant conversations about middle school masturbation, and a head raping joke that’s so vulgar the character making it knows it was too much? That’s the question Big Mouth has to confront in its second season. And as it turns out, Season 2 of Big Mouth isn’t better or worse than the Netflix series’ first season… It’s merely different. But those pointed differences, and the societal anger stewing beneath them will arguably create a bigger buzz than Season 1.

In some ways it feels like Big Mouth has survived a decade of transformation in the mere year since it first debuted. It took shows like The Simpsons and South Park multiple seasons to pivot from absurdist, often gross-out humor to targeted societal takedowns. Big Mouth makes that change almost immediately. This new season features a graphic yet nuanced conversation about women’s bodies that condemns the male gaze in no uncertain terms, an intelligent ode to Planned Parenthood, and a scathing takedown of its own first season flaws. The series is still filthy and still oddly sweet, but now there’s a more defined edge to every dig.

If Season 1 was defined by humanizing the awkwardness of surviving puberty, then Season 2 is colored by anger. Sometimes that anger is targeted at the unhelpful way our society hides essential information about puberty. Coach Steve (Nick Kroll) gets a long-running B-plot that pokes fun at his own sexual ineptitude while mocking America’s deeply flawed sex education practices. Sometimes that anger is directed internally, screaming at the Shame Wizard (David Thewlis) who transforms puberty into a dark thing and haunts this season’s characters. Regardless of where exactly the show has directed that anger, it is always there, replacing much of the wonderment from Season 1 with a sort of bitter exhaustion.

Part of the charms of the show’s first season came from how deftly it could transition between laugh-out-loud funny comedy and believable character evolutions without ever dropping the tone of the show, and that continues in Season 2. The chronically small Nick (Kroll) is still frustrated that he hasn’t fully hit puberty. The awkward Andrew (John Mulaney) is conversely mad about how his hormones are changing him into a monster he doesn’t recognize. The conflicted Jessi (Jessi Klein) finds new ways to act out in the wake of her parents’ divorce, and even the once-confident Missy (Jenny Slate) starts to hate herself. Everyone is mad this season. Even the most difficult emotions this season feel earned and are captured in a way that stays funny.

And this new season is funny. Whereas Big Mouth‘s first season often drifted between random shock humor and its more effective, character-driven through lines, Season 2 leans more on its strengths. Yes, the jokes are still gross, and yes most of the show would be illegal if it was performed with real children. But the end result is also more biting and, as a result, more laugh-out-loud funny than the show used to be.

Big Mouth still wants to be your friend. It still wants to hold the hands of viewers all over the puberty spectrum and reassure us that our bodies are weird and gross, but at least we’re all weird and gross together. But in its second season, Big Mouth seeks to make a bigger, more interesting point. If we all have to go through this hell together, why exactly are we all so ashamed of it?

Season 2 of Big Mouth premieres on Netflix October 5 at midnight PT / 3 a.m. ET.

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