‘Big Mouth’ Season 4 Is Less Raunchy and More Introspective

Most people regurgitate the same advice about middle school: growing up is hard. For the past three seasons Big Mouth has chronicled in deeply disturbing detail all the ways that statement is physically true, from masturbation-obsessed preteens and boys mourning lost pubes, to flirting with your cousin and fretting over periods. But Season 4 is the first time the series has committed to chronicling the internal truth behind that age-old advice. Growing up is hard; not just physically, but also emotionally and mentally.

Whenever Big Mouth has embodied mental health struggles it’s been at its best. David Thewlis haunted Season 2 as the Shame Wizard, a being who takes any unsavory action and magnifies it to be as internally devastating as possible. Jean Smart did the same in Season 3 with her Depression Kitty, a giant cat who convinced the smart and driven Jessi (Jessi Klein) that it was easier to give up than try. These moments were as insightful and painfully funny as Big Mouth so often is, brilliantly balancing the unspoken truth of how powerful these emotions are with their silly cartoon counterparts. But as excellent as they were, they were often few and far between.

On that front, Season 4 completely flips the script. The masturbation, period, and Hormone Monster jokes are still there, and they’re still raunchy, but for once it’s the mental health of these budding adults that takes center stage. What’s especially impressive is that each kid’s internal struggle is drastically different than the next.

As Jessi has to deal with the fallout of her parents’ divorce and moving to an academically challenging school, she’s followed by the Depression Kitty and Tito the Anxiety Mosquito (Maria Bamford), a lethal duo who convince her to doubt herself. For Andrew (John Mulaney) his mental health woes become an amplified sense of dread that he could die at any moment, a fear instilled in him by his constantly anxious parents. Matthew (Andrew Rannells) battles with the fear that if he comes out it will cost him his family. And Nick (Nick Kroll) takes the most nuclear option of everyone. As dark thoughts spiral in his head, he chooses to completely shut down.

The most interesting part of these varied responses is that they all come from roughly the same emotional triggers. As each character is pestered by Tito and to a lesser degree the Depression Kitty and the Shame Wizard, they handle their ribbing and self-doubt in drastically different ways. It’s rare to see mental illness portrayed this way — as something that affects us all yet convinces us we’re alone. That’s what depression, anxiety, and shame do, they cruelly divide us. It’s miraculous that any show, let alone an animated one that once drowned Florida in a sinkhole, has managed to capture this duality.

As smart as all these arcs are, it’s Missy’s storyline that deserves the most praise. Big Mouth’s resident horny spazz has long deserved a meatier story than her Nathan Fillion daydreams, and in this season she finally gets one as she explores her racial identity. As Missy learns from her cousins what it means to be black while her parents tell her that race shouldn’t matter, you watch Missy literally tearing herself apart throughout this entire season. It’s heartbreaking to see a character as intrinsically lovely as Missy suffer, especially in this complex, emotionally draining way that has no “right” answer. So when Jenny Slate finally hands over the role to Ayo Edebiri in the penultimate episode, it’s a moment of well-earned relief.

Of course, this is Big Mouth we’re talking about. There are still plenty of gruesome jokes to make you nearly gag, like a platoon of tampon surfers and a teenage boy’s penis that has a Long Island accent for some reason. But this time around the changes everyone is going through are a bit more abstract, for the better.

All episodes of Big Mouth Season 4 premiere on Netflix Friday, December 4 at 3/2c a.m.

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