What if all of the deepest desires and shames you experienced during puberty were brought to life in cartoon form? This is the implicit question answered by Netflix’s Big Mouth, the adult animated series created by comedian Nick Kroll and Family Guy writer Andrew Goldberg. Based on their real-life friendship as pubescent boys in Westchester County, New York, Kroll and Goldberg’s show cobbled together an impressive creative team for its first season, which streamed in September 2017. Here’s what we know so far about Big Mouth season 2.
Big Mouth season 2 cast
Just over a year later, Big Mouth season 2 is about to drop on Netflix. Nick Birch (Kroll), Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) and Jessi Klein (Jessi Glaser) are back, along with the other horny kids, unknowning adults and monstrously personified hormones voiced by Maya Rudolph, Jason Mantzoukas, Jordan Peele, Fred Armisen and Jenny Slate. This time, however, the boys and girls struggling to deal with puberty will also have to contend with Gina (Gina Rodriguez) and the Shame Wizard (David Thewlis).
What is Big Mouth season 2 about?
Yeah, on paper Big Mouth sounds like a really weird and slightly inappropriate show.
In execution, it’s still very much both of these things, but the comedic might packed into it by co-creators Kroll, Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett is undeniable. Big Mouth gets so many things right about what it is to grow up as a confused adolescent in the modern era. What’s more, the show doesn’t shy away from some of the gnarlier, more off-putting subjects that a typical television sitcom might avoid for the sake of appeasing censors, advertisers and angry viewers.
This is especially true of Big Mouth season 2, which takes the many shameful elements season one played for comedic purposes and literally transforms them into a new character: Thewlis’ Shame Wizard. Much like Maurice and Connie, the Hormone Monster and Monstress voiced by Kroll and Rudolph, Shame Wizard is an imaginary character whose presence is only felt or witnessed by the children.
Unlike his more hormonal counterparts, whose primary mission is to encourage the adolescents’ more extreme desires, the Shame Wizard does precisely what his name implies. That is to say, he latches onto the deepest, darkest shames the kids encounter in their various pubescent explorations and brands them as unwanted witchcraft, much like the townspeople of Salem many centuries ago.
These somewhat more serious machinations notwithstanding, Big Mouth is a comedy first and foremost. Much like The Simpsons and Family Guy before it, it is an animated series that younger children should definitely not watch. Anyone who has experienced these kinds of growing pains first hand, however, will most likely enjoy both seasons.
Big Mouth season 2 release date
Big Mouth season 2 premieres this Friday, Oct. 5, on Netflix.
