by Dylan Ferguson–Netflix recently released the much anticipated third season of the Nick Kroll led cartoon, Big Mouth. With this new season came more of the same, more raunchiness and more social commentary.
The season begins in the Spring, where the events of the Valentine’s Day special is still fresh in every character’s minds. For season three, Big Mouth’s main themes include teenage cell phone addiction, exploration of sexual identity, and betrayal amongst close friends.
Some of the commentary on these themes are excellent. In a multi-episode arch, Nick Birch (Nick Kroll) receives a hand-me-down phone from his older sister that becomes sentient. The interesting part of this is that to portray a teenager’s addiction to their phone, the phone is portrayed almost like a girlfriend to Nick. Nick seems to show that the phone is the love of his life, showing how some teenagers become over dependent of their phones.
Other commentaries in the show start out strong, but simply fall flat. To carry over an arch from season two, the show explores more into Jay’s (Jason Mantzoukas) confusion on sexuality. In classic Big Mouth style, sexual identity is explained in a song. The song does an excellent job explaining different sexual identities in a way almost anyone could understand.
That’s where the theme of sexuality loses track. Later in the season, the character Ali (Ali Wong) is introduced as a new pansexual character. She becomes very underutilized as a character and is trivialized by the rest of the cast.
One thing that is bothersome about the new season is the underutilization of key characters. The arguably biggest example of this is fan favorite Coach Steve (Nick Kroll). Up until the last couple of episodes, Coach Steve is shown only in brief cameos in each episode. While the two final episodes of the season do bring him back in a big way, the other eight episodes make him feel like the creators forgot about him.
Overall, hardcore Big Mouth fans have a lot to enjoy with this new season. It may not be as strong as past seasons, but it continues the strong momentum set forth in seasons one and two.
Seasons 1-3 of Big Mouth are available to stream now on Netflix.
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