Monday, October 8, 2018

Netflix's BIG MOUTH: "A [Teen] Show About a Bunch of Kids Masturbating"


The Netflix plot summary for Big Mouth is an understatement: "Teenage friends find their lives upended by the wonders and horrors of puberty in this edgy comedy from real-life pals Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg."

"Edgy" is a clue, but Nick Birch (Nick Kroll) clarified in episode ten of season one that Big Mouth is, "[...] a show about a bunch of kids masturbating."

To which Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) asked, "Isn't that basically just child pornography?"

Maurice the Hormone Monster (Nick Kroll) gasped, "Holy shit. I hope not. I mean maybe if it's animated we can get away with it. Right?"


So, what's so "edgy" about Big Mouth? The edginess comes from masturbating middle schoolers, a 9th grade "blow job machine", and the middle schoolers fixation on sex.

Big Mouth's Wikipedia page states that the Netflix series is: "[...] based on Kroll and Goldberg's tweenage years growing up in Westchester County, New York [...]"


If you have any doubt that Big Mouth is really based on Kroll and Goldberg's tweenage years, Winnifred, of Sexy Baby (2012), shared in "Porn Before Puberty?", an ABC News feature, that when she was in eighth grade, "[..] boys mostly, were watching porn during school [...] during independent reading, they would do that."


Per Wikipedia, Big Mouth is an American adult animated sitcom, which means that the series is "mainly targeted towards adults and older adolescents" With that said, Troy Patterson wrote in a New Yorker review of the series, "The Extreme Puberty of Nick Kroll’s “Big Mouth”": 
"Personally, I find “Big Mouth” a great prod to getting serious about the parental controls on my television. The show itself suggests its own rating, indirectly, when the boys score a copy of a video game titled Hooker Killer: Vatican City, and thrill to note that it is labelled CSMBP: “Child Services Must Be Present.”"

Recently, on my way to the downtown D train, I eyed a new advertisement for Big Mouth, which promoted that season two of the edgy series premiered on October 5.