And we’re back to our regularly-scheduled Big Mouth reviews on The Book of Rannells. This is another solid episode – it features the first big guest star of the season, Gina Rodriguez as Gina, a classmate of the kids, while looking at body insecurity and body positivity.
The whole school is buzzing about Gina’s developing body, with the guys regarding her as a pair of perfect breasts that just transferred to their school (despite Gina being in their class since 1st grade) and the girls putting her down while feeling ashamed about their own bodies. On his sister’s advice, Nick tries the radical idea of talking to Gina and – even more radically, on the advice of the ghost of Duke Ellington – listening to the words she says. Meanwhile, Missy starts to beat herself up over her flat chest.
Like in the last episode with Nick and Andrew, we see again that there’s no “correct” body to have to counteract feelings of insecurity. Missy goes wholeheartedly into criticizing her body here (at one point calling herself a “busted Sméagol,”) but the very-pretty Devin feels inadequate next to Gina, big boobs aren’t much of a help to the overweight Lola, and Gina herself is obviously deeply uncomfortable with all the attention (the boys are bad enough, but the girls aren’t any better – Devin refers to Gina’s “slutty boobs.”)
The episode also features a musical celebration of boobs, bushes, stretchmarks, and more, Nick and Gina both show off killer Coach Steve impressions (with the meta joke of Nick’s being “weirdly good,” since Nick Kroll voices both characters,) and the usual slew of great lines. Here, I especially like Connie backing up Jessi’s icy greeting of, “Hi, Dina,” with “Yes!! Use her name against her!!”
Side note: while the first impression of Gina seems to veer a little into Cool Girl territory – she makes crass jokes and knows ‘90s basketball references (‘cause her brothers watch it, you know!) – I still like her and am prepared to get to know her better. I really like how surprised Nick is to discover that he actually enjoys her as a person.
Our Matthew time is again limited, but Andrew Rannells makes the most of his lines. He uses his morning-announcement show to broadcast “uninformed opinions” from the student body on Gina’s boobs (how is this show possibly still something school-sanctioned and not just a YouTube channel or something?), and I adore his annoyed delivery on clarifying that the the school is being swept by “boob fever, which is not breast cancer.” He’s also still on top of his game when it comes to withering insults about Coach Steve, in which he always seems kind of gobsmacked that this teacher is actually this dumb.
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