While not as perfectly-suited to the show as their Valentine’s Day special, this Christmas episode is a lot of fun. The Valentine’s Day special was a super-sized holiday story filled with trademark Big Mouth hilarity and angst, but “A Very Big Mouth Christmas” has more of the feel of an old-fashioned (albeit super-dirty and irreverent) Christmas special, with an “oh, so glad you dropped by my Christmas party” framing device and a collection of holiday-themed shorts.
Maury is hosting a Christmas party that steps out of 2-D into the real world, where he and the other Hormone Monsters are in puppet form. As they wait for other guests to arrive, they snack, get all kinds of wasted, and exuberantly copulate. We also check in on a variety of holiday stories, from Big Mouth’s rendition of the first Christmas, to Andrew wondering what it would be like to be a Christian, to a Scandinavian Christmas horror story. Even Jay’s pitbull Featuring Ludacris gets his own holiday tale!
This is fun. Big Mouth generally does gimmick episodes well, and they have a good time here playing with a variety of Christmas tropes and putting their usual outrageous spin on it. The puppet Hormone Monsters are a delight, and it’s an entertaining way to hold all the animated Christmas stories together.
Of the animated bits, my favorites are probably the first two. The story of the first Christmas, wherein the biblical figures are of course all played by characters from the show, features a bunch of great lines. As Mary, Jessi protests, “Wait, I’m gonna have a baby, but I don’t even get to have sex? Isn’t that like all of the calories, none of the fun?” Meanwhile, Jay, as one of the wise men, enthuses, “This holy baby rules! Anyone wanna, like, wage a war on behalf of it? Kinda feels like we should kill anyone who doesn’t love and worship this baby. Holy war!”
Andrew’s It’s a Wonderful Life-esque fantasy of what his life would be like if he were a Christian is a lot of fun too. Naturally, he’s into it more for the presents than the religion. I love the description of Hanukkah as “an olive-oil-based miracle,” and reimagining the Gloubermans as WASPy Christians is great. I especially love Andrew’s exclamation of, “Holy Gary, mother of Todd, these dumb WASPs bought me a Range Rover!”, to which Maury adds, “And it’s positively filled with guns!”
The other stories range from amusing to all right. I appreciate that some secondary and tertiary characters get in on the action. The Scandinavian twins’ deadpan explanation of the terrifying Santa of their home country is entertaining, and where else but Big Mouth would you find a self-aware pitbull and Santa engaging in a Christmas-themed revenge action film?
Matthew appears in several stories, but for the most part, he’s used very sparingly. An exchange with his little sister about Santa leads into the Featuring Ludacris-Santa story, and he joins some of the other kids in listening to the twins’ horror story. The only time he has more of an actual role is in the story of the first Christmas, where he plays Joseph. His reaction to finding out Mary is pregnant with the Son of God is great: “You mean you want me to be the ‘husband,’ but we don’t have to doing anything except hang out? My parents will love this. I’m in!” Strong line readings from Andrew Rannells as always, even when he doesn’t have as much to do.
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