*Spoilers for the end of season 5.*
Now that I’m finished with The Duke of Mount Deer, I’m going to take a break from A Little TLC(w) posts for a while and catch up on The Book of Rannells reviews I’ve stockpiled in the last year. In the meantime, I’ve started watching The New Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, another Tony Leung Ciu-wai TV show from the ‘80s, so I’ll be ready to start posting that once I get through all my Andrew Rannells stuff.
Big Mouth season 6! This show is such chaos, I love it. The season premiere offers up an opening musical number, a sexy Christmas tree, and a subplot for Andrew Rannells/Matthew. We’re off to a good start!
When the kids return to school after all having been snowed in at home with their families, without any outlet, they’re hornier than ever. With all those hormones in the air, they’re looking for somewhere they can get away—Matthew, who’s dating Jay now, is wary of actually bringing a boyfriend home, while Andrew is in desperate need of privacy to Zoom with the out-of-town girl he’s been flirting with. Enter, the hookup house.
There’s some fun stuff here. We reestablish the current state of various relationships, picking things up from the end of season 5 as well as introducing some new shakeups and a new student. I’m always here for horny Missy and her hormone monster Mona, and they’re in rare form drooling over the “mysterious” new boy Elijah. “Where do you think he’s going?” Mona asks as he walks off down the hall. “Probably to fix something with his shirt off,” Missy says.
Andrew’s predicaments are as ridiculous and cringeworthy as ever. The girl he likes, the winkingly-named Bernie Sanders, seems to vibe with his brand of weird, but naturally, the universe conspires against him as he tries to get some virtual alone time with her. His plot includes the terrific line, “That’s it! We can’t trust you with your own penis.” Meanwhile, as everyone around him seems to be dating someone or finding someone, Nick is feeling left out and looks for a means of drawing more action his way.
Plus, there’s a Mel Gibson reference that rivals the Woody Allen joke from season 2. After a Lethal Weapon reference goes over Missy’s head, she says, “Oh, I only know him from his work as a racist and an anti-Semite.” Mona replies, “Well, he used to be an actor, too.”
Like I said, Matthew has his own subplot out of the gate, which is nice. In recent seasons, he’s stuck more to his bitchy Greek chorus role in the early episodes and only gotten actual storylines later on. Maybe it’s a product of being paired with Jay, who’s a more prominent character than he is. The two continue their cute-but-wild energy from the end of season 5, with Matthew literally leaping into Jay’s arms when they come back to school after the snowstorm and Jay later blasting off fireworks that spell out “Boner Boyz.” They’re two characters who definitely don’t fit together logically, but that gives them a fun energy when they play off of each other.
In the opening song, in which all the kids lament the long days stuck inside with their families and go stir-crazy with horniness, Matthew gets the first stanza and a few prominent parts throughout the number. It always amuses me to hear Rannells singing next to the intentionally shaky voices of the other kids, but of course that’s very on brand for Matthew, so it all works. Also, he dances with a stuffed Garfield during the song as he daydreams about making out with Jay—funny and cute.
I will say, though, pairing Matthew with Jay puts him in more of a straight-man role (comedically, not orientation-wise,) reacting to Jay’s antics and mayhem. And Andrew Rannells gives good exasperation/bewilderment. But the show has amply demonstrated his ability to slay a one-liner, and he doesn’t get as much of a chance to do that here. Matthew is actually funniest in this episode when he is in more of his Greek chorus role, doing his morning announcement show. Rannells kills me with his reading of, “Coming up later, we have an exclusive with a student who saw Ms. Benitez at a laundromat.” It’s a basic line, but Rannells sells the hell out of it, and I love the recurring theme of Matthew being fascinated by the thought of one of his teachers being just a person.
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