The Book of Rannells: Big Mouth: Season 2, Episode 10 – “The Department of Puberty” (2018)

Pretty good finale – some great jokes and interesting material for the main cast.  Less so, though, for Matthew, which is disappointing to me.

Nick runs into an issue with his Hormone Monster Tyler, and a careless mistake winds up giving him access to a portal to the Department of Puberty; he, Andrew, and Jessi head through it, getting a glimpse at where the Hormone Monsters come from.  Nick tries to find himself a new Hormone Monster while Jessi is faced with a different possibility.  Back in our world, Jay tries to come to terms with some stuff that went down during the school sleepover.

I enjoy the Department of Puberty, mixing office mundanity with the outrageousness of the Hormone Monsters.  We also get to see some of the creatures responsible for other aspects of growing up, and there are some neat things going on with how certain parts of the mind/personality are represented.  And on Earth, we have a return of the cops from last year’s season finale.  They’ve popped up from time to time this season, and they’re always hilarious to me.

Fun sight gags, like the Shame Wizard’s autographed picture of the “Shame Lady” from Game of Thrones and Maury’s bag of assorted dicks (including one that looks like the Edge from U2!)  Plus, there’s Missy accompanying lines of innuendo with the words “eyebrows, eyebrows” and Connie screaming (re:  Jessi’s mom,) “You’re not the boss of us just ‘cause you’re tall and you’ve got a big-ass purse!”

I think I’ll do a separate spoilery post next week to get into the Matthew stuff more, but while I think the show was attempting to do something more with him earlier in the season, they don’t really stick the landing here.  Disappointingly, the storyline that’s halfway started for him over the last few episodes seems to turn into a jumping-off point for another character’s story.  Matthew is in just one scene here, all but handing off the narrative to someone else.  And while the scene features actual plot instead of Matthew just popping in to deliver a catty remark, and even though it’s a plot that he’s had a part in, the scene isn’t really about him in any meaningful way.  We’re left not really knowing what he thinks about the events of the last few episodes and whether it’ll have any bearing on what the show does with him in season 3.  They could’ve done much better here.