Not my favorite episode, mostly because the gross factor is just a little too high for my tastes - Big Mouth has had plenty of gross-out gags and gross-out plots, but it seems like every plot in this episode included a major gross factor. That said, there was still stuff that I liked (one relationship spoiler.)
It’s the last night of camp for Nick, Andrew, and Jessi. While other kids around them are hooking up, the boys are both having a rough time. Nick, plagued by Anxiety Mosquitoes, desperately tries to turn the summer around for himself at the bonfire talent show, and Andrew is suffering the effects of being a nervous pooer who’s only had public bathrooms for the last month and has been completely unable to go. Back home, Jay and Lola try to go public with their summer fling and are thrown when the other kids think both of them are slumming it with each other.
As I said, there’s just a lot of grossness going on. Chief among these is Andrew’s “groundhogged” talking poop (voiced by Paul Giamatti, by the way – this show, I tell you,) but there’s also a romantic subplot that takes place in the vicinity of the swollen carcass of a dead bird in the woods and Jay and Lola swimming in dank mud water. Everywhere you turn, there’s something gross going on, and it got to be too much for me. Admittedly, I was still able to enjoy some of the humor there. Andrew’s predicament has Maury worried that he’s developing “poop madness” (in which he goes so long without pooping that he becomes “shit for brains,”) and this leads to a great, trippy musical sequence featuring an Alice in Wonderland-style Brown Rabbit. Other, less-gross humor I like: Jay and Lola are hilarious together (I love the ridiculous flirtations, “You look like you just ran the Kentucky Derby in the rain,” “Clop, clop, I’m a little showboater!”), and one of the camp counselors is voiced by John Oliver, which has given the show an excuse to slip in fun Last Week Tonight references when his character is onscreen.
Even though Nick is the only kid who’s seen the Anxiety Mosquitoes so far, you can already tell that anxiety is going to be a major player for plenty of the kids this year. In addition to being an explicit aspect of Nick’s plot in this episode, Andrew’s woes obviously have an anxiety angle as well, and Jay and Lola’s oblivious bliss over their relationship quickly starts to falter when their friends start judging them. As the season goes on, it’ll be interesting to see how anxiety continues to affect the kids and the different ways they’ll react to it.
Something I appreciate is the fact that the show does seem to be moving forward in time, which doesn’t always happen with animated shows. But these first few episodes have taken place over summer vacation, with eighth grade looming around the corner for everyone, and there’s at least one big plot shake-up on the horizon. I like that.
A relatively-light episode for Andrew Rannells, although he gets more than we saw from him in the premiere. Matthew is a supporting character in the Jay/Lola plot, one of the disapproving voices in their relationship. Although he’s mostly just serving a plot function here, I like his morbid enjoyment of Jay and Lola’s horrifying DIY pool party – (paraphrased) “This is officially better than the time I watched Eric Stonestreet fall down a flight of stairs.” I’ve noticed that, so far this season, Matthew’s default setting has been “relishing the madness” rather than “completely over it” (if anything, Aiden’s been more the “over it” one,) which I like. Matthew pretty much always has great dialogue, but it’s usually even better when he’s enjoying himself, and I suppose it’s a good way to split the difference and maintain his bitchy/quippy side while still being a little less mean as a result of his minor arc in season 2.
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