Four episodes into season 4 and we’ve still seen very little of Matthew, which bums me out. Despite that, though, this is an excellent episode that starts off the new school year with plenty of Big Mouth’s combination of hilarity and pathos (one spoiler for an end-of-season-3 plot.)
Realizing with horror that everyone in their grade already appears to be coupled up, Nick and Andrew decided to scope out the incoming 7th graders for prospective new girlfriends. Seeing the boys with younger girls sends Lola, who was held back in kindergarten, into a tailspin about being “old.” And Jessi has an even rougher start to the 8th grade – she’s moved with her mom into the city, where all the high-achieving girls at her fancy new private school make her feel unsure of herself.
The show is firing on all cylinders with this one. I didn’t twig this until close to the end of the episode, but the 7th grade girls Nick and Andrew try to get with are played by Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle from Pen15 (a show I’ve heard about but admittedly haven’t seen.) There are some good meta jokes at play there, especially in the commentary on both shows being raunchy comedies with tween protagonists (cue a judgmental Maury: “You can be funny without being dirty.”) Also, Andrew is pretty much as obliviously toxic as ever when it comes to girls – I like Nick’s increasing dismay as he listens to Andrew wax about the two of them being “hunters stalking their [7th grade] prey.” Unsurprisingly, Jay and Lola’s related plot is a hoot. I love Jay’s clumsy efforts to make Lola feel better about being a “cougar” and Lola repeatedly teasing the “hilarious” reason she got held back.
Jessi’s storyline is really good too. Middle school girls are often rife with insecurities anyway, but transplant Jessi into a different school in a different city, where the academic track is so much further ahead of her and the girls’ lives seem far beyond her own, and it’s a perfect storm for spiraling out. She’s our next kid to be visited by the Anxiety Mosquito, and as I anticipated last week, it’s cool to see how the kids react differently to this new puberty creature. While Nick constantly tried to run away from the Anxiety Mosquitoes whining in his ear, Jessi immediately starts to nurture hers like a friend, agreeing with everything she says and reinforcing those feelings. Also, the details on some of her new classmates are awesome. I love the girl whose “what I did this summer” share included her foundation saving “women from being turned into glue.” Ha!
It’s glorified Greek chorus Matthew today. Andrew Rannells’s only appearance is during Matthew’s morning-announcements show at school, catching us up on the latest relationship gossip and teasing the “pointless twist” of the school’s new “Masked Principal.” “You have to guess who it is by the end of the year, or we lose all our funding!” I don’t watch The Masked Singer, but it still cracked me up.
I hope we get more Matthew soon. The show can be all over the place when it comes to how much they use his as a character, but Rannells’s delivery is always golden, and whenever they give him more to do than commentary or drive-by barbs, I get excited to see more from him.
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