Like I said earlier, it took me more than one episode to realize that Peter Capaldi was in this season of Big Mouth. After watching this one, I was looking on IMDb to see who voiced one of the other characters and was pretty stunned to see Capaldi’s name attached to Seamus—I hadn’t recognized his voice at all!
In this episode, three of the boys are looking to make big moves, as they all detail in song (naturally.) I’d thought Nick was over idealizing his dad’s toxically masculine past, but apparently not—he makes a plan to go to Staten Island to meet his “real man” of a grandpa. Andrew is thrilled when his girlfriend Bernie comes to town for dinner, because, as per the episode title, “Andrew’s gonna touch a boob tonight!” And Jay goes all out for his and Matthew’s one-month anniversary.
Despite the shallow set-up, Andrew’s storyline is pretty good. I love that Bernie is just as eager as he is, and Kristen Schaal’s delivery is great as she wonders when they can “move it upstairs and mammogram each other raw.” But while the night doesn’t go as planned, it’s not the usual disaster of Andrew’s own making. Instead, there’s a lot going on over dinner that, impossible as it may seem, takes precedence over boob-touching, no matter how much he might wish otherwise.
While previous Jay-and-Matthew plots have been from a little more Matthew’s perspective, this one squarely follows Jay. In a way, that’s nice, because we get a little more about how he actually feels about Matthew. As his sex cushions advise him on his anniversary plans, Jay says, “Ooh, I really don’t think he’s a fuck fort kind of guy. He’s, like, super fancy and clean.” It’s been obvious throughout the series that Jay really isn’t used to people caring about him, and that comes out here in his desire to impress Matthew. Also, his reaction to Matthew giving him a present is hilarious.
But as a result, Matthew is again more reactive in the plot, by turns charmed by Jay’s efforts and weirded out by certain developments over the course of the evening. While I always wish for more for him, Andrew Rannells simply does not give bad line readings. I love when Jay exclaims, “Oh my god! Did you get me a gay present?”, and Matthew replies, “Uh, just a regular present.” And as things get increasingly bonkers, his reactions are fantastic. I know that a lot of voice acting these days is all recorded separately, but you can really feel the chemistry, both romantic and comedic, between Rannells and Jay Mantzoukas.
After getting a quick glimpse of him in flashbacks in episode 2, this episode gives us our proper introduction to Nick’s paternal grandpa Seamus—or as Rick puts it, “I can’t believe we’re gonna meet the penis that made your dad!” This show has always beaten the drum in opposition to toxic masculinity, so it’s no surprise that things do not go the way Nick was hoping.
At first, Seamus seems like everything Nick wants, brash and macho and swaggering. But as Nick spends time in his grandpa’s moldering wreck of a home, it isn’t long before 1) he realizes this is not the kind of life he wants for himself and 2) Seamus mocks him cruelly for it. It all gets pretty gross, emotionally as well as physically.
Like I said, I didn’t recognize Peter Capaldi’s voice at all, which was impressive. In my experience, his characters pretty much always sound like him, accent work notwithstanding. The Scottishness is cranked up to eleven here, and he has a haggard quality in his voice, a mean old man running on bluster and spite. Everything we’ve seen so far of this character is horrible, but Capaldi does have a few good line readings in here. I especially liked, “You have a gun? Shoot me in the teat! I won’t feel a thing!” (I swear it makes sense in context,) and, “Well, I’ll be a dad of a bitch.”
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