The Book of Rannells: Big Mouth: Season 7, Episode 5 – “Graduation” (2023)

I’m surprised that we’re getting 8^th graduation in the middle of the season, but I suppose it makes sense. If, going by the title of episode 1, we’re going to see the gang start high school in the season finale, it’s reasonable that they’d graduate middle school more mid-season. But a graduation is a very finale-type storyline, so there’s a definite energy in the episode of things coming to an end.

As the Bridgeton kids barrel toward their 8^th grade graduation, everyone is looking both to the past and the future. After discovering that his yearbook superlative is “grossest human,” Andrew is anxious to make amends to everyone for his past pervy behavior and start high school fresh. Nick’s mom, worried that he’s starting to go down a bad road, makes him tour a fancy private school, and Elijah is nervous about telling Missy he got into an all-boys Christian school. Matthew prepares for the last edition of his morning announcements show and is blindsided when Caleb, his cameraman, gets upset with him.

As I said, the graduation setting brings finale vibes to the episode—and not just season finale but series finale. We get recurring talking heads from the main characters as they participate in a graduation video, a “photo” montage from past episodes, and a pervading sense that some of the characters are about to go their separate ways. There’s even a classic “turn out the lights” sitcom-finale trope.

But even though it’s a little weird to get all this in the middle of the season, the episode works well. Predictably, Nick goes on his private school tour with a massive chip on his shoulder but starts to realize it’s not all bad—thanks in part to Danni, a hot girl voiced by Zazie Beetz. The Missy/Elijah stuff is good, though it makes me worry that Elijah isn’t long for this show. (And just when I said it was good to see him integrated into the main cast! Sigh….)

Some choice jokes:

·        In Andrew’s talking head (before he sees his yearbook superlative,) he sums up high school thusly – “I leave here with a vague understanding of photosynthesis and the respect of my peers.”

·        When Jessi’s talking head gets too meta, Caleb tells her off-camera, “Please do not break the fourth wall. We just had it repaired.”

·        Mona calls Missy’s boobs Tia and Tamara – ha!

I wasn’t expecting another plot between Matthew and Caleb after the season premiere, but in retrospect, it makes sense. After episode 1, I remembered that it wasn’t the first time we’ve seen Matthew and Caleb paired up during a field trip plot—they also had quite a bit of screentime together when the kids went to the 9/11museum in season 4. That was interesting to me, but it wasn’t until this episode that I remembered that Caleb films Matthew’s morning announcements show.

It's logical, then, that Matthew and Caleb would wind up together on field trips. Since Matthew is probably the classmate that Caleb knows best, it makes sense to put them together in unfamiliar, possibly overstimulating settings outside of school.

But getting back to this episode, their conflict arises when Caleb discovers Matthew doesn’t plan on continuing his show in high school: “I’ve said all I have to say. I don’t want to overstay my welcome, like The Office after Steve Carrell left.” The prospect of losing this routine, and Matthew’s company, is upsetting to Caleb, which Matthew doesn’t really get. Later in the episode, he gripes to Jessi, “I mean, he wants me to do his thing just to make him happy? What are we, a straight couple?” (lol, Andrew Rannells is the best!)

As with the Matthew-Caleb story in the season premiere, it flirts a bit with After School Special vibes, but I think it ultimately pivots away from that. Once again, it helps that Matthew doesn’t really treat Caleb like “the disabled kid,” getting annoyed when Caleb is short with him and arguing when he thinks Caleb is being unreasonable. The resolution is sweet without being saccharine.

We’ll end on a couple fabulous line readings from Matthew’s show:

·        I just love Rannells’s cheerful delivery on, “It’s unanimous: Andrew’s incredibly gross!”

·        This made me laugh out loud – “Special congratulations for all you children of divorce for being able to get a rare photo with both parents!”

Character Highlight: Padmé Amidala (Star Wars)

*A few Padmé-related spoilers.*

As with a lot of characters and elements from the prequels, my thoughts on Padmé are a little at odds with each other. I think she isn’t as well-served by those films as she could be, even though, in truth, there’s a lot of good that gets overshadowed by some unfortunate choices. And as I’ve said before, The Clone Wars is giving me fonder feelings toward that whole era, which helps further.

We meet Padmé when she’s queen of Naboo, even though we’re not really introduced to her as that queen. Padmé is clever and uses her ornate makeup and hairstyling to make it easy for one of her handmaidens to serve as a decoy. This purpose is twofold. First, there’s a practical protection element here, keeping the queen safer from those who’d do her harm by hiding her in plain sight among the handmaidens while the decoy wears the grand robes and white face paint. And second, it allows her to learn more unvarnished truth. People will say things in the presence of a handmaiden that they won’t say to a queen, and she gets her decoy to “assign” her to accompany Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace.

Because even though the use of a decoy can be a protective measure, that doesn’t mean Padmé shies away from risk. She still finds her way into the thick of things, staying involved and only revealing her true identity to the Jedi when she needs to. When the droid army attacks at the end of The Phantom Menace, she leads the charge to defend her people. Her bravery stays with her when her reign as queen ends and she becomes a senator. After she’s sent away for her safety following an assassination attempt in Attack of the Clones, Padmé convinces Anakin to leave their hideaway when they find out Obi-Wan is in trouble. Consistently, her curiosity, courage, and intelligence serve her well. On The Clone Wars, she regularly balances senatorial diplomacy with clandestine snooping, and she’s good at both.

As I said, these are a lot of good points. However, Padmé’s heroic qualities can be overshadowed by the frustrating and sexist turn of events for her in Revenge of the Sith. After realizing that her secret husband has fully turned to the Dark Side in a pretty horrific and decisive way, she gives birth to twins and immediately dies. And not even dying in childbirth—dying seemingly of a broken heart, having “lost the will to live.” It’s like a more tragic version of the way some fans look at Leia and only think “gold bikini.” Padmé’s smarts, tenacity, and nerves can get washed away by a wave of, “Yeah, but she died of a broken heart.”

But that’s why I enjoy seeing her on The Clone Wars. In the prequel trilogy, Padmé’s story is always ultimately in service of Anakin’s, but in a long-running TV show with frillions of mini-arcs and side quests, we get to see Padmé in all sorts of different contexts: giving impassioned speeches in the Senate, navigating complex and sometimes dangerous diplomatic visits, investigating shady business on the downlow, enjoying secret rendezvous with Anakin, and more. Anakin is one of many characters that she has significant interactions with, so she’s given many more chances to assert herself as her own character, which I appreciate.

Other Doctor Lives: Sex Education: Season 4, Episode 7 (2023)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

For me, the penultimate episode of the series is pretty satisfying. Little strings of plots that have been unwinding all season come to a head in important ways, and the last scenes bring the story home well. I’m looking forward to seeing where we go in the finale.

A mock exam at Cavendish is derailed when the lift breaks down—again. Rather than suck it up once more, Isaac takes matters into his own hands, making a major statement about accessibility at the school. (And little does anyone know, Otis and O were both in the lift when it stalled!) Jean invites Maeve over for dinner, but things get off on the wrong foot when 1) Otis doesn’t turn up (again, no one knows he’s stuck in a lift,) and 2) Maeve arrives right when Jean is in the middle of a blow-up with her sister. Cal struggles with their gender dysphoria, Adam spirals after a serious screw-up at his internship, and Viv has a troubling encounter with Beau.

I’m glad the many access issues at Cavendish, both large and small, finally come back to bite them. It gets a bit heavy-handed at times—there are suddenly far more disabled student extras on campus than we’ve ever seen before—but on the whole, it’s well done. Isaac is finally able to force everyone to hear what he has to say, telling them that instead of worrying about his exams like everyone else, “I’m here wasting my time explaining why accessibility is a big deal, when it should be a given.” And when an administrator tries to downplay the recurring issues with the lift, Aisha speaks up to say that insufficient access for disabled students “[isn’t] a misunderstanding, it’s an afterthought.” Snaps for all these kids!

“X and Y get stuck in an elevator” together is one of the oldest tropes in the book, one the show employed at the start of the season with Aimee and Isaac. Otis and O’s scenes together are interesting—the two have been competing all season, Otis is on the verge of a panic attack, and both have understandable reasons to regard the other as their enemy. But inevitably in these types of scenarios, defenses drop as the hours stretch on, and both characters wind up being honest about things that neither probably ever imagined sharing with the other.

The Jean-Maeve stuff is interesting as well. The episode opens on a flashback to Jean and Joanna’s teen years, which addresses some heavy, formative stuff for them and deeply fuels their argument in the middle of the episode. So when Maeve arrives, Jean is completely off-balance, and Maeve isn’t doing much better herself—she’s just had to pick up her mom’s ashes. But as they muddle through together, without Otis as a buffer, they too find their way toward connection.

For a scattershot of the other plots, I’m glad that Cal has Roman as a sounding board for their struggles, but I’m definitely concerned for them. They’ve been documenting their experiences on testosterone, and in today’s recording, they express how overwhelming their gender dysphoria is and say, “I wish I could just go back to being a kid. I think that was the last time I felt like me.” Viv’s plot, to me, feels like it might have escalated a little too fast, but I suppose that’s a byproduct of having so many different ongoing mini-plots throughout the season; there’s only one episode left in the show, so it’s not like there’s much more time to work with. And while I continue to think the show should’ve done a better job to address Adam’s past history as Eric’s bully, I do like how they’ve explored his feelings about his dad this season and the effect his upbringing had on him. There’s a strong scene between him and Mr. Groff, where Adam has a speech that begins, “I messed up at work today, and the first thing that I thought is, ‘I’m gonna disappoint my dad.’”

Oh, and the episode uses Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” to excellent effect!

Not much Ncuti Gatwa today. No real movement is made on Eric and Otis’s argument in the last episode—there’s one shot of Otis avoiding Eric and another of the boys looking at each other across campus—and only one major scene that addresses his ongoing inner conflict about his relationship with his church. Other than that, we’re pretty light on Eric. Still a couple great moments, though. I love when Eric is getting ready in the morning and tells the picture of Jesus on his bedroom wall, “Stop staring at me. Silly, silly Jesus.” And he’s already stressed about the prospect of taking his mock exam, but he absolutely jumps out of his skin when the fire alarm goes off.