Kinky hippos, foul-mouthed crabs and heaps of heart: A musical drama from the makers of Big Mouth | Television

MeIn the first minute of the Netflix drama Mating Season, a bear wakes up, urinates uncontrollably in its den, stumbles outside, watches two horned raccoons roll over, then rolls around in a pit of shame. At this point, it goes without saying that Mating Season is the spiritual successor to the magical, magical comedy. Big Mouthit’s completely in the DNA of the show.

And at this point, you will already know if this show is for you or not. Because Big Mouth, as it was called, blew the audience away like nothing else. The show was about the dangers of puberty and sexual awakening, and it was very precisely tailored to its target audience of hormone-battered teenage boys. You could argue that it did this very accurately, because his childhood was so constantly nuclear that many people found themselves alienated from all sex and profanity.

Honestly, it was their loss. Once you get past all the annoying parts, Big Mouth might just be one of the sweetest shows on television. Young men are a confusing mixture of complete confidence and extreme restlessness, and Big Mouth captured both in equal measure. If you are a certain type of man of a certain age, it was given that you might see yourself as one of the characters.

This is a little difficult to achieve with Mating Season, however, because here all the characters are animals, and sex is not so much fun as the key to survival. Josh, the aforementioned bear (voiced by Zach Woods), has realized that it’s mating season. After sleeping for a long time, he was horrified to hear that his friend had escaped with a large alpha bear. As such, he cannot decide whether to – as he says – “give myself over to the nakedness,” or get back on the horse. Which according to the show is not a metaphor.

Above all, this is the story of the newly dumped. In its 10 episodes, Mating Season follows Josh as he hits different shows, tries out spiritually inadequate sex and comes to realize that they are the same. But, like Big Mouth, the backbone of the show is actually a repository for many other amazing things.

Much of this is carried over by co-creator Nick Kroll, a very reliable raccoon. This character gives Kroll plenty of room to do what he does best, which is yelling as loud as he can, but it also serves an important role. The worst thing about being young and single is the idea that everyone else has the sex of their life, and Kroll’s raccoon is a living proof of that.

However, again, all of the characters are naturally correct animals – governed by impulses very different from humans. And that means there’s less disconnect between the characters and the audience than the creators expected.

There is, for example, a whole story about the consecutive tie (when the bulbus glandis of the male swells, while the muscles of the female’s nipples work around, closing together), while much is made of the ritual of the hippopotamus spraying each other with excrement. No shame, obviously, but the show is very much in line with animal behavior – “Put your butt lumps all over my goddamn belly!” screams Kroll’s character in the middle of the sequence – that it won’t be a story about the growth of sexuality and a lesson about ‘hey, aren’t animals dangerous?’.

Another thing that Mating Season does – and I’ll let you decide if this is good or not – is take advantage of the Disneyfication of the characters. Bears and deer and raccoons were all well-dressed characters in classic Disney movies of yesteryear. When you see them, you can’t help but think of Bambi or Baloo the bear, or Meeko from Pocahontas, so it’s amazing when they all start to flirt and stop.

To make this clear, the 1941 Disney short The Little Whirlwind has a scene where Mickey Mouse is so enamored by the smell of freshly baked cake that the smell picks him up and floats him. There’s a variation on the trope here, a lone human can float up an animal’s butt, muttering “Nummy nummy nummy”.

However, once you get past that, we’re left with another dirty sex comedy that has more heart than anyone else. If it settles and matures, like Big Mouth did, we could have something special on our hands.