‘Big Mouth’: Is There a Secret Meaning Behind the Kids Switching Hormone Monsters?
Hormones play a big part in children going through puberty. Big Mouth depicts that through hormone monsters and monstresses getting assigned to a child during this awkward time.
The creatures differ when it comes to age, appearances, and gender. Some of the kids on the Netflix show had their monsters switched in previous seasons. Is there a meaning behind this?
Nick Kroll, Jason Mantzoukas, and Jessi Klein were at the press conference for Big Mouth at New York Comic Con on Oct. 3. This is Kroll’s answer to that and more to know about season 3.
Nick Birch got new hormone monsters last season
Nick Birch started out with Ricky being his hormone monster. Ricky was very old and Nick wasn’t thrilled with him at first.
This changed in season 2 when Ricky was replaced with Tyler (John Gemberling), then Connie (Maya Rudolph), who previously was Jessi (Jessi Klein)’s hormone monstress.
It seemed like an interesting change given their different genders. However, we have learned that doesn’t really matter in this universe. Kroll talked about the meaning behind this.
It shows that hormones aren’t entirely masculine or feminine
“I felt a bit at that point and really throughout my life, which is that your hormones aren’t necessarily entirely masculine or feminine,” explained the show creator. He said this season Nick will be pulled different ways because of this and current events.
“And I think really this season was the first season we wrote after Me Too took hold. And so a lot of the season is the kids struggling with living in a post Me Too world where women and girls or are fed up and angry and men are trying to understand how to deal with their masculinity.”
He continued, “Nick I think finds himself somewhere in between because he has a female hormone monster that he is trying to navigate where he fits inside of all of that.”
Season 3 will have a musical episode based on ‘Disclosure’
The theme of gender continues in this third season and the topic of sexual harassment. Kroll talked about how there is a musical episode showing that.
“We wanted to do a musical a kid’s musical episode and we thought like what would it be a funny object for it,” said Kroll. “And I was like well the bad example would be like Disclosure and then it kind of stuck.”
Disclosure is a movie starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore that was released in 1994. Moore plays a woman named Meredith who takes advantage of her male employee. She then makes a false claim that he sexually harassed her.
“It worked well because Disclosure is this story about women weaponizing sexual harassment and really white upper middle class male paranoia,” said Kroll.
He later added the musical was “our way into talking about sexual harassment and everything that has the conversation that the country and the world has been having around that area.“
Big Mouth fans can hear Kroll and Mantzoukas’ opinions about the actual movie Disclosure now on the podcast, How Did This Get Made? “We did an episode dedicated to the movie Disclosure that allowed us to talk about it and then also talk about the episode of Big Mouth this season,” said Mantzoukas.
The third season of Big Mouth is now available on Netflix.
