Big Mouth

I’ve watched another animation on Netflix.  It’s not big, but… it is clever.  In fact, it’s actually called Big Mouth, so parts of it are, in fact, big as well.  So, to conclude, it is both big and clever.  And I watched it.  And here you are, reading about it.  Right, that’s the awkward opening passages out of the way, so let’s plough on with making sarcastic remarks about it, all while feeling a little guilty that there’s a remote chance its creators might one day read this and think me a prick for commenting on it.  I’ve frankly no right.  I’ve just counted up how many shows of my own I have created, and the answer is: none.  Also, there’s no chance of them ever reading this self-indulgent nonsense, so let’s agree that I’ve got nothing to lose.

The good news is that Big Mouth is a good time.  You might have seen it in your various Netflix menus: crudely drawn children and hairy, horned monsters.  What a combination.  But it’s not quite the pervy mess it sounds like (or is it?).  Big Mouth is all about puberty and adolescence.  Set in an American middle school, our focus is a bunch of young teens at various stages along the hormonal journey, some on the lookout for that first hallowed pubes, others coping with bumfluff taches and uncontrollable, confusing sexual urges.  Chaperoning them on this voyage of development is an array of adults who should know better, but don’t.

Cast your mind back to your schooldays.  Male classmates were divided into the early adopters, sporting their adult bodies at the age of 12 and buying everyone alcohol as a result, and the Peter Pans, trapped in an eternal babylike state of knee-highness and squeaking to communicate.  I remember after PE in year 7 when the whole class, rather than getting changed back into our uniform, got distracted by comparing who had the most impressive armpit hair development – we might as well have ranked ourselves in order of undergrowth.  The advanced puberteers derided the non-starters, while the hormonally under-resourced eyed their hirsute brethren with suspicion.  It’s in this pickling predicament that our two Big Mouth heroes find themselves, with Andrew Glouberman’s precocious development exceeded only by Nick Birch’s desperate desire to harvest his own crop of precious pubes.

I’ll stop myself here as I’m painfully aware that this is a fairly graphic way to talk about underage bodies.  Rest assured, this pales in comparison to how this process is handled in the show: what images my words can’t bring to life are rendered in colourful animation across your screens.  If you’re prudish or easily offended, don’t watch (don’t read this, either).  And if you think my intentions are sinister (which they’re not) just wait till you come across the main conceit of Big Mouth: the hormone monsters.  To represent the bad influences these biological changes have on behaviour, a hairy, horned accomplice appears in the lives of these children to guide them through their new urges.  And by guide, I mean persuade them to give in so that we as the viewer can enjoy the most extreme and entertaining circumstances.  It’s like an imaginary friend, only they’re not telling you to burn things, just to hump them.

If you think it’s just the boys getting the pubescent scrutiny, I can assure you that girls come in for the same treatment.  Whether that’s Missy pleasuring herself with her plush toy during a school camp out, or Jessi’s first period coming on a day she chose to wear white shorts, everyone can enjoy getting offended here.  There’s a certain shared experience with the characters’ disastrous attempts to make sense of their changing bodies, especially when you factor in the cluenessness of the parents to deal with any of it.  Nick’s dad’s wholly inappropriate responses are beyond slimey (pretending to be a pussy), while Jay’s mum (or mom, rather) couldn’t be less interested in any of her boys, let alone the youngest – especially when there is wine to focus on – leaving him to forge relationships with household cushioning.  The teachers are even worse, with a special mention going to Coach Steve.  At first, this individual annoys with his constant appearances, but he becomes a well-placed foil to so many of the storylines that he inevitably endears himself.

Let’s therefore laugh at our obsession with sex by revisiting our first encounters with its mysteries through the eyes of middle schoolers and their hormone monsters.  Big Mouth is as comfortable being intelligent with thought provocation as it is making vagina jokes (with the voice of Kristen Wiig as a really friendly vagina).  There’s a song in every episode and the voice talent is stellar, with Maya Rudolph unrecognisable as Connie the hormone monster, but Andrew Rannells (often the best thing in Girls, apart from the girls) entirely recognisable as the quick-witted Matthew.  With its imaginative and subversive approach (and strokes of genius, such as illustrating minds blown by having characters’ heads literally explode), Big Mouth throws open our societal inconsistencies in the treatment of so many issues, as well as recognising hilariously that we are all just about managing to keep on top of our hormones, even as adults.  How big and clever is that?

Summer Heights High

After all these stupid posts, I’ve just realised something.  I’ve only ever written about shows produced in the UK or the US.  It’s as if nowhere else in the world can make any good boxsets.  But, there’s a whole international body of content out there.  Don’t think I won’t sit through something just because it’s got subtitles.  I bloody will.  And let’s not forget the other countries that speak English.  To be fair, everywhere does, if you shout loud enough.  So which proud nation will join the two Uniteds?  Step forward, Australia.  It couldn’t be further away, but its culture and Great Britain’s are like two old friends who hardly ever see each other, but, whenever they do, they pick up right where they left off.  If you don’t have any Australians in your life, get some now.  I can highly recommend them.  In the time it takes me to agonise at the weekend over the fat content of hummus in Sainsbury’s, your average Australian has visited three different European cities and attended an orphans’ event somewhere in London.  They are having too much fun to need to go to bed at all.  They willingly leave behind the glorious weather and space of their homeland, just so disgruntled Brits can shove them on the Tube before they head out into the drizzle, and yet they still appear to have the best time.  So, there they are, coming over here and being awesome.  And they’ve only gone and brought a banging comedy with them.

Summer Heights High’s brilliance comes from its credibility.  It’s a mockumentary, like The Office, so we can’t help but feel it’s a real place of education.  The school is in another country, so our lack of knowledge about schools there allows us to stifle our scepticism even more.  Without a closer frame of reference, you’ll swallow anything; admit it.  For all you know, every Australian school really is like this.  But, most importantly, Summer Heights High’s believability comes from the performances.  Sure, most of the supporting cast seem like innocent passers-by who’ve had scripts thrust into their hands and still don’t know how they ended up in front of a camera.  But that doesn’t matter.  It just pulls the focus even more sharply onto the show’s creator, writer and star.

It’s not for me to be sycophantic (though I have gone around declaring national treasures willy nilly – see the posts on Chewing Gum and Nighty Night) but let’s give Chris Lilley a big hand.  This is a fully-grown man whose portrayal of a year 11 girl is the most realistic portrayal of a year 11 girl anyone anywhere has ever seen, done or imagined.  I didn’t want to resort to exaggeration, but I’ve been driven to it simply by the way Chris Lilley looks in a school dress.  On that note, let’s examine the three main characters of Summer Heights High, and bask in these comic creations.

Ja’mie King

Note the pronunciation, with the emphasis on the second syllable.  Take one Chris Lilley, add a wig, some pop socks and one of those summer dresses that schoolgirls wear in hot weather, and you’ve got yourself every teenage girl tantrum ever.  Ja’mie offers a unique perspective on the school, as she is on an exchange from her beloved private academy, experiencing the harsh realities of a public education for the first time.  Self-assured to a fault, she rates herself as the smartest non-Asian in year 11 (but she finds disabled people so cool) and doesn’t let anything stand in her way when it comes to being the most popular girl in her new year group (because she doesn’t want to look slut, she wants to look semi-slut, and that’s fair enough).  You’ll be shocked by her manipulative approach to relationships, and she actually appears in a previous Chris Lilley show, We Can Be Heroes: Finding The Australian Of The Year, exemplifying this perfectly by trying to get the African school boys she sponsors for charity to send her dick pics.

Jonah Takalua

I’ve always struggled with this character the most.  He’s basically your naughty lad at school, learning to use inappropriate humour to offend teachers while not being clever enough to carry it off.  His main feature, however, is being Tongan, which isn’t a place lots of Brits come from (so Tongans, please come to London in large numbers so you can join in with everyone being welcome here, despite the fact our mums and dads voted for Brexit) so I’ve had to infer that this seems to signify his status as part of a social underclass.  He can be charming and sensitive, so there is depth to this character, but I secretly always willed his bits to be over, and these days, the sensitivities about dressing up as another racial group mean that he is a bit dated as a concept.

Mr G

But two out of three ain’t bad.  Along with Ja’mie, Mr G is a hoot, everyone.  With a similar level of self-interest, Mr G is the camp drama teacher who believes no subject holds more value than Performing Arts, simply because that’s what he teaches.  He’s happiest at the centre of attention, and the scene where he explains that he often just spends whole lessons performing to the kids has me nearly wetting myself every time I watch it.  He defines the quotable comic creation, with his sexual meowing in the sequence just mentioned shattering the peace and reverence of a many a temple visit during a recent trip to Japan.  Mr G is perfectly at ease with exploiting tragedy for personal gain, turning a student’s death from a drug overdose into a school musical (one of the wow shows, as opposed to the traditionals that have to be endured every second year).

Each of the eight episodes in the single series works back and forth and back again among these three terrible people, but you’ll really only be able to love them.  Originally shown on BBC Three in the UK, you’ll be able to join the Summer Heights High-quoting community once you have tracked the programme down and consumed it in full.  And you should.  If you’re unlucky enough to lack Australians in your daily life, this will go some way to helping you get your RDA of vitamin Oz.  Also, carry on reading this blog each week, as I’ve now covered off three different countries’ telly programmes, demonstrating the wokeness of Just One More Episode.