The 11 most disgusting (and heartwarming) moments on Big Mouth

Let’s start on the positive side of the disgusting-to-heartening spectrum: Big Mouth’s musical numbers have been a highlight ever since composer Mark Rivers voiced a tampon singing “Everybody Bleeds.” Often packed with unabashed joy, off-kilter jokes, and genuine pathos, the songs are proof that there are too many feelings involved in growing up to confine them to dialogue. The most uplifting of Rivers’ tunes is “I Love My Body,” sung with full-throated glee by the masterful, Emmy-winning Maya Rudolph as hormone monstress Connie. A body positivity disco anthem for the ages, it celebrates femininity in all its natural forms, and the magic of animation enables Big Mouth to render that body diversity with refreshingly playful frankness. A central theme of this show is the ubiquity of shame—there’s even a Shame Wizard (David Thewlis), a villain for characters to defeat again and again—and Big Mouth is at its best when it demonstrates how to combat it.

The thing about the most viscerally revolting moment on Big Mouth, when Andrew (John Mulaney) gives birth to his blocked-up turds after clenching for weeks at summer camp, is that it has the least to do with puberty of anything on this list. Season four, a series high point, delves into the nuances of anxiety that are all too characteristic of middle school years. So sure, Andrew’s constipation allows the show to explore yet another relatable adolescent experience. But come on, you know the Big Mouth writers dreamed this up by brainstorming the foulest scenario they could possibly depict on Netflix. This writer has embedded a moment from that sequence above, but refuses to watch it out of sheer, traumatic nausea.

In season four’s ninth episode, “Horrority House,” Big Mouth rectified what show creators and voice actor Jenny Slate had come to realize was a mistake: having a non-Black actor voice the nerdy Missy, a Black character. “Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people,” Slate announced, and producers cast Ayo Edebiri as a replacement regular. What makes this offscreen thoughtfulness all the more notable is how the show addressed it onscreen: Big Mouth has gotten increasingly comfortable with meta moments, but never has it seamlessly played with the fourth wall better than the sequence in which Slate’s voice is replaced by Edebiri’s, a climactic resolution of Missy’s ongoing identity issues. As her disparate parts merge—Black, white, nerdy, sexual—Edebiri effectively, and movingly, begins carrying the torch for one of the show’s best characters.

Is it any wonder Andrew dominates a round-up of this show’s most vulgar moments? As evidenced by his self-pleasure ritual (above—NSFW, watch at your own risk), something as innocuous as a tomato can, er, satisfy this firehose of a pubescent boy. Andrew’s father Marty (Richard Kind) may be harsh, but his repeatedly calling his son depraved is 100% accurate. The kid was caught masturbating—sorry, “yoidling” his “doidle”—next to his dead grandfather, for goodness’ sake. It’s a testament to the show’s shocking-but-accurate portrayal of Andrew’s development that such a moment makes sense for the character. And it makes us long for the days of early-season Big Mouth, when Andrew’s, uh, crusty socks were the grossest thing about him.

Matthew (voiced by Andrew Rannells) is a triumph of a character, a peak example of Big Mouth depicting coming-of-age issues that are actually relatable to audiences. Any moment from his journey to come out as openly gay to his parents will warm the heart of anyone who’s ever worried about acceptance and belonging, especially young queer kids seeing themselves onscreen. Andrew’s first kiss is a highlight of his storyline, and there’s a poignant tension around having to choose between his conservative mother and embracing his sexual orientation. But it’s his coming out to his traditionally manly father that ranks among Big Mouth’s most poignant scenes. After much buildup and encouragement from Kroll’s delightfully supportive Maury, Andrew is relieved to find his father’s reaction is the opposite of what he anticipated.

Don’t think we were going to forget Jayzerian Ricflairian “Jay” Bilzerian (Jason Mantzoukas) on a list of depraved Big Mouth moments. His animated pillows aid his journey through puberty as, among other things, a way for this notoriously horny kid (he doesn’t even need a hormone monster, that’s how wild he is) to grapple with his bisexuality. But no offense to anyone who may have explored humping as a pre-teen, they’re mostly used to vaguely nauseating effect. If we had to single out the height of vulgarity in this storyline, it’s Jay attempting to extinguish a pillow fire with his, um, “Jay juice.”

Jessi (Jessi Klein) is a character bound to resonate with any kid who’s dealt with parents divorcing. The upsetting lows of her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Shannon (Jessica Chaffin), are offset by hard-won highs. The best of these is their teary goodbye when Jessi is moving from New York City back to New Jersey to be closer to her father, Greg (Seth Morris), and friends. There’s genuine love and understanding between this mother and daughter, and there’s nothing sweeter than the punctuation of Connie, notoriously anti-Shannon for multiple seasons, joining in on the crying and declaring her a nice mommy.

“Steve, do you ever get lonely?”

“Of course not—I remain lonely!”

There’s no better contender for a Queer Eye makeover—the greatest crossover event in recent TV history—than poor Coach Steve (voiced, of course, by Kroll). Pepperoni nipples notwithstanding, his comedy tends to lean more pitiful than outright disgusting. Not so with the deranged season-two storyline involving the loss of his virginity. Jay’s mom, who is referred to as Jay’s Mom (Heather Lawless) is the lucky lady, and it’s not so much the act of procreation itself as the way Steve talks about it. If anyone ever refers to sex as making “thick in the warm,” just run.

The thing about Nick, one of the lead characters of this show, is that he’s an asshole. No one has cycled through more incompatible hormone monsters than he has, and it isn’t just because he’s a late bloomer in the puberty department. (Hang in there, Nick’s pubes!) Considering that the character is based on the actor-creator voicing him, it’s fascinating to consider how much of Big Mouth entails Nick Kroll putting himself through the wringer of his own past. It’s Connie, his unexpectedly feminine hormone monster, who ushers in Nick’s first orgasm, which marks the beginning of a roller coaster of a relationship between the two. After one particularly rough falling-out, a scene where Nick confesses, Jerry Maguire-style, that he loves how Connie “takes care of me and my tender nipples,” is one of the show’s all-time heartwarming moments. How is it possible to get so invested in a spoiled pre-teen and a raunchy, hairy monstress?

Lest we neglect Kroll’s breakout character Lola—God knows her mother and generally most adults in her life do—she’s responsible for many a revolting moment in Big Mouth’s later seasons. Take her “squishing [her] dirty little nuggies in some fresh mud.” You read that right: When Lola and Jay find in each other kindred, unsupervised spirits and launch TV’s wildest affair, one of their favorite activities is, ew, sucking each other’s muddy toes. Yikes. Luckily, from vulgarity comes hilarity: Watching this depraved interaction leads to one of Matthew’s top-tier offhanded zingers. Andrew Rannells was put on this earth to say, “This is officially better than the time I saw Eric Stonestreet fall down a flight of stairs.”

Big Mouth season six was a solid installment, and one of its most delightful storylines culminated in a moment that managed to combine naughty and nice. After Connie impregnates Maury and refuses to support their child (watch the spinoff Human Resources!), he worries no one will be there to deliver the baby (Cole Escola). Sure enough, he goes into labor, and at the last possible moment, an apologetic Connie appears. That lovely moment happens simultaneously with a truly shocking one (not a closeup of Maury’s puckered butthole, please!), resulting in the best recent example of how, in this universe, depravity and delight are two sides of the same fucked-up coin.