“Big Mouth,” streaming on Netflix, is a rated-R exaggeration of the challenges faced by adolescents in the world. Season two of the show hits viewers with a lot of humor but also a lot of real topics that a lot of us as preteens and teenagers couldn’t and wouldn’t want to talk about.  But the fact that the writers of “Big Mouth” took these hard, rough topics of our childhood and turned them around on us gives me hope that maybe the next generation won’t be scared to talk about this stuff with each other and their parents.

“Big Mouth” follows the lives of middle schoolers who have just entered the world of puberty and are now grappling with their very own hormonal monsters.  Even though the kids should be the most important characters of the show, the key characters are the hormone monsters themselves, Maurice (the boy hormone monster voiced by Nick Kroll) and Connie (the female hormone monster voiced by Maya Rudolph).  Both monsters are wild, foolish, and very protective of the young children. Their job is to guide the children through puberty, but season two brings an unwelcome character, The Shame Wizard, whose key job is the make the kids feel bad about everything that their hormone monsters are making them feel good about.  

The show follows the uncomfortable areas of puberty, especially the ones that we have usually been forbidden to talk about.  Unlike season one, season two discusses many rough topics such as bodily insecurities, Planned Parenthood, drugs, ideal relationships, cheating parents, makeout sessions, slut shaming, depression, and a big no-no in the community, masturbation.  Two characters, Missy Greenwald (voiced by Jenny Slate) and Andrew Glouberman (voiced by John Mulaney) grapple with the effects of experiencing the shame that many people feel when talking about the sore topic of masturbation. (I bet you feel uncomfortable just reading it, don’t you?)  

Another topic that is a key takeaway from the show was the mordant way that the writers discuss planned parenthood which according to half of our country shouldn’t even exist because of the “murdering of babies,” but the show shows that it’s more than abortions.  The writers created a skit much like “The Bachelor” where a young girl is given the choice of which contraceptive she would prefer to use. Who she chose shouldn’t surprise you considering the number of unwanted children being birthed and not taken care of by the parents or put into an unforgiving foster care system that is just going to spit them out into society. This show is a definite punch in the face to our government, and they could definitely learn something from it.

All in all, the show is a brilliant masterpiece that displays the inner workings of a tween/teenage mind and how they cope with their thoughts and experiences.  With episode titles like “Drug Buddies” and “Am I Normal?” this show is bound to teach you something that maybe you didn’t even know about yourself.