In the first minute of Netflix's animated comedy Mating Season, a bear wakes up, urinates uncontrollably across his cave, stumbles outside, sees two horny raccoons mating, then spirals into shame. At this stage, it is barely worth pointing out that Mating Season is the spiritual successor to the outrageous, witty comedy Big Mouth, so completely does it inhabit that show's DNA.
And at this point, you will already know if the show is for you. Because Big Mouth, as popular as it was, polarised audiences like little else. That show was about the horrors of puberty and sexual awakening, tailored with precision to hormone-battered adolescent boys. You could argue it did this too precisely, because its juvenilia was so relentlessly nuclear-powered that many found themselves turned off by all the sex, farts, and swearing.
Quite honestly, it was their loss. Once you peeled back the layers of overt offensiveness, Big Mouth might have qualified as one of the sweetest shows on television. Adolescent boys are a confusing mix of confidence and awkwardness, and Big Mouth captured both. If you're a certain type of male of a certain age, you'd see yourself in one of the characters.
That's harder to achieve with Mating Season, because here all characters are animals, and sex isn't recreational but key to survival. Josh, the urinating bear (voiced by Zach Woods), realises it is mating season. After hibernating too long, he learns his girlfriend has run off with an alpha bear. He forlornly debates whether to devote himself to masturbation or get back on the horse—barely a metaphor here.
On the surface, this is a story about the newly dumped. Across 10 episodes, Josh hits the apps, engages in spiritually unfulfilling sexual experimentation, and reaches equilibrium. But like Big Mouth, the spine is a placeholder for weirdness.
Much weirdness is perpetuated by co-creator Nick Kroll's character, an extremely confident raccoon. This gives Kroll opportunities to shout disgusting things loudly, but it serves a function: the worst part of being young and single is assuming everyone else is having the sex of their lives, and Kroll's raccoon is living proof.
However, all characters are biologically accurate animals governed by different impulses, creating disconnect. For example, an entire episode focuses on the copulatory tie in canines, and much is made of hippos spraying faeces on mates. The show is so tied to animal behaviour—'Express your anal glands all across my goddamn pelt!' screams Kroll's character during copulation—that it becomes less a relatable story of sexual development and more a study in animal grossness.
Mating Season also exploits the Disneyfication of its characters. Bears, deer, and raccoons were well-worn types in classic Disney movies. Seeing them rutting with abandon is weird, given associations with Bambi, Baloo, or Meeko. To make it explicit, the 1941 Disney short The Little Whirlwind features Mickey Mouse entranced by a cake's smell floating him towards it. Here, a variation has a character floating towards an animal's anus, muttering 'Nummy nummy nummy.'
Nevertheless, once you get over this, we're left with a truly disgusting sex comedy with much more heart than given credit for. If it sticks around and matures like Big Mouth, we might have something special.
