Nick Kroll and Jennifer Flackett Break Down ‘Big Mouth’s Most Controversial Season 2 Episodes

Puberty is an inherently weird and gross part of growing up, and only one show is fully dedicated to taking the pube-covered plunge into that weirdness — Netflix’s Big Mouth. Filled with talking vaginas, trials about erections, and graphic descriptions of sex, Big Mouth uses its comedy to perfectly capture the nightmare that is pubescence. But dedication to sexual frankness often encourages this animated comedy to walk almost too close to the line. Two of Big Mouth‘s creators — Nick Kroll and Jennifer Flackett — spoke to Decider about finding the heart in the show’s most shocking yet empowering episodes to date. Spoilers ahead for Episode 2 and Episode 5 of Big Mouth Season 2.

Big Mouth Season 2 doesn’t waste any time breaking boundaries. This season’s second episode “What Is It About Boobs?” almost completely revolves around new character Gina’s (Gina Rodriguez) developing breasts. However Gina’s developing chest leads to a myriad of complexities in this middle school ecosystem. While the boys drool over this poor young woman and shamelessly objectify her, the girls start to harshly evaluate their own bodies. This power transition leads to the increasingly rebellious Jessi (Jessi Klein) becoming even more unhappy and the once-upbeat Missy (Jenny Slate) to hate herself for the first time in her life. Missy’s self-hatred manifests in the form of “Mirror Missy,” a version of the character who constantly yells insults at the sweet girl.

“I think one of the things we all love about Missy is that she’s not self-conscious,” Flackett said. “And then like kind of when that’s taken from her it’s so painful. And that voice that says ‘Oh, you’re ugly,’ and ‘You’re bad,’ and ‘No one will like you,’ that’s the voice of 7th grade.”

Missy’s aggressively harsh, body-shaming internal monologue is relatable to any woman who has survived puberty. That’s what makes what happens next so incredible. Saddened to hear about her daughter’s self-image, Missy’s mom takes Missy and Jessi to a Korean spa, which leads to a powerful disco anthem titled “I Love My Body.”

Flackett revealed that the idea for the Korean spa story came from her own life. When the creator took her teenage daughter to the spa, the younger woman was immediately impressed by the different types of female bodies that were being proudly flaunted. “I really looked at it through her eyes thinking the exact same thing that you said. If I had seen that when I was younger that would’ve been so impactful,” she said. “And also as I like to say, it’s sort of self selecting the women who go to the Korean spa. So they’re all owning their bodies in a very specific way.”

Once the Korean spa story was on the table, Flackett and the writer for “What Is It About Boobs?” Kelly Galuska knew the episode needed a musical number. That song originally started as an Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque number about female bodies. With the help of composer Mark Rivers, that quickly changed to the episode’s incredibly catchy nod to “I Will Survive.”

“Sometimes you have to see what it isn’t to see what it is. And right there we said ‘No, no, no. It’s a disco number,'” Flackett said of the first version of the song. “It’s not female bodies, it’s ‘I Love My Body.'” Maya Rudolph, the sultry voice of the Hormone Monstress, was immediately on board.

But what makes “I Love My Body” ground-breaking isn’t just its message of self-acceptance, it’s the number’s animation. The song is filled with lovingly drawn images of all sorts of naked women — women with big boobs, small boobs, round butts, flat butts, bat wings, muffin tops, cellulite legs, slim stomachs, rounded tummies, shaved vaginas, full bushes. It’s a celebration of all the forms the female body can take.

“Even for our animators, they don’t animate women’s bodies like that. That was its own kind of moment,” Flackett said. “I remember the first time we saw it. It was a lot. You were like ‘Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.'”

“[Jenn Flackett and Kelly Galuska] really were the ones pushing the envelope of what we were gonna see,” Big Mouth co-creator and voice actor Nick Kroll said. “I loved seeing all the different types of women’s bodies. I thought that was really exciting, it felt like innovative and stuff we haven’t seen before.”

The entire musical number builds to Jessi and Missy finally deciding to embrace their bodies as well and take off their robes. But that emotional high point led to a complicated discussion in the writer’s room. How do you animate two naked young girls in a way that’s not scandalous and tonally in line with this episode’s empowering message?

Whereas Nick Kroll and co-creator Andrew Goldberg were quick to advocate for covering Jessi and Missy up, Flackett originally pushed for them to be fully nude in the song. She and Galuska argued that since the boys had been naked before it was only fair to show the girls naked. “I’m free the nipple and free the vagina. Netflix clearly gives us a very wide berth, it’s very rare that we find a line,” she said. Big Mouth eventually settled on using some well-placed steam. “I think that we felt like with the girls’ vaginas we had to be more careful. Everyone will tell you it took me the longest to get there.”

“We’ve shown the boys topless, we’ve shown the boys naked. We should be able to show the girls naked and not have it be a sexual — like those girls being naked is not inherently a sexual thing. We put that sexuality on them,” Kroll said. “We sort of had to figure out what we showed, both of the girls and of the women in general, so that we could tell that story and sort of speak to those issues without having it be so distracting that it stepped on all the other things we were trying to do in this episode and in this particular scene.”

But as surprising as a celebratory song that ends in two naked little girls may be, Big Mouth tops itself three episodes later. Written by Emily Altman, “The Planned Parenthood Episode” completely breaks the show’s form, switching from its typical serialized story to a series of vignettes all about the benefits of one of the most controversial organizations in America, Planned Parenthood.

“Planned Parenthood basically met with a bunch of writers and producers and said ‘We obviously appreciate people making donations, but what we really would like is for stories to be told involving Planned Parenthood.'” Kroll said. “And we’re all supporters of Planned Parenthood’s mission so we took that upon ourselves to say what kind of stories could we tell using Planned Parenthood.”

The first draft of the episode started with the kids going to a Planned Parenthood and learning about everything the organization does. But according to Flackett, that approach felt forced. Instead the team decided to completely break form, turning the episode into a one-off that’s half after school special and half self-aware SNL spoof that’s connected to the universe of the show but not part of its ongoing serialized story. “We like to think that you could learn a little something,” Flackett said. “[The lessons are] sort of like vegetables. They’re sort of hidden in a lovely tomato sauce.”

The episode follows the kids as they try to explain the risks of sex and benefits of organizations like Planned Parenthood to their sex teacher Coach Steve (Kroll) through a series of educational sketches. According to Kroll, this format wasn’t chosen to make any comment about how sex education is taught in America. “It’s always helpful to have character who’s super ignorant or dumb … or to have the simple child who needs explanations about things,” he said. “It helps that our simple child is a grown man and teacher.”

What follows is one of the funniest sex education crash courses ever brought to television. There’s a Woody Allen-inspired take on a vasectomy, a Bachelor show about Nick’s sister choosing a contraception, and a horror vignette centered around a fake STD that real teens and preteens are currently worried about — Blue Waffle. The Blue Waffle sketch even features a spot-on cameo from Jordan Peele that includes him screaming “Get out!”

Though there are many sketches proving that Planned Parenthood is responsible for more than just performing abortions, Big Mouth‘s abortion sketch is perhaps its most interesting. Set to Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart,” the completely wordless vignette follows Andrew’s mother Barbara (Paula Pell). The tasteful and sad sketch follows a young Barbara as she hooks up with a whistle player, realizes that she’s pregnant, gets an abortion, and eventually meets Andrew’s father. All of this plays out against the cheerful melody of this dance number.

Kroll said that he was out of the room when the Big Mouth writers decided to set this story to “Groove Is in the Heart.” But after they came up with the idea, they refused to budge. “I was like ‘Oh that’s cool, that’s funny,'” he said. “And then I was like ‘What are some other songs that it could be?’ And the writers’ room was pretty adamantly like ‘No it’s set to this song.'”

When Kierin Magenta Kirby, better known as Lady Miss Kierof Deee-Lite, was first approached about Big Mouth using her song, she refused. “She had just seen the trailer for the show and was like ‘I’m not giving that song to that show about boys jerking off,'” Kroll said. “And then we followed up with more context about what this was for and showed her more of the show and she was like, ‘Oh. This is fine.'”

But despite the many self-aware comments about Twitter backlash in “The Planned Parenthood Episode,” neither Flackett nor Kroll are worried about negative reactions to the episode. “We think [Planned Parenthood is] an amazing institution that does great work,” Flackett said. “And obviously we know that there will be people who don’t feel that way and that will be whatever it will be”

“I’m not worried, but I am aware that Planned Parenthood is a hot button. It is a trigger for certain people,” Kroll said. “And so [this episode] was my way of working through. There was never a thought about not doing it, but there was just the realization that it is a trigger for people.”

However there are still some lines the Big Mouth writers room won’t cross. When asked if there have ever been any ideas that were dubbed too gross for the series, Flackett immediately thought about an idea she had for Season 1’s “Requiem for a Wet Dream.” The idea revolved around Nick’s first Hormone Monster, the old, limping, and constantly slurring Hormone Monster, and inserting a thermometer in his penis.

“Everyone was like ‘That’s too gross!’ And I was like ‘Is it?'” she said. “But it was really funny because it was like ‘Hey, look! We figured out where the line is.’ Ever since then we enjoy referencing that. And every once in a while someone will be like ‘I think that’s like the thermometer in 107’ and people will be like ‘Yeah. I think that’s like the thermometer.'”

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