Let’s talk about the big mental health portrayals in Big Mouth and Human Resources
Ok, so Big Mouth is one of my comfort shows because it has everything, action, adventure, drama, comedy, and characters that you can really relate to that make you feel a lot less alone in the awkwardness that comes with maturing. Even as an adult, watching these animated characters grow up in some of the same crazy hormonal turmoil I did at that age brings me comfort in knowing that the experience of puberty and growing up is just a universal part of life; an embarrassing, stupid, messy universal experience…. But another show I love is Bob’s Burgers, and I’ve recently been rewatching that, so Big Mouth got pushed back until yesterday, and when I was rewatching the show, I realized that mental health is a pretty big theme across the seasons of the show, which is great since mental health can be a big deal as a kid barely figuring out their body and likes and dislikes that they’ll likely carry into adulthood, and between Big Mouth and it’s spinoff show Human Resources, I think we have a lot to talk about in how the creators of the show chose to portray the mental health of its characters as well as the mental health characters themselves, so, you know, let’s get into it!
So, I’m not the biggest fan of going in order when I’m analyzing complete shows, so I wanna start by talking about the portrayal of depression in the Big Mouth universe. And while you could argue that depression is the first major mental illness we see in the Big Mouth, I more so want to talk about the difference we see in the the way we see female vs male depression experiences portrayed in the Big Mouth universe and how it mirrors what depression tends to be seen and handled societally. I can already hear the “what does that even mean, Fizzie?”, and to that dear readers, I give you the comparison of there being multiple depression kitties vs the singular anxiety mosquito that seems to handle everyone’s anxiety between both Big Mouth and Human Resources. Now, know we don’t see the other depression kitties, I think it’s safe to say that since we see at least two separate representations of depression in Cat Stevens and Kitty Beaumont Bouchet, it is likely that there are more than just those two wild cats running around making the people of the world depressed, but if we look at the creatures shown to us, we can see there seem to be two main types of depression in the Big Mouth universe, breaking down this illness into a male and female archetype. It’s important to note here, that the reason depression in this series is split by gender is because, unlike we see with some of the other creatures in universe, we only see the depression kitties match the gender of the person whose team they’re working with. I honestly kinda like this idea because I think that this brings a lot of light to how socially acceptable depression between the genders and how the depression is felt differently.
Depression
If we look at Kitty, everything about her presence is and portrayal is big. Not just big, but BIG. Kitty Beaumont Bouchet is first shown to be Jessi’s depression monster. Even Kitty’s physical form is massive, dwarfing Jessi…. And I think that’s an amazing way to portray how Jessie’s depression made her feel, with Jessi even telling Kitty at one point in the beginning that she’s heavy when Kitty curls up on her chest. We also see Kitty kind of sneak into Becca’s life in Human Resources as she struggles with postpartum depression after the birth of her first child. In both of these instances, we see the characters in question plagued by this heavy, almost debilitating presence that is Kitty; that is depression. We see Becca seem to drown in her depression while her husband lays right beside her in bed, Kitty almost challenging her to see how hard she can cry without waking him; and we see every ounce of ambition that we know makes her such an amazing character drain out of her as she goes from a kid who seems genuinely happy to go to school, to someone who actively avoided it and ditched so often her grades plummeted. And this can be a reality of depression for people, especially women. Depression for women tends to be deeply internalized; this heaviness that we can’t seem to put down that drains us of the ability to want to do anything else but hold ourselves up under this giant unseen weight. Becca and Jessi experience this same mental illness at completely different stages in life for completely different reasons, but we see that both of these female characters seem to dim in the shadow of Kitty and we see them both struggle to vocalize what’s going on with them to anyone who might be a support system for them, with Becca even going as far as to ending up in such a deep depression, that she struggles to even feel love for her husband at one point, and we see Jessi try to cope with her depression by getting into a relationship that I truly believe she would have called out for being toxic.
And then on the other end of things, we have Cat Stevens, the male depression kitty we see in Human Resources. Now, Cat is very different from Kitty, not just in gender, but he’s portrayed physically smaller, and far less emotionally driven in his actions than his female counterpart. While we only see him interact with other monsters in the Human Resources world and briefly with his client Barry and then briefly in Big Mouth when he advises Camden in season 8 1 of Big Mouth, I think Cat is actually a rather good representation of the way male depression is felt (as far as I can tell from a female point of view at least). While it tends to be more socially acceptable for women to have “big feelings” and emotional “outbursts”, the world of men’s mental health is still rather new and smaller than it should be because the ideology of men was always the stoic, protector and provider type who only showed emotion through anger or lust in a lot of instances, and with that being what a lot of the older generation grew up on, it became the norm for men to push down emotions deemed more feminine in nature, birthing a “boys don’t cry” mentality that was widely adopted in some places. With that being a norm, a lot of men felt that their emotions could either come out as destructive behaviours like rage, or they keep anything negative behind a mask in an attempt to keep up the facade of manliness that has been associated with stoicism and the idea that men who uphold a certain standard are more attractive as partners or friends. This masking tends to mean that men show certain emotions differently, one of those ways being very, very quietly, so while Kitty is portrayed as an almost larger than life character in many ways, I think it makes sense that Cat seems almost too chill to be sad, as if his goal is to not take up space in any way so he and the man whose mind he’s occupying aren't seen as a burden in anyway, and whereas Kitty seems hellbent on destroying the women she's working with, Cat seems to genuinely want to try to help these men stay safe and seen in the ways he can.
While I don't know if it was the show's intention to make Kitty and Cat so fundamentally different, I think they're both amazing characters and amazing representations of depression in their own perspectives. I love the contrast and I love that we see between both of them and their effects on the clients they serve through the Human Resources department.
Anxiety
Of course, we can't talk about depression without talking about something that tends to go hand in hand with it; anxiety.
Anxiety, represented by Tito the anxiety mosquito. And I need to start by saying I love that they made Tito a mosquito because that is such an embodiment of the actual illness; just that incessant nagging feeling that just pokes at you until you feel so uneasy that you almost feel physically sick even though you know that nothing is really wrong, it just feels like it is….. it's so reminiscent of a mosquito or a swarm of bugs nipping at you that when her character was introduced, her being a giant mosquito just felt right.
I do wish they had done more with her character, but since Tito first appeared in season 4, halfway through the series, it makes sense that they didn't do quite as much with her as her character had the potential for. Personally, I would've loved to see more of how anxiety could turn into panic or paranoia in Nick or Andrew's storylines after the introduction of the smaller monster, though I did love the fact that unlike a lot of the other monsters we meet between Big Mouth and Human Resources, Tito is seems to be a one woman show, with the swarms that represent the anxiety attacks the human characters have in the show being swarms of multiple Titos that she seems to manifest out of thin air, which honestly feels like a really cool way to show how quickly one tiny bit of anxiety can spread like wildfire until suddenly someone can see a danger of some sort in everything and it can send the mind spiralling in ways that make no sense. Tito flying solo in the anxiety department felt like a really good metaphor for how exhausting anxiety can feel for people too since we see this one little bug splitting herself into these swarms to follow all these people, popping in and out of different client’s cases and worrying herself about whether or not she’s where she needs to be and whether or not she’s doing her job well when her job is quite literally to look at situations and make up the most out of pocket “what could possibly go wrong” scenarios under the guise of helping to keep her client safe. And yeah, while some anxiety can be warranted, most of the scenarios and anxieties that Tito creates for our beloved characters are super out of pocket and serve no purpose other than to create misery…. But hey, I’m not gonna blame the already overwhelmed bug for doing her best to do her job well, so I’ll give her a pass since I know anxiety can be rough in those formative years where every tiny move you make feels like it could trigger the end of your world as you know it…. But I did appreciate the creators giving some of our favorite Big Mouth character’s the tools better cope with the anxiety and depression that was crushing them in so many ways.
Addiction
Unfortunately, we don’t see an addiction angel until Human Resources joins the chat, but I actually don’t mind the wait to see the creature portrayed because of how well Dante and his entire storyline was written.
While addiction is often shown to be an awful, nasty thing (which it 100% can be in a lot of cases when not treated properly), the addiction angel we’re introduced to in Human Resources isn’t some grotesque beast that forces goes around bashing people over the head with a meth pipe or something…. No, Dante is attractive, charming, rather non-threatening in the way he moves and speaks, his angel wings giving him this air of innocence surrounding him that makes people trust him. Addiction, while often portrayed in a light that makes us think of meth pipes and back alleyways and powder and pills and dirty needles or empty alcohol bottles scattered around when someone wakes up from being blackout drunk for the umpteenth time in a row, doesn’t always start out in that downward spiral, and it doesn’t always mean drugs or alcohol. Addiction is defined as physically and mentally dependent on a substance, thing, or activity. In Big Mouth’s spin off show, we see that Doug is addicted to sugar and sweets, and with Dante driving him, he becomes addicted to weight loss as well while trying to combat his sugar addiction. We also see the main protagonist of the series become addicted to Dante himself and seek him out like she’s seeking out a literal drug.
I love this portrayal of addiction because it shows just how easily an addiction can take a hold of someone, sinking it’s claws in before they even realize what’s happening, while simultaneously showing the lighter side of addiction before it descends into something as ugly as we’re used to seeing when hearing the terms “addict” or “addicted”. Addiction creates it’s own logic to justify what an addict needs to do in order to keep themselves fed with whatever their “drug” of choice may be, as we see with Dante manipulating Pete the logic rock into pushing Doug to exercise until he literally collapses. A pretty face and a charismatic charm like Dante’s is what addiction has; this alluring idea and warped logic that twist things into something good or “fun” until suddenly the consequences of that fun comes crashing down all at once to crush the person beneath. We can absolutely see the bad traits that Dante has, but it is a lot easier to see the downside to an addiction when you’re not actively in it, which we see when Emmy slowly gets over her addiction to the addiction angel himself and realizes just how poorly he treated her during their “relationship”.
As much as I hate Dante’s character because of how much I hate addiction and what it does to people, I think the character and creature hit the nail right on the head when it comes to addiction being portrayed in a show of this nature. He’s beautifully written and acted to create the type of person who can promote addiction to the characters in universe without glamorizing it to the audiences at home, making him one of my favorite mental illnesses portrayed in the Big Mouth universe.
OCD
Ok, so I personally think Andrew’s OCD type tendencies deserve a mention despite not having a creature to portray the disorder in the show. I really would have loved to see the creature to portray OCD, but I also kind of like the fact that there isn't one because it gets a tiny bit harder to recognize that he has tendencies reminiscent of obsessive compulsive disorder because of how easy it is to only see a creepy little weirdo when you look at his character, but Andrew’s character is a lot more than that and I genuinely think that if the creators hadn't leaned into the creep thing so heavily in the later seasons, he might have had a better storyline and more of a look into Andrew's mental health and how it was affected by his family dynamics outside of one off jokes and creepy gestures.
Unspecified Mental Illness
Another honorable mention would be Human Resources character Claudia. While it's never outright said what Claudia suffers from, it's clear that she unfortunately suffers from an illness that when left untreated leads to bouts of mania. While I personally think she suffered from bipolar disorder, I've seen a few different theories about Claudia's mental health, a lot of people in forums suggesting that schizophrenia could be another potential candidate for her mental state, saying that it may be why she is able to see Claudia despite not being supposed to….. I'm not personally familiar with schizophrenia outside of the fact that visual and auditory hallucinations tend to be heavily associated with it, but as someone living with bipolar disorder, I know that unmedicated, hallucinations can happen with the disorder as well, so I'm not sure if that's correct, and with the creators leaving it unconfirmed, we're left to speculate and theorize. Regardless of what mental illness Claudia was struggling with, I absolutely loved the way her and Sonya’s storyline was handled since it portrayed not only loving someone with a mental illness really well, but the reality of what a mental illness like the one Claudia suffers from can do to a person when not treated properly.
Grief
The last honorable mention is technically not a mental illness, but I really wanna talk about how amazing Keith from grief. Keith is honestly a great representation for grief because not only is he there to be supportive, but much like grief, Keith is a persistent little bastard. Grief is a normal human emotional response to loss, consisting of 5 stages: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance, almost all things that honestly most people don't wanna feel, but come when called by the loss of a loved one. And Keith is there, ready to hold the hand of his clients as they navigate each stage until reaching the goal of acceptance. And honestly, I love that because I think a lot of us could use a creature like Keith to help up navigate loss since it can be a bitch to try to handle alone.
I think Big Mouth and Human Resources are honestly two of the best adult shows to show some of these heavier issues like mental health, making those of us who suffered from those things at the age the characters are in Big Mouth while showing us that it’s ok to still have some of those issues in adulthood in Human Resources. I think it’s almost like an adult version of the movie Inside Out, giving us as adults these silly, stupid creatures that we can still relate to in some ways while not making the entirety of either show this heavy, depressing thing that it could’ve been had they leaned into the topics in more dramatic ways. And honestly, I love that because it made the shows more digestible and enjoyable, which cemented Big Mouth as one of my top 3 comfort shows pretty quickly right between Friends and Bob’s Burgers. I was sad to see it end, and I was sad to know that there wouldn’t be another season of it’s spin off, but honestly, the way I rewatch Big Mouth (and Human Resources), its almost like an old friend that I know I’ll never truly lose despite the shows having drawn to a close.
