Late in the first season of the Netflix animated comedy “Mating Season,” the protagonists — beta bear Josh (Zach Woods), randy raccoon Ray (Nick Kroll), Sapphic fox Penelope (Sabrina Jalees) and single deer Fawn (June Diane Raphael) — gather on the couch to watch “MiceFlix.” (Is the concept even a feeble attempt at a pun? No! It’s literally two mice in a box.) The foursome are disgusted to find themselves watching “some show called ‘Big Mouse,’” in which a horny beast urges children to do unspeakable things. “They should arrest whoever made this,” Josh sighs.
The scene is not an unprovoked dig at a rival for the title of lewdest cartoon on streaming, but a winking acknowledgment of shared heritage. “Mating Season” may not be an official spinoff of “Big Mouth,” like the short-lived “Human Resources,” but it does share a creative team in Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin — the same quartet who landed on the visual metaphor of Hormone Monsters for the universal experience of puberty. The subject matter of “Mating Season” isn’t nearly as unique; rather than the precarious middle ground between childhood and adolescence, the show dramatizes the same phase of adult singledom as countless live action shows, like “Friends” or “Sex and the City.” The raunch factor, however, is the same, and that’ll be more than enough for fans missing “Big Mouth” after its conclusion last year. There’s less insight into an under-explored life experience than in the earlier show, if about the same level of laughs.
“Mating Season” is, funnily enough, the second “Big Mouth”-adjacent series about animals making their way in the world to premiere inside of a month. But where Amazon Prime Video’s “Kevin” (which was co-created by longtime “Big Mouth” writer Joe Wengert and works with the same animation studio, Titmouse) follows the namesake cat’s adventures in New York City, “Mating Season” takes place in an idyllic forest. Humans technically exist in this universe, but mostly as the background to jokes about homo sapien-themed roleplay or a horse love interest’s background as a competitive jumper. Otherwise, there are no bipeds — let alone silly human concepts like “jobs” — to distract from the core focus of “Mating Season”: these cuddly creatures’ quest for love.
In the series premiere, Josh wakes up from hibernation to learn he’s overslept and his wife has left him for another, bigger bear. This development forcibly ejects the mild-mannered mammal into both his parents’ den and the wild — literally — world of dating, where smelling suitors’ pee takes the place of an app profile. (The service is called “Tinklr.”) “Mating Season” is consistently creative in its combinations of romantic tropes with animal frameworks: Fawn’s ex Dylan (Timothy Olyphant) is a wild wolf who refuses to be domesticated in an extreme instance of commitment issues; Ray turns to performance-enhancing pills when dating a rabbit who wants to hook up like…well, you know. When the core characters gather to commiserate over their struggles, they do so at a bar called the Watering Hole.
There’s some serialization among the episodic adventures. The cynical, hedonistic Ray experiences love for the first time with a goose voiced by Broadway star Annaleigh Ashford, who gets to show off her talents with a handful of musical numbers. Penelope is hung up on her Canadian ex Summer (Abbi Jacobson), a — what else? — hound who turns the classic Disney tale into a “Romeo and Juliet”-style romance. But even though a mock-David Attenborough voiceover solemnly intones that finding a mating partner is the most important quest in an animal’s life, “Mating Season” mostly takes pleasure in the chase. There’s always another niche of (non)human sexuality to explore. Take gay men, who already use animal-based slang. Here, a skinny-but-hairy otter type takes the form of an actual otter, and when Fawn dates a moose who decides he doesn’t swing her way, she happily volunteers to be his “stag hag.”
The opening credits of “Mating Season” play Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” — an answer to Charles Bradley’s “Changes,” which served a similar role on “Big Mouth” — over real-life footage of animals copulating. The message is clear: the proverbial birds and bees got their name because all species feel compelled to reproduce and take part in the various rituals around that process. (On “Mating Season,” birds take part in a “bird mitzvah” that provides an offhand gag, while bees produce the honey Josh uses to woo a date.) That means “Mating Season” plays out on well-trodden territory, rather than shedding light on taboo topics á la “Big Mouth.” It’s also broadly relatable, and inventively illustrated. Growing up means losing some of the magic of childhood, and even a show about interspecies lovemaking can’t retain the transgressive charge of 12-year-olds learning firsthand about masturbation and periods. But “Mating Season” retains enough profanity and playfulness to create a distinct family resemblance with its predecessor, if not deliver a one-to-one subsitute.
All 10 episodes of “Mating Season” are now streaming on Netflix.
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