Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg really know how to make us feel uncomfortable. When Big Mouth broke through on Netflix, it earned praise for its commitment to the earnest and wild sexual feelings that we experience in puberty. With their latest series, Mating Season, Kroll and Goldberg keep the sexual humor intact. By shifting to an adult animation series about animals, it feels less essential than the previous series. That said, Kroll and Goldberg craft another exceedingly funny show.
What is Mating Season about?
Waking up from hibernation two weeks after his partner, Josh (Zach Woods) discovers she’s left him for another bear. Depressed that he has to reenter the dating world, Josh leans on his friends for help. Fawn (June Diane Raphael) is a doe whose mother recently passed away, and her father has reentered the dating pool. Ray (Kroll) is a sex-addicted raccoon who even finds his limits pushed by some of his partners. His mommy issues do him few favors. Finally, Penelope (Sabrina Jalees) comes to grips with her lesbian identity while working to become an effective flirt.
The group finds themselves in a dating world that is crazy and eccentric. Josh continues to work on himself while his friends try dating older animals, different genders, and even different species. Kroll and Goldberg load the show with real-world parallels, using Mating Season to poke fun at the modern dating world.
Kroll and Goldberg always go for the joke, which keeps things consistently funny. However, it can get repetitive.
Mating Season never hides its intentions as a sex comedy. It’s explicit in its depiction of sex, which makes more than a few scenes (including raccoon/rabbit/skunk copulation) feel more than a little uncomfy. Kroll and Goldberg are among the funniest comedians on a joke-for-joke basis, and the show is never light on humor.
If anything, there may actually be too many jokes for stretches of the show. The topical humor is always effective, but when we’re landing on jokes directed toward a dating service, Mating Season can get a bit reductive. There are certainly many who use these sites solely to get laid, but there’s very little substance to the comedy beyond the surface-level jokes around animals having sex.
Zach Woods is certainly a great fit for the anxiety-riddled Josh, even though his role on Silicon Valley portrayed him as something of a ladies’ man. The chaos gets to be a little much at times, especially with Kroll lending his voice to additional characters beyond Ray. Woods gives Mating Season an empathetic heart to show and an excellent home base for the series to revolve around. In many ways, he’s your traditional sitcom lead.
Kroll gets the juiciest and weirdest plotlines, but that’s to the show’s benefit. After all, it seems unfair for him to ask any other actor to be as obscenely weird as he can get, and Kroll once again proves he’s down for any gag. Mating Season provides less of a horny-rage-hormone monster with the inclusion of Jalees and Raphael. They’re both funny and zero in on the complexities women face in the current dating world.
Is Mating Season worth watching?
Yes, but Mating Season is almost entirely for fans of Big Mouth. The new characters are fun, and the animation takes a step up, but the mileage on the gags is almost certainly going to vary between audiences. The comedy is absurd and graphic, making this really a show for adults. However, without the surprising nuances that helped make Big Mouth such a good tool for explaining sexuality, Mating Season is just a sex comedy with animals. It’s fun, but the ceiling for a show like this is much lower.
Mating Season releases on Netflix on May 22, 2026. Ten episodes were provided for this review.
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