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 a deep well of shame about it. 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.
Like its predecessor, Mating Season polarises audiences. The show is about a horny bear on a quest of sexual exploration after his partner leaves him during hibernation. Josh, the bear voiced by Zach Woods, realises it is literally mating season. After hibernating for too long, he is dismayed to learn that his girlfriend has run off with a hulking alpha bear. He ends up forlornly unable to choose whether to devote himself to masturbation or get back on the horse.
On the surface, this is a story about the newly dumped. Across its 10 episodes, Mating Season follows Josh as he variously hits the apps, engages in spiritually unfulfilling sexual experimentation and comes to a vague sense of equilibrium. But, like Big Mouth, the spine of the show is basically just a placeholder for lots of other weirdness. Much of this is perpetuated by co-creator Nick Kroll's character, an extremely confident raccoon who shouts disgusting things as loudly as he can.
However, all the characters are biologically accurate animals governed by entirely different impulses to humans. This means there is a little more disconnect between the characters and the audience than the creators probably expected. There is, for example, an entire episode about the copulatory tie in canines, while much is also made of the hippopotamus's ritual of spraying their mate with faeces. The show becomes less a relatable story of sexual development and more a study in animal grossness.
Another thing Mating Season does is exploit the Disneyfication of its characters. Bears, deer and raccoons were all well-worn character types in classic hand-drawn Disney movies. When you see them, you cannot help but think of Bambi or Baloo the bear, so it is weird when they all start rutting with abandon.
