Headscratchers / Big Mouth

• Can other people see the hormone monsters or not? The show occasionally goes on record to say that hormone monsters can't be seen by anyone but their owners but then several instances in the series directly disprove that, with other characters interacting with the hormone monsters directly, and not just for a joke either. Entire episode plots focus on characters such as Nick talking to Maury, even though he's Andrew's hormone monster.
  • Sometimes if the kid your a hormone monster for has a best friend who hasn’t started puberty or they will show up to give that kid a warning and if hormone monsters are friends they might show up for all the kids they take care of.
• So do the kids eventually forget the hormone monsters when they grow up and the monsters leave them? Because none of the adults seem to know of the monsters’ existence even though it’s a given they would have had their own when they were younger.
  • I don't think so. Coach Steve remembered Rick after he left him in "Steve the Virgin" and Duke Ellington still remembers Maury fondly even beyond death, so how come such parents as Marty, Diane, and Elliot don't know about them?
  • Hormone monsters shouldn't be a foreign concept to the adults, since Barbara had a Menopause Banshee in "Florida". By the way, whatever happened to this menopause banshee?
  • Some people remember them when their older teens/adults while others don’t or maybe those people had different hormone monsters they just don’t talk about.
• Do all characters become ghosts when they die or just celebrities? If it's everybody, then why would anyone fear death in this universe, especially when ghosts can just talk directly to living people, pick things up, and move around freely on Earth and even walk through walls and possess people? In fact, getting killed seems like an improvement in this series, since you'd get more powers and can alter your appearance to look as young as you were in the prime of your life.
  • A rabbi was shown becoming a ghost after death as was Natalie's grandmother. It's everybody.
• So, is Andrew gay or not? Cuz in "Am I Gay?", it was pretty firmly established that Andrew was indeed a homosexual but then this seemed to have been inexplicably thrown out the window by the end of the episode and even flat-out contradicted with the story arc of him being in love with Missy. Seriously, what the hell?
  • Pretty soon, we'll have an episode where Jay is asexual.
  • Andrew’s sexually is on a spectrum he’s more into girls but sometimes likes guys. Jay knows he’s bi and he’s into guys and girls on an even level. But that’s also because while Andrew’s sexually could be mostly straight as he’s mainly into girls but finds some guys hot. Jay is into both but is seen as either a gay top, just too much of a horn dog or just wants attention. Either way double standard.
  • It was not established at all in the aforementioned episode that Andrew is gay. The whole plot of the episode is him trying to figure out his sexuality before coming to the conclusion that he's not entirely sure yet and that's alright. By later seasons he's clearly figured out his sexual preferences.
• Okay, ... seriously. What the fuck is up with Coach Steve?
  • It was stated in one of the Season 5 episodes that he has a dead onion in his brain. Not sure if this was joke a throwaway joke or if this is actually the reason why he's so stupid.
• This has been confusing me for a while. In the Season 2 finale, Connie was fired as Jessie's Hormone Monster due to her bad influence, but in Season 3, she's still around her, acting as like nothing has happened. What happened in intermediate time?
  • Actually, what was said was that the other Human Resources monsters on Jessi's case were taking away Connie being Jessi's "number one". It comes across as being kind of like going on probation. She is still Jessi's Hormone Monstress, but she is no longer allowed free rein over Jessi. This would account for why, in Season 3, Connie is more narrowly focused on Jessi's developing sexuality and not pushing her to be a Bratty Teenage Daughter as much as she had been.
  • It’s possible Connie was helping Jessi get some angry brat behavior out of her system so her parents would pay attention to her. But Connie didn’t know how or when to tell Jessi to cut it back and didn’t know about the depression kitty being on the move until it was almost too late. But yeah I can’t imagine another hormone monster would want to take Jessi as their kid where as Connie promised she’d do better.
• So, when the tip of Andrew's finger got sliced off in "My Furry Valentine", ... are we just supposed to forget that?
• Are Devin and DeVon legally wed?
  • Doubt it. They probably did the "wedding" as the next step for their relationship to seal the deal in the way a twelve/thirteen-year-old would do so.
• Who is this "secret daughter" Jenna was talking about?
• Can everybody's genitals talk or just Jessi's vagina? We know Nick's pubes can talk but not his penis. Dicks are sentient in this universe, as we've seen with Maury so how come some genitals are alive and some are normal?
  • Since it's now canon that the hormone monsters are all in the characters' minds, Jessi's vagina and Nick's pubes being sentient falls under the same category. They are imagining those conversations.
• Everything considered, it's really difficult to tell what's supposed to be "real" and what's not in this show. Several cutaways and talking objects make absolutely no sense in the show's established environment and are clearly just meant to be non-canonical gags, right? But then the jokes come back and play a major role in the overarching plots of the series, leaving us to scratch our heads and think, if X was supposed to be real or fake and if X was fake, then why did Y happen? or if X was real then how is Y possible? And this isn't just for the hormone monsters. For instance, did Jay really impregnate a talking pillow or was that all just in his imagination? If it was all in Jay's head, then why would Jessi be playing along with the joke if she, herself found the joke obnoxious. And did Daniel really die from getting candy-flavored beer dumped on his head or was that just cutaway gag nonsense?
• If Bridgeton is a middle school, then why were there 9th graders going there in the first episode? And why was this the only episode where the 9th graders even made appearances?
  • Only one 9th grader appeared, and he was at a school dance with his 8th grade girlfriend. Bridgeton Middle only has 7th and 8th grade. But that means that an 8th grader dating a 7th grader may move on to high school while their younger date is still in middle school.
• Why is it that only the hormone monsters make prominent appearances in the kids' lives? As "The Department of Puberty" has shown us, there's also anxiety armadillos and ambition gremlins and intellect sphinxes, so why don't they show up whenever a kid experiences anxiety, ambition, intelligence, etc.?
  • Those positions may rotate between different "case workers". Human Resources has separate agencies for childhood, puberty, adulthood, old age and even the dead. Hormones play a huge role in puberty, but less of one most of the time. When they do impact another stage of life you get a different monster like the Menopause Banshee. Jessi's other monsters seemed more concerned about her future than her present, so they may actually have been from the Center for Adulthood and intervening only because they felt that Connie was preventing Jessi from maturing emotionally.
  • Also, as of Seasons 4 and 5, we're starting to see those monsters play bigger roles in the lives of these kids, such as the Anxiety Mosquito, the Love Bugs, the Hate Worms, the Gratitoad, etc.
• Are the superpowers from "Super Mouth" canon or not? Because if they were fake, then how would the "real life" segment at the end of the episode have been possible? Nick and Andrew would still be friends because, without Jessi's superpowers, she would have never been able to make Nick admit the truth about him not really being in love with Missy, so they'd have no reason to even be in that fight.
  • Nick likely confided the information to Jessi and it came out by accident in casual conversation or Andrew overheard Nick and Jessi talking about it.
• Oh, and more importantly, what was up with Marty's eyepatch?
  • Probably just a blink and you'll miss it.
  • I think the joke is that they're never going to explain it. It's just there because it's there.
• What was Bridgeton Middle School doing during Gym Class without Coach Steve?
• Why is the show called Big Mouth?
  • It's because the main character has a big mouth. If you look in the brilliance section of the fridge page, you'll also find that Nick's big mouth, along with his tiny penis is a reference to an old joke.
  Why do men like girls with big boobs and tight pussies?
  Because they have big mouths and tiny penises.
• So, the episode "Horrority House" obviously took place on Halloween and the episode "No Nut November" supposedly took place on the first day of November that same year, (otherwise all the characters would have already lost No Nut November), which means that not one day had passed between the two episodes. However, the episode "What Are You Gonna Do?" still aired and took place in between the two episodes. Was there some kind of a time paradox after Halloween, causing an extra mini-month warp into existence between October 31st and November 1st that only lasted about two or three days?
  • More likely, they just didn't start doing the challenge on the first day of November because none of them even heard of it until Jay found out about it while trying to get his mind off Lola.
• In season 1, in "The Head Push", when Andrew and Missy are about to kiss in the closet, Maury and Connie have a meeting about what their clients can do, where Connie represents herself as Missy's hormone monstress, by saying "my client (Missy) also has no idea what she's doing" in regards to the kissing. However, she is never seen around Missy after that, and in season 3, in "Discloure The Movie: The Musical", Mona becomes Missy's hormone monstress and when she shows up, Missy says "I'm not ready" as in she's not ready for the whole puberty thing just yet, but why would she say that if she's had a hormone monstress before? So, was Connie actually her hormone monstress, did Missy just not know about it at the time or is this just something the creators forgot about?
  • Missy wasn't quite into puberty yet. Connie herself that noted that she "lost" Missy when Missy decided that she didn't really want to date Andrew. Hormone Monsters are drawn to lust after all. Maury had a high ranking in Human Resources (on the spinoff) largely because of Andrew's insatiable masturbation, which surpassed all of his other cases (and those of other Hormone Monsters). That said, Connie nearly got pulled off Jessi's case because early on she was just driving her towards juvenile delinquency instead of sexual maturity. We also saw later, when Connie was assigned to both Jessi and Nick, that she isn't very good at handling multiple kids that interact with each other a lot. Maybe Human Resources decided that a different Hormone Monstress could do a better job with Missy and so they assigned Mona to her instead?
• In "The Shane Lizard Rises", the Shame Wizard notes to Jay that he's the only uncircumcised male student in the school. As someone who was circumcised and brought up non-religious, I ask this question because I read somewhere that American non-Jewish males born after 1985 were automatically circumcised. If that was the case, then why are Jay and I presume his brothers uncut? Additionally, I read somewhere that circumcision rates in America went down some years ago. Basically, what I'm trying to say is Jay being the only uncut male student in Bridgeton Middle is unlikely to me. So can anybody please help me out here?
  • For decades, yes, the default was circumcision unless the parents decided otherwise. The shift away from circumcision is fairly recent and for the kids to be the right age for their grade in season 1 they would be born in 2004-2005, before the movement had really gained footing.
    • So, in other words...?
  • Circumcision was never legally mandatory, just strongly recommended by the U.S. medical profession (but not globally) because of perceived reduced risk of certain diseases, including HIV. Parents do have the option of refusing circumcision for their children. Given Guy Bilzerian's attitudes on masculinity, it's not surprising that he didn't want his sons to be circumcised.
• Missy gets her hair done on summer vacation and her parents don't think she needs to go back to the salon at all the first few months of school? This is not only embarrassing for her but could have caused a teacher to think Missy was being neglected at home. Both her parents are professors, do they really not have the presence of mind to take care of her basic grooming needs?
  • Neither of them is particularly fastidious about appearance. Monica doesn't shave her armpits (and presumably not her legs either). Cyrus simply keeps his own hair shaved very short. Missy's cousins, and the hairdresser in Atlanta who first did her corn rows, were shocked to learn that she was washing her hair with an "all-in-one" body wash from Costco.
• Why didn't Sonia, Walter, or Rochelle show up or even get so much of a MENTION in Season 6?