Gone is the safety of the Bridgeton Middle School locker room. In its place is the "Social Lyceum," a bizarre, Gilded Age-inspired private school where the rich kids are already doing coke and the guidance counselor is a 400-year-old demon. The move forces Big Mouth to ask a question it has deftly avoided for years: What happens when your support system collapses?

Big Mouth Season 7 understands a terrifying truth about adolescence that most shows ignore: the real horror of puberty isn’t the first pimple or the wet dream. It’s the creeping realization that your childhood best friends will one day become strangers you text every six months.

In this episode, Jessi (Jessi Klein) discovers her estranged grandmother is dying in a hospice in Queens. What follows is a half-hour that channels the spirit of The Farewell and Tick, Tick… Boom! The show’s animation style shifts to a watercolor dreamscape as Jessi confronts mortality without the buffer of a joke. The Shame Wizard (also Kroll) shows up not as a tormentor, but as a weary philosopher, admitting that even he is afraid of the void.

By [Staff Writer]

By embracing that melancholy, Big Mouth has secured its legacy. It is no longer just the filthiest show on television. It is one of the wisest.