Season Review: Mating Season Season One
Overview:
Netflix recently dropped a new series, Mating Season, looking at the love lives of various animals in the woods, coming from the cast and crew as Big Mouth.
Our Take:
The series starts out with four animal friends, Ray the raccoon, Fawn the deer, Josh the bear, and Penelope the fox. Of course, just because this is an animated series about talking animals doesn’t mean that is going to be a cute and cuddly series.
Things start out with Josh waking up from hibernation, only to learn that he overslept. His love, Olivia, has left him for another bear. And it soon becomes clear that his oversleeping was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. She feels that he has been hibernating through life.
Meanwhile, Fawn is dealing with her father dating a new doe after the death of her mother. After learning of her stepmother-to-be’s mindset to not see age, she decides hooking up with an older buck herself. Of course, her father will prove to be a “do as I say, not as I do” type of parent.
Before fans wonder if this is all just going be animals going through metaphors about what people go through while dating, just with animals, Ray finds himself stuck within a “copulatory tie.”
Obviously, things aren’t going to work out for Josh during the first episode. During a fight with Olivia’s new love, who is bigger and stronger than him in every regard, he still manages to win by really hitting below the belt. By which I mean tearing it off, causing his rival to bleed to death. Of course, this ends up scaring off Olivia.
By the second episode, the anthropomorphizing continues, as Josh tries to explore dating with the help of “Tinkler,” which is basically Tinder with more focus on peeing on trees. After realizing that the other animals aren’t looking for love, he gets pressured into going on a date with an old bear from school. It seems like the typical “ugly duckling” storyline, with his old acquaintances no longer ripping off the fur from her belly, but the two almost immediately break down crying over their exes. Agreeing that they need to work on themselves before getting back into dating. Honestly, it’s at least more interesting than a typical “ugly duckling” relationship.
Meanwhile, Ray realizes he probably shouldn’t have sold his ex-girlfriend’s panties to a creepy bison who lives in the woods. Well, the dark side, since they all sort of live in the woods.
The real storyline of the episode, however, is Penelope, who tries hitting up the forest’s lesbian bars. Trying to get in with a group of jean jacket wearing girls, things take a turn during mushroom foraging when the group takes more of an interest in Fawn. Jealousy consumes her, until a talk with her beloved mushrooms convinces her that love is in abundance and that love helps to create more love. Sure, the mushrooms are secretly evil, but they do still make a good point. With a little prodding, Penelople patches things up with Fawn and learns she dodged a bullet, with the sow she was pining after turning out to be in a toxic relationship. To give her an even happier ending, she even finds a new chance at love with a sassy armadillo. And she seems to come with quite a soft shell.
What unfolds is a season of sex cults and destination weddings, all starring talking animals. It can be a little jarring about how the show goes back and forth on just how “human” the animals are. Some wear clothes, while others don’t. Of course, this is an age-old issue in animation. It’s basically Goofy vs. Pluto all over again.
However, this turns out to be a major point of the series as it reaches its finale. In a send-up to romantic comedies, Fawn contemplates getting back with an ex, the wolfish Dylan, right before it gets married. The story is set up as him rejecting his bride-to-be for her, only for it to turn out that he was just using her for one last hookup. Just to drive the point further, he even repeats the words he used to charm her on his fiancée, Cynthia. This is when Ray calls out the thing that is likely in the back of most viewers’ minds: that they are wild animals acting like civilized humans.
It becomes apparent that the characters have been following fantasies of love, but not the real thing, which the show paints as chaotic by nature. Josh ruins relationships because he wants true love then and there while Ray only thinks of indulging himself. The show tries to say that they both need balance in their own ways.
Penelope is the closest a character gets to a happy ending as the season draws to a close. However, one last twist might keep things from working out. After all, the show will need drama if it gets a second season.
Knowing that the series comes from the creators of Big Mouth lets you know from the start just what you are getting into. The fact that the characters are animals, and mature enough to mate, really lets the show crank up the sex and toilet humor, and this wasn’t really a low bar to begin with. In other words, this really isn’t a series for the faint of heart.
As mentioned, a lot of what the animals go through are clearly meant to be metaphors for what people go through in the real world, especially when it comes to dating. Sometimes, it’s more blatant than others, but viewers are bound to have one scene that they can empathize with. Though hopefully, for their sake, not that much.
A running joke throughout the series is that the animals seem completely aware of what’s going on in the human world, from jokes about furries to wishing death and damnation on Alvin and the Chipmunks. It sometimes allows the subtext of some jokes to become outright text. However, it will at least save us from those conspiracy theory fan videos about where humans are in this universe.
Given the themes of the series, some viewers might disagree on the overall message, with many hoping that real love does exist and doesn’t have to be chaotic. The trailer even spells out, “We’re all animals!,” which becomes a lot less subtle in hindsight. Still, with all the focus on love in all its forms, there are bound to be some points each viewer can understand. Besides, those talking mushrooms could totally be the star of a Human Resources-style spin-off.
