{"id":434265,"date":"2026-05-19T01:35:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434265\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T01:35:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:35:15","slug":"mating-season-creators-on-sex-jokes-and-emotional-stakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434265\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Mating Season’ Creators On Sex Jokes And Emotional Stakes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After nearly a decade of turning adolescent anxiety into one of streaming animation\u2019s most successful adult comedies, the creative team behind Big Mouth faced a seemingly simple question when considering what came next. As co-creator Mark Levin tells us, they wanted to make something \u201cthat we would want to see, that we could fall in love with and that we could tell honest stories in a reflection, even though in this case we\u2019re using animals to tell the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is Netflix\u2019s Mating Season, an animated adult romantic comedy series from Levin, Jennifer Flackett, Andrew Goldberg, and Nick Kroll, produced with the prolific indie animation studio Titmouse. Set in a world populated by sexually adventurous bears, raccoons, foxes, deer, and other woodland creatures, the series shifts the focus from puberty to adulthood and the exhausting search for connection, both physical (especially physical) and emotional.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were interested in telling stories about the next phase of life,\u201d Flackett says. \u201cBig Mouth was such a specific time of life, and it had its own set of rules. And we were interested in that kind of period of life when you\u2019re kind of in your 20s, and you\u2019re looking for your person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The creators briefly explored live-action versions of those themes before deciding that the material they wanted to cover would be better done in animation, with its fewer limitations.<\/p>\n

Mating Season, in its earlier forms, was being developed as a feature. Eventually, though, the team realized there was too much terrain to cover in a single story. \u201cThere are so many stories to be told here, it\u2019s better as a series,\u201d Flackett insists.<\/p>\n

Animals Behaving Like People<\/p>\n

Part of the appeal came from the freedom animals offered thematically and visually. While Big Mouth often approached sex through metaphor, Mating Season embraces the absurdity of animal behavior more directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something about it that we never really liked to show very much between humans,\u201d Flackett recalls of Big Mouth\u2019s sexual content. \u201cSo we always went to metaphor. There was a skating metaphor. There was a train metaphor\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Mating Season, sex between animals is funnier. And you can look at it in a way where you\u2019re not like, \u2018Oh, my eyes,\u2019\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n

That framework opened up new storytelling possibilities. \u201cWhen you get something like the copulatory tie, or Fawn wanting to tame a wolf, all of those things play so beautifully into a human and animal narrative,\u201d Flackett said.<\/p>\n

\"Mating<\/a><\/p>\n

To better nail down their metaphors, the team conducted extensive wildlife research. Goldberg said the staff spent hours watching nature documentaries together and studying real animal behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to write, but we also like to learn and research,\u201d Goldberg says. \u201cWe\u2019ve watched a ton of nature videos. We\u2019ve done a lot of animal research. We\u2019ve even sat together as a writing staff and just watched nature videos.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the emotional material remained grounded in modern relationships and contemporary anxieties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be talking about how we live now,\u201d Flackett says. \u201cWe really like talking about how people find love. That to us is just really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the show\u2019s raunchy surface, the creators repeatedly emphasize that emotional connection remains the center of the series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe characters are trying to connect with other animals,\u201d Goldberg says. \u201cWhich is, I think, why we do a lot of the stupid stuff we do as people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levin added that while sex and relationships move the story along in their shows, it\u2019s the friend groups that ultimately ground both Big Mouth and Mating Season. \u201cAt the end of the day, it comes back to the core relationships between the main characters,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that gives us a real anchor for the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

More Human than Human<\/p>\n

One of the show\u2019s biggest animation challenges involved figuring out how anthropomorphic these characters should be. The animals walk upright during conversations and dates, but shift onto all fours during moments of instinct, panic, hunting, combat, or\u2026 other more primal activities.<\/p>\n

Animation supervisor Anthony Lioi said they discovered early that the transition between human and animal behavior would define the show\u2019s visual identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe designed Fawn the deer standing up on two legs,\u201d Lioi explains. \u201cSo her proportions were such that it\u2019s like, that doesn\u2019t work when she just goes on all fours.\u201d<\/p>\n

The solution became part of the comedy. \u201cWe just drew a real deer with Fawn\u2019s head,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then it was like, what if the gag and the joke is that as they return to all fours, they become more animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mating<\/a>\u2018Mating Season\u2019 Character Sketches
\n\"Mating<\/a>\u2018Mating Season\u2019 Character Concepts<\/p>\n

Goldberg says the creative team gradually established rules for when characters revert to instinct.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey act like people until they have a reason not to,\u201d he explains. \u201cIf they\u2019re going to get down and charge each other and fight, they\u2019re going to be animals. If they\u2019re going to run away in fear, they\u2019re going to be animals. But if they\u2019re on a date, they\u2019re more like people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those discoveries continued throughout development. Lioi describes how practical design issues evolved into recurring comedic opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cRay Raccoon was tiny compared to his best friend, Josh,\u201d he recalls of early explorations. \u201cSo then we had to go, \u2018Oh wait, how do we get a two-shot in here?\u2019 That got us to figure out pretty soon, Ray could climb up Josh, and then that added all these other physical gags and opened our minds to new ways to play with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production\u2019s confidence in its work benefited from the fact that much of the Big Mouth crew remained intact.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like a first season in a lot of ways,\u201d Flackett said. \u201cIt was kind of like our 11th or 12th season together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mating<\/a>\u2018Mating Season\u2019 Character Sketches
\nThe Titmouse Relationship<\/p>\n

The series also continues the long-running creative partnership between Netflix and Titmouse, one that helped define the initial success of Big Mouth.<\/p>\n

Goldberg credits Lioi with helping establish that connection in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went around and visited all the different animation houses in L.A.,\u201d Goldberg recalls. \u201cTitmouse stood out, one, because we liked their vibe, we liked how artist-friendly they are, and two, Anthony was doing a show there. He trusted them. He liked working there. And we valued his opinion a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lioi described a production environment built around experimentation and trust. \u201cThere was just a freedom there that we could actually play,\u201d he remembers, emphasizing how important it was that the pipeline never felt too rigid.<\/p>\n

\"Mating<\/a>\u2018Mating Season\u2019 Background Sketches
\n\"Mating<\/a>\u2018Mating Season\u2019 Background Concept<\/p>\n

That freedom extends into the production process itself. Levin describes a highly refined script-driven pipeline developed over more than a decade of making adult animation. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to waste a lot of pencil mileage on jokes that aren\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Episodes are extensively rewritten before storyboarding begins, something Lioi said remains surprisingly rare in television animation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the first and only productions where rewrites are actually done before we start boards,\u201d he says. \u201cSo many shows I\u2019ve been on, we\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019ll fix it in animatic.\u2019 This team figures things out every step of the way, and it just gets better and better instead of hoping it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n

That collaborative culture has become central to how the creators think about success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe process is everything to us,\u201d Flackett insists. \u201cCreating a repeatable and enjoyable process is, in a way, the most important thing. Because you can\u2019t know how the show will be perceived. You really hope the audience likes it. You know that you like it. But the only control you have before release is over the process and making it a good one for everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a series about desperately searching for companionship in a chaotic world, that philosophy feels entirely appropriate. Underneath all the animal sex jokes and woodland chaos, Mating Season sounds less interested in shock value than in the universal panic of wanting somebody to love you back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After nearly a decade of turning adolescent anxiety into one of streaming animation\u2019s most successful adult comedies, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-434265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}