Mating Season: Season 1. (L-R) Zach Woods as Josh and Maria Bamford as Kiki in Mating Season: Season 1. Ten million. Netflix © 2026
mating season It’s a painful example of a cheesy comedy that strains for the shock factor but only reaches for silliness. Coming from the team behind Big Mouth, a show that not only has its critics, but also a group of undeniably dedicated fans, mating season Wants to continue that strain of simple animation with a sense of brutal and provocative humor.
Although it does a good job of attracting those who are fond of gross-out humor, its larger-scale jokes and more focused set-up are far less funny than the odd throwaway line. Mating season is at its best when it doesn’t require so much effort.
A promising campus ruined
The premise of the show, as much as it is derived from one sentence, is promising on paper. The idea of a show about dating and relationships through the comedic lens of mating season in the woods is a good one. Many live-action sitcoms have found success on the same basis in the past and present. What changes in Mating Season is those shows’ penchant for realism, making the comedy more realistic.
In the first episode, we meet a bear named Josh, who wakes up from hibernation to find that his partner has moved on with a new lover. Her colorful group of friends, including a hypersexual raccoon named Ray, a lesbian fox named Penelope, and a mild-mannered deer, Fawn, all help her move forward. Each episode follows a similar pattern: Josh becomes depressed, a friend tries to help with a ridiculous plan, the plan fails, rinse and repeat.
Mating Season: Season 1. (L-R) Nick Kroll as Ray, Zach Woods as Josh, Drew Tarver as Zeke, June Dianne Raphael as Fawn, and Sabrina Jalies as Penelope in Mating Season: Season 1. Cr. Netflix © 2026
jokes without depth
The big problem with Mating Season comes from the heavy jumping in writing style between regular sitcom setup and attempts at provocative jokes. Most of the show’s dialogue sounds like someone wrote an extremely boring episode of How I Met Your Mother without any jokes, remembered that the show is about animals and threw in a bunch of references to their genitals. It’s a jarring structure that has little to say about modern dating and very little to add in terms of comedy.
While any show focused on dating tackles the same dilemmas, Mating Season understands that many of these issues are evergreen and deserve debate. What kind of age difference is appropriate in a relationship, how difficult it can be to navigate dating apps and finding love among gay communities are topics that have a lot of unknown depth, but the show isn’t interested in them. The focus of Mating Season is obviously more on comedy than commentary, but good comedy is often found in good commentary. Here, the philosophy is of depth through jokes rather than depth through jokes. This creates a disconnect between the show’s premise and its humor, which isn’t that strong anyway.
Mating Season: Season 1. (L-R) June Dianne as Rafael Fawn, Sabrina Jalies as Penelope, Zach Woods as Josh, and Nick Kroll as Ray in Mating Season: Season 1. Cr. Netflix © 2026
A dated formula in a changed world
To make stimulating work effective, it is necessary to have a sense of novelty in it. when you like the show family Guy Since first airing, they were pushing the limits of what could be broadcast on national television. Even though it wasn’t the best written show of all time, its goal of being provocative was successful. mating season A very different world exists where we have been in the streaming era for over a decade and the old ideas of what can and cannot be shown have almost faded away. It’s difficult trying to handle the legacy of Family Guy in this era, and it’s easy to sympathize with the show trying to recreate its magic.
However, in 2026, the idea of a 2D adult animated sitcom with crude humor isn’t exactly interesting, and Mating Season does nothing to lower audience expectations. We are served exactly what we expect, and good comedy depends on at least a little subversion. We are expected to find the mere image of animals having sex or the description of Ray’s multiple orgasms ridiculous. None of this is new, and it all feels a little lazy.
where it works
The more spontaneous and fun comedy comes in the form of throwaway lines that are far more subtle and don’t feel like the show is worth laughing at. Some of these are then undercut by too many ham-fisted gags, but the majority stand alone as great bits, especially compared to the show’s bigger set-piece gags.
decision
Mating Season has no ambitions beyond the course of an adult animated sitcom. It has a conservative approach to its art style, which looks exactly like you picture it in your mind, and its humor, which is exactly like you picture it in your mind. Sometimes, a show can confidently retrace the steps of others in an entertaining way, but we’re so far past that point with animated sitcoms that the same old tricks don’t work anymore. The mating season finds itself at the end of the life cycle of this formula.
