Big Mouth is an animated comedy filled with colorful characters. From the kids suffering through the pains of puberty to the outrageous and vulgar hormone monsters, there are some interesting people populating this world. But perhaps the most memorable is the high school gym teacher, Coach Steve.
Coach Steve is an incredibly positive and lonely man. He is a well-meaning guy who wants to make friends and spend time with others. But just as you begin to sympathize with him, he reminds you that he is also a pretty skeezy human being as well, which gives us conflicting feelings. Here are some of the times we felt bad for Coach Steve on Big Mouth and some times he just creeped us out.
Felt Bad: Jay’s Mom
Even a man like Coach Steve is able to find romance on the show albeit in an unexpected place. After Coach Steve and Jay form a friendship, Jay’s mom takes a special interest in Coach Steve, somehow finding him attractive.
Coach Steve is finally able to lose his virginity, a prospect that scares him a lot. However, after sleeping with Jay’s mom, Coach Steve thinks that they are in love and is part of the family, only to wind up alone once again after Jay’s dad returns.
Creeped Out: Hanging Out With Kids
Coach Steve’s over-affectionate nature is creepy enough with other adults. But it becomes much more concerning when he acts that way with his students. Though he is a harmless man who is quite childish himself, he doesn’t seem to understand how inappropriate it is to be friends with the kids he teaches.
He is so lonely that he inserts himself into his students’ lives in very wrong ways. He is constantly asking his students if they want to hang out with him. He even forms a genuine bond with Jay, which isn’t healthy for either of them.
Felt Bad: Steve The Virgin
Though it wasn’t too much of a shocker, the boys at school discovered that Coach Steve was, in fact, a virgin. His total lack of knowledge about sexuality sort of hinted at this, but when confronted with the question, Steve openly admits it is true.
While being a virgin, even at Steve’s age, is fine if that is a choice, it seems Steve was just confused about things, which led to a life of celibacy. When asked why he never had sex, Coach Steve explains that he couldn’t because he is not a “mommy or daddy.”
Creeped Out: Giving Advice
Most of the kids are smart enough to know not to ask Coach Steve for advice about their puberty struggles. Even if he is their sex-ed teacher, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have the knowledge to help. But when Jay is desperate, he goes to Coach Steve for help about his burgeoning bisexuality.
This leads to a pretty inappropriate conversation between a teen student and an adult teacher. While Coach Steve is trying to help, he should have known that it is pretty creepy to talk to a student about having sex with a couch cushion.
Felt Bad: Best Friends
Friendship seems to be the most important thing to Coach Steve, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that he doesn’t have any friends. Despite his eccentricities, he is a very nice man who means well. He tries to make friends with just about everyone he meets, but usually creeps everyone out.
The desperation with which Coach Steve searches for friends is certainly funny, but also pretty tragic. He seems to be taken by surprise anytime someone responds to him and he considers everyone he meets to immediately be his best friend.
Creeped Out: Getting Attached
Though it is sweet how friendly Coach Steve can be, it’s also disturbing how quickly and how severely he grows attached to people. It is also as if people cannot show any kindness toward him because he will latch onto that and never let go.
He can become immediately attached to a complete stranger, holding the hand of a random man just because they happen to be sitting next to each other. He also tells Miss Benitez that he is completely willing to kill for her, even though he knows it will weigh on him.
Felt Bad: Proposing To Miss B
Coach Steve is nice to everyone without ever expecting anything in return. But much to his surprise, one of the teachers, Miss Benitez, returns his kindness. She treats Steve with respect, talks to him and even teaches him how to read. This level of kindness is completely new for Steve, which he mistakes as love.
Immediately, we feel bad for Steve because we can see he is severely misreading the signals from Miss Benitez. This leads to him declaring his love for her almost immediately and eventually proposing to her, which she turns down.
Creeped Out: Pink-Eye Epidemic
Coach Steve does not have the strongest sense of hygiene in the world. In fact, he can be downright gross with some of his lifestyle choices. So it is not surprising that he becomes “patient zero” for an outbreak of pink-eye in the school.
By his own guess, he got pink-eye from basketballs which had feces on them. The result is gross, crusty eyes swollen shut so that Steve is completely unable to see. What makes this even more revolting is that Steve later admits to putting the feces on the balls himself.
Felt Bad: Fired
Coach Steve might not be the most qualified man to be an educator, but his job is very important to him. He enjoys teaching the kids and it seems to distract him from the awfulness of the rest of his life. So seeing that job taken away from him at the end of Season 2 was a sad moment.
Though Coach Steve seems to keep his spirits high and finds ways to keep busy, his entire goal throughout Season 3 is to get his job back. Luckily, by the end of the season, he is Coach Steve once again.
Creeped Out: His Diet
Coach Steve really should be dead. He does not live a healthy lifestyle and makes horrific choices in his diet. He has to regularly eat popsicles so his tongue doesn’t dry out. He eats Dippin Dots ice cream even though he thought it was hamster droppings. He even drank soda that had dead goldfish floating it in.
But the most unusual and grotesque dietary choice was drinking milk even though the smell of dairy makes him vomit profusely. He drinks it to the point of apparently dying, only to come back and continue drinking.
