Spoilers ahead for Big Mouth Season 3. There are few joys quite like finding a television show or movie that feels made specifically for you. That glorious feeling is exactly what Jay feels on Big Mouth when he comes across Gordie's Journey, a show about a pansexual Canadian magician trying to navigate love, life, and illusions in the Toronto magic scene. Martin Short, who voices Gordie on Big Mouth is a Canadian legend in his own right and has impersonated magicians in the past, (although he may not be pansexual like Gordie is).
Short is known for his many years on Saturday Night Live, the legendary Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV, and a career in comedy that spans 50 years and numerous different shows and movies. Short brings his comic talent, musical ability, and an exaggerated Canadian accent to the role of Gordie, who ends up teaching Jay a very important lesson about coming to terms with one's own sexual identity.
Jay's been having difficulty determining his own sexual identity for the entirety of Big Mouth, having realized that while most of his friends are straight, he's doesn't share the same attraction to other genders. Gordie's Journey serves as an great example for Jay that he is free to explore his own identity and can decide on how to label himself whenever he likes, and that he can change those labels whenever it feels appropriate.
After devouring the first season of Gordie's Journey as fast as possible, Jay bemoans the season's ending for being a cliffhanger and not showing Gordie make a decision about his own orientation. While Gordie believes that he may be a "pansexual, demi-romantic illusionist," his final address to the audience of his show-within-a-show reveals that all he really knows about himself is summed up by the sentence "my name is Gordie, and my journey has only just begun." Jay's frustration with Gordie's lack of a decision mirrors his frustration at himself for not being entire sure where on the spectrum of sexual identity he, himself, falls.
Just when all hope seems lost, Gordie steps out of his show to lead a song-and-dance number about sexual identities to show Jay that it's okay to be pansexual, omnisexual, bisexual, androsexual, demisexual, or anything that Jay is or decides he wants to explore being.
In a triumphant moment, Jay races into a party to announce to his friends that he's a bisexual, cisgendered, polyamorous magician — which is deflated by the revelation that no one is there to hear him except for a caterer.
However, the important thing is not that Jay failed to tell others about his own identity, but that he managed to find a set of labels that fit him and allowed him to feel comfortable enough in his identity to share it out loud, even if the only one who is listening is a racoon. While Martin Short's appearance as Gordie on Big Mouth may be limited to one episode, the fact that Big Mouth has been renewed for three more seasons suggests that Jay may end up catching Seasons 2, 3, and 4 of Gordie's Journey in the future and that Jay's journey is far from over.
