Tuca & Bertie Got High and Heavy on the Fumes of Codependency

In Tuca & Bertie’s second season, the feathered associates are again and nonetheless a pair of sizzling messes dwelling their finest lives in a world full of different anthropomorphic animals and glistening tomato strippers who’re most likely bored with being requested whether or not they’re GMOs or natural. However, final night time’s episode, “Planteau,” went even deeper.

Keeping with the present’s first season, which adopted Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) and Bertie (Ali Wong) as they went via trials and tribulations that helped them higher perceive themselves, the brand new season kicked off final week with the pair doubling down on their commitments to emotional progress. While Tuca mustered up the braveness to start courting once more as a comparatively latest sober individual, Bertie got down to discover a therapist to assist cope with her crippling bouts of hysteria. Both Tuca’s eager for emotional intimacy and Bertie’s must cope with her feelings with individuals different than Tuca are parts of their personalities that Tuca & Bertie’s explored beforehand. But “Bird Mechanics” and “Planteau,” Tuca & Bertie’s two most up-to-date episodes, have been revisiting these concepts as a way to emphasize how life-style modifications and dealing on one’s psychological well being are processes that take time.

Though Tuca’s nonetheless susceptible to existential messiness, her sobriety is definitely one thing she’s navigated with energy and uncanny knowledge when confronted with obstacles like her belligerent, merciless aunt Tallulah (Jennifer Lewis). It’s comparatively simple for Tuca to place herself again in the marketplace as she ropes a bunch of unexpecting individuals onto her Sex Bus—a automobile that turns into the setting of a courting present wherein going out on a date along with her is the final word prize. For Bertie, monitoring down a therapist she correctly vibes with proves to be a tough job. Even after she ultimately settles into a cushty sample with Dr. Joanne (Pamela Adlon), by the top of “The Bird Mechanics,” the second episode opens with it being fairly clear that neither Tuca nor Bertie is in what one may contemplate a great place.

Good as issues nonetheless are between Bertie and her boyfriend Speckle (Steven Yeun), “Planteau” lays out how Bertie’s nonetheless taking steps to be a extra social individual considerably extra unbiased from him and Tuca. When Speckle’s sister Dottie (Steven Universe’s Michaela Dietz) invitations Bertie to hitch her bachelorette social gathering in Planteau—a Vegas-like metropolis filled with plant individuals—she agrees out of a need to maintain breaking out of her shell and assembly new individuals. Though Tuca and Speckle are additionally current for the journey, the thought of hitting Planteau’s streets for a wild celebration continues to be sufficient to almost ship Bertie into conniptions. So, Bertie decides she’ll be sober buddies for the night with Tuca so long as she agrees to not go away her alone and awkward.

One of the largest anxieties Tuca handled in season one stemmed from her concern that with out ingesting, she may not be the charismatic type of individual that others naturally gravitate in direction of. Through the method of placing herself again on the market and giving herself time to determine how she desires to reside her life now, although, she’s been capable of transfer previous a lot of that outdated self-doubt. It’s one thing that’s made it considerably simpler for her to establish what elements of her friendship with Bertie won’t be wholesome. Tuca & Bertie’s jokingly danced across the concept of its two leads being emotionally codependent to a fault, however the way in which that it involves the fore in “Planteau” feels distinctly like a narrative formed by how the previous yr has strained many individuals’s friendships.

When Tuca tells Bertie she doesn’t must drink to have an excellent time, she genuinely means it, but it surely’s tough for Bertie to internalize—or maybe put a lot religion in—what Tuca tells her, and much more of a problem for her to grapple along with her personal self-consciousness. The remaining moments of “The Bird Mechanics” reveal that whereas Tuca really does care about Bertie, she additionally keenly feels how prioritizing Bertie’s emotional wants earlier than her personal is inflicting her deep ache. It’s not that Tuca doesn’t wish to be there for her good friend, however that at this level of their lives, Bertie hasn’t taken the time to think about whether or not she’s reciprocating the type of care and a spotlight that her finest good friend has.

Tuca & Bertie items this story collectively in a means that doesn’t scale back the friction between the 2 to a easy occasion of 1 good friend not realizing that they’ve been considerably egocentric, however intensifies it. Bertie begins to sneak drinks whereas out as a way to work up a buzz to get her on Tuca and the opposite drunk bachelorettes’ degree of carefreeness, and when Tuca finds out, the betrayal brings the social gathering to an abrupt halt. What “Planteau” by no means explicitly spells out, however is woven into the subtext of the combat, is that even in her try at being supportive of Tuca’s sobriety, Bertie was finally nonetheless creating an imposition for her good friend whose solely need was to have an excellent, non-intoxicated time with a bunch of fellow animals in a city filled with speaking vegatables and fruits. Though Tuca and Betie are capable of patch issues up after their falling out, “Planteau” makes clear that patches may not likely be sufficient to take care of their friendship because the season progresses, which isn’t essentially a nasty factor.

As little doubt as there may be that Tuca and Bertie will stay associates, Tuca & Bertie’s very purposefully seeding the likelihood that what the 2 of them want most proper now’s time aside—not precisely as a result of they’re not good for each other, however as a result of there are occasions in individuals’s lives the place change and recalibration are essential. Emotional tough patches just like the one Tuca and Bertie have wandered into sometimes solely develop extra treacherous until the individuals misplaced in them legitimately hash out what’s on their minds. That form of forthrightness has been a trademark of Tuca’s interactions with individuals for fairly a while now, however by the ultimate second of “Planteau,” it’s clear that Bertie isn’t fairly there simply but. The extra time Bertie spends bottling up her insecurities, the extra probably that they’re simply going to bubble up once more in much more intense, sudden methods, and there’s no telling whether or not Tuca (and maybe additionally Speckle) can be ready for what occurs subsequent.

Tuca & Bertie’s second season is airing Sunday nights on Adult Swim.

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