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Tuca & Bertie Season 1 Review

Tuca & Bertie is an adult animated sitcom created by Lisa Hanawalt and starring Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong. The first season premiered on Netflix in 2019.

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“Since you moved out,

I feel like something’s missing“

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This is a show made by women for women. As a guy watching this show, it’s still pretty good, though it’s obviously extremely female-centric. It follows the relationship between two women. One is a toucan and the other is a song thrush. The show is at its best when focusing on the existential crisis of their friendship and their relationships. It’s very well written in dialogue, though its humor is for now hit-or-miss, and certainly not truly funny as I cannot remember laughing hard once during the first season.

The theme song is pretty good and the voice acting is uniformly excellent. Yes, these voices are initially odd in an animated format, but eventually I got used to them and I even found Haddish and Wong excelling in emotiveness especially. Tuca is definitely obnoxious at first, but she grew on me eventually, though she remains your typical over-the-top sitcom sidekick.

Bertie fares much better. She isn’t funny and Ali Wong is definitely not a good comedian unlike Haddish, but as a straight character she really worked and she got a great arc. The first season definitely belonged to Bertie. Her husband is also very likable and the relationship between the two is complicated and well explored.

By far the biggest highlight of Tuca & Bertie is its visual style. The show was made by some ‘BoJack Horseman’ people, but it doesn’t resemble that show in the slightest, certainly not in the overall story and more lightweight tone. But the animation has its similarities, though this world is much more colorful and bright.

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The show is trippy and surreal in its world and pleasantly goofy in character designs. There are so many beautiful moments to be had here in terms of the visuals and imagery while the overall color palette and the minimalism in its aesthetic pleasantly reminded me of surreal animation from the sixties, in particular the ‘Pink Panther’ series.

The first season has ten episodes and it took a while for the show to get its groove. The Sugar Bowl established the characters well, but the tone and the storytelling wasn’t deftly realized here at all. The Promotion is also not great. Its tackling of sexual harassment wasn’t very sophisticated and the episode was certainly not funny.

The Deli Guy is the first truly excellent episode of this series that is actually quite amusing in its sex-centered storylines. The one with Bertie trying new things out with Speckle was a lot of fun and the show definitely felt realistic in its depiction of what women really fantasize about. The Sex Bugs is entertaining and fun, but a concept that ‘Big Mouth’ would have done better.

Plumage is interesting for pairing Speckle and Tuca. The result is a surprisingly fun, endearing dynamic. The aunt character was also very funny and well developed. The Open House is ridiculous and chaotic, but it works in the animation style as this is by far the most artistic-looking episode of the bunch. Yeast Week is overly dramatic and not fun enough, though the ending where the two break from their friendship for a while was very touching.

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The New Bird is important for pairing the two birds back together in a moving fashion. The Jelly Lakes is by far the most disturbing, darkest episode of this season that explores PTSD from sexual assault. It is the most reminiscent in that regard to ‘BoJack’ and it’s very well written. SweetBeak is a solid finale that ends well and it features a particularly explosive, memorable fight between Bertie and Speckle.