She even had a complete meltdown in a grocery store, presented via the musical number “I’m Losing My Shit,” several months before a global pandemic would cause many, many humans to have panic attacks in grocery stores.
In the first episode, she’s wracked with such fear about what should be a fun event — an anniversary dinner with Speckle — that she spends an inordinate amount of time trying to find the perfect therapist who can magically give her the life hack she needs to achieve calm.
The sorts of themes addressed in the Adult Swim version of Tuca & Bertie — mental health, toxic masculinity in the workplace, the loyalty and limits of tight friendships — are pretty similar to those addressed in the Netflix incarnation.
But it also seems to be embracing its introspective side more openly, the way it did in “The Jelly Lakes,” the first season’s penultimate episode, which addressed a long-buried, traumatic incident in Bertie’s childhood.
From the very beginning of the first episode, Bertie is on edge, a feeling that intensifies when Pastry Pete, the chef and mentor who sexually harassed her, reasserts his presence this season.
When Tuca goes on her late-night walks, the buildings in Birdtown are drawn in outline only, without details or colors filled in, capturing the dim eeriness and strange comfort that comes from being one of the few beings with their eyes open when everyone else’s are shut.
Because its world is so fantastical in nature, some viewers may feel more comfortable recognizing a kinship between themselves and its inhabitants — it feels like less of a personal attack to see a bit of yourself in a pretty cartoon song thrush who’s dealing with severe angst than in a live-action, flesh-and-blood human doing the same thing.
The core of Tuca & Bertie obviously lives right there in its title: the relationship between the two central characters is what defines the whole series.
But those bird BFFs are nevertheless dealing with many of the same issues affecting those of us emerging from COVID: uncertainty, sleeplessness, social apprehension, and questions about which people in our lives are doing us good rather than harm.