Review: Tuca & Bertie “The Flood”

Overview:

“The Flood” throws Tuca, Bertie, and all of the residents of Bird Town into the storm of the century and new levels of helplessness and vulnerability. Tuca and Bertie’s plans to have a cathartic final night together as roommates progresses into a struggle to survive against tumultuous watery depths. Bird Town grows into more of an aquatic wasteland and a desperate Tuca and Bertie attempt to find their North Star during this chaos. The two friends argue over whether Kara or Speckle is the better savior for this scenario, which triggers a season’s worth of drama that these two birds finally need to address.

Our Take:

Break ups aren’t easy. Even the unhealthiest of relationships that are filled with red flags can implode in surprising ways that blindside the involved parties. Season two of Tuca & Bertie structurally draws a lot from the decaying final stages of a relationship. Much like the death throes of a romance, Bird Town has exhibited various stages of stress all season. These accelerating pressures come together to reach a dangerous conclusion that leaves Bird Town in physical disrepair that’s as dire as the emotional dissolution that Tuca’s relationship currently faces. 

Tuca and Bertie have been repeatedly presented with healthy solutions to pull them out of their funks, but “The Flood” is an episode that’s largely about mounting ignorance and the precarious house of cards that can be built from repression and avoidance. Tuca and Bertie’s stress reaches a boiling point in this finale, but it’s metonymically represented by the destructive storm that ravages Bird Town. Tuca & Bertie faces a dangerous mess, internally and externally, in this exceptional second season finale.

The bulk of Tuca & Bertie’s second season has focused on the ebb and flow of Tuca and Bertie’s friendship, both in terms of its healing nature and the dangers of codependency. In this sense, it’s highly appropriate that this season finale examines what’s potentially their final night together as roommates. The entire season has been building towards the inevitable split between these two friends and “The Flood” examines if this break up is for the best or actually counterintuitive to the progress that Tuca and Bertie have made this year. As a result, so much of this season has had Tuca and Bertie on separate islands and even when they share storylines together there’s still been an inherent degree of isolation that keeps them emotionally distant or distracted. “The Flood” flips the season’s dominant dynamic in several ways, whether it’s that Tuca now becomes more reliant upon Bertie, or that Bertie is able to internalize her work in therapy to help out her friend. 

This entire season of Tuca & Bertie has featured some incredibly strong metaphors for the mature subject matter that it’s explored. These symbolic inclinations are at their strongest in “The Flood” and it’s hard to not look at “End is Now” signs that are in response to Bird Town’s flood, but to internalize them as warnings over the nature of Tuca and Kara’s relationship. A short, humorous chain reaction from gubernatorial arguments is what culminates in the burst of the levees, but it’s also another strong visual metaphor for the Rube Goldberg-like nature of stress that’s built up over the course of the season. Bird Town’s levees rupture just as the structural integrity of Tuca’s emotional reservoir reaches its breaking point. 

“The Flood” absolutely benefits from the poetic structure wherein this Bird Town epidemic is bluntly reduced to historical data out of a textbook. “The Flood” strips this natural disaster of its power by turning it into dry, matter-of-factly narration (by freaking Whoopi Gold-bird Goldberg, no less!), which makes it even more charming. The episode cleverly uses the history and genealogy of Bird Town as a larger metaphor for everything that’s going on at the moment (which is only strengthened by the fact that Speckle and his new home are initially complete paradise where not a drop of negativity from Bird Town’s storm intrudes on this idyllic alternative). Even the connection between Kara’s lighthouse home and its significance during the flood is inspired. Lost travelers use this beacon of light to reach safety and stability, yet Tuca risks greater danger the closer that she gets to that light.

“The Flood” doesn’t overextend itself and it instead uses the framework of this season finale to better contextualize all of the ideas that have been present through these ten episodes. It’s a finale that simultaneously feels epic and intimate, both as a celebration of the series’ titular characters as well as a reinforcement on the importance of true friends. It’s a mature, powerful episode that would have made for a satisfying finish to Tuca & Bertie, but thankfully it’s instead merely a coda before these birds’ next big adventure. “The Flood” isn’t just an excellent end to a phenomenal season of television, but it’s a satisfying encapsulation of everything Tuca & Bertie stands for and why it’s such a special television series.

Here’s hoping for a Jazz Hens or Water Trees flashback episode next season, or at least a jump forward hundreds of years to when the Vibrator Fish rule the world…