Screenshot: Adult Swim
Two years after its surprise, shocking, and to some, offensive cancelation by Netflix, Tuca & Bertie is coming back this summer. After Netflix decided that the show that everyone seemed to like was not worth the money, the Tuca & Bertie hive rallied around the show on social media, hoping to squeeze another couple of episodes out of the streaming service that gave The Ranch four seasons. Luckily, Adult Swim came a-knockin’.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been about a year since Adult Swim decided to pick up the show. We were so young back then. So innocent. So trusting that the pandemic would be over any day now. Thankfully, it looks like Adult Swim has put Tuca & Bertie back together in the correct order. Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong return as Tuca the toucan and Bertie the song thrush, respectively, along with series creator and BoJack Horseman-alum Lisa Hanawalt. And yes, it still feels bizarre that Netflix would cancel a show starring two of the most well-liked comedians in America and created by one of the architects of one of its signature cartoons, but the algorithm has mysterious demands. It’s even stranger now considering how fast Steven Yuen’s IMDb star-meter is rising. Well, their loss is Adult Swim’s gain, and what they’re gaining is an Oscar nominee.
The show looks like it hasn’t missed a beat, though, with Bertie still in therapy and Tuca driving something called the “Sex Bus.” So if you’re into a show about an introverted song thrush watching pottery fails and an extroverted toucan piloting some sort of intercourse-based public transit vehicle, this is a dream come true. The second season begins on June 13 at 11:30 pm on Adult Swim.
36 Comments
I watched one episode, didn’t like it, and didn’t watch any more. Still, I’m very happy that the people who did like it get some more. We all need a little happiness these days.
This is a healthy attitude. I was raised by a father who felt that anyone enjoying something he had no personal value in was “wasting their life”.
Is your father about 80% of the people on the Internet? I’ve lost track of the number of assholes who say that anyone who likes X thing “doesn’t value their time.”
“Hey everyone, there’s a guy who like something I don’t like. Get ‘im!”“Uh, I’m a ‘Supernatural’ fan. Can I still join?”“Oh, we’ll deal with you later.”
they certainly don’t value their time as much as those fathers on their threadbare recliners pumping PBR into their guts while they watch the Iggles lose badly even after being eliminated from the playoffs. Or as much as that same father watching a Blue Bloods marathon. Don’t even mention NASCAR or watching GOLF ON TV
This is a healthy attitude.I’ve been trying hard to adopt this attitude lately—age and COVID have both inspired my current desire to feel and spread more joy.To wit: I recently told someone in the With Gourley & Rust comments that while I wasn’t into Animal Collective, I’m happy that he liked them. And while I deserve absolute hero status for that comment, I have to be honest and say that my initial impulse was to talk only about how I didn’t like Animal Collective.
I similarly didn’t get the appeal. It felt like the embodiment of the spirit of Poochy, i.e. in your face and biz-zay. Though, I have an irrational love for Check It Out with Dr. Steve Brule so I’m not really one to criticise anyone’s tastes.
Yeah, it was a bit too chaotic for me, but hey, there’s plenty of shit I like. Let people have their niches.
Surely Tuca and Bertie fans should be referred to as a flock, not a hive?
Cancel the show again and they’ll become a murder.
A beak of fans.
It’s pretty much an open secret that it’s because the animators unionized, right?
It might be, but it’s not confirmed.Keep in mind this is also a women-oriented adult animated show, which is a niche that’s been routinely marginalized despite reasonably not even being a ‘niche’. Tuca and Bertie getting a second season at all makes it the most successful western adult animated show aimed at women, ever.Yeah, it getting cancelled might’ve been an anti-union thing. But it might’ve also been just plain old TV-executive sexism.
This show was also utterly buried by the Netflix algorithm.
Yeeeeah, it didn’t get any help from Netflix. The recommendation algorithms basically ignored it (whether that was intentional or not, who can say), and it got no support from advertisements.It’s hard to say what inspired what, though. It’s a lot of the ‘malice or stupidity’ argument; were they actively trying to quash it, or just mistaking it falling through the cracks of The Algorithm as a lack of interest?
that’s weird, I saw it advertised everywhere and it always came up, I watched one episode and wasn’t into it, and then it seemed like the cancellation came rather quickly
Sometimes a show just isn’t that popular and it’s not just the ‘algorithm’.
It can be two awful things!
No, that’s largely seen as the reason Bojack got cancelled.
It would be a good idea to pair it with Three Busy Debras.
I randomly found that show on HBO Max last month and enjoyed the hell out of it.
Is this worth checking out? This trailer really didn’t sell me on it.
I love it. It has a Bojack-esque heart but with a wilder comedic sheen. Putting it on Adult Swim feels like a best case scenario for both the show and the channel, since its mix of neuroses and wackiness brings to mind some of the all-time best AS shows like Home Movies and Lucy, Daughter of the Devil, or I guess Rick and Morty.
Put simply it’s one of the most inventive cartoons currently being produced, and is on par with R&M (the fact that they’re airing together is great).
if you’re into a show about an introverted song thrush watching pottery
fails and an extroverted toucan piloting some sort of intercourse-based
public transit vehicle
GIVE ME BACK MY DREAM JOURNAL, LISA HANAWALT
Is this going to make it the first Adult Swim cartoon where the leads and creator are all women? Serious question – I can’t think of anything else on that network which is, and I vaguely recall something about R&M being the first show that even had parity in the writers’ room.
I don’t think there were many (any?) women writers for R&M until the third season, which is, completely coincidentally, when a bunch of people started making YouTube videos about how the show was suddenly amazingly unfunny and had jumped the shark and was completely unwatchable, etc.
I recall they mentioned something about hiring for parity so that sounds right.
Yeeeeah like reason #800 to avoid the fandom, TBH. S3 as far as I’m concerned has at least three of the best episodes in the entire show.
To be fair, season 3 is by far the weakest of its 4 seasons thus far. People point to Pickle Rick as the funniest thing in season 3, which I think illustrates perfectly why that season really misses the mark. Pickle Rick is not a particularly funny episode at all in practice, it made for a funny trailer to the season, but then you see a whole episode of it and there is just so little to it, and that’s what that whole season felt like. Season 4 was a great rebound though, and I’m looking forward to season 5.
ballmasters 3000 had a female creator, but not all female leads.AS has made it no secret that they are actively looking for female talent after they got called out for having all male creators a few years ago.
Ahh thanks. I don’t follow AS content that closely (I prefer taking naps when I’m stoned TBH), I’d simply heard about that issue.
‘…an extroverted toucan piloting some sort of intercourse-based public transit vehicle’. Not a sentence I expected to read this morning. Wonder what the rest of the day holds?
I watched most of the first season. I loved the creativity of the animation and thought the voice cast was great. (Tiffany Haddish, in particular, was a sensation.) But I just couldn’t deal with the heavier themes. After ‘BoJack Horseman’ I was just burned out on that kind of brutal dissection of mental illness and human frailty. That’s not ‘Tuca and Bertie’s fault – it’s not ‘BoJack Horseman’s fault either – but it’s just where I’m at right now.
It is a bit of a mystery why Netflix cancelled the show, until you remember the leads are both female.
maybe I will give this another shot, I legit was only watching TWD because of Steven Yuen and stopped when he left
Sigh, why can’t this be Bojack Horseman getting a second lease on life? Sure it had a solid ending, but it could easily come back and do more. This show however, just never worked for me. I’m sure it’s return makes some fans happy, but for me it just feels like the wrong show of 2 similar breeds is getting revived.