Yeast Week

***Yeast Week*** is the seventh episode of Tuca & Bertie. It aired along with the rest of Season 1 on Netflix on May 3, 2019.

## Episode Synopsis

Tuca needs medical attention stat—but she's scared to see a doctor. An elite baking expo gives Bertie the chance to bring "*crunts*" into the world.

## Plot

Tuca is playing Reali-Tease online, a online game where gameplay is have virtual sex with strangers for money. As she plays she feels a sharp pain in her side.

Bertie is preparing for Yeast Week, where baking's best will be attending. Pastry Pete is introducing crünts - a croissant and Bundt cake combo, and she will be performing the demo for him, so she is practicing doing the quadruple cabriole de crünt - a magical girl-esque move to prepare the dough.

Tuca bursts in, scaring Bertie and causing her to throw her tray into the ceiling, creating a hole.

Tuca asks to borrow multiple cloves of garlic and dish soap. Bertie questions if she’s making her own make her own medicine from the Dr Garlic book.
When the noice her wincing in pain, she assures it’s just a cramp and lifts up a bit if her shirt to show a large lump protruding from the side of her stomach. Bertie tells her she knows Tuca’s scared of doctors but she’s going to be busy all weekend and she can take her today. Tuca assures she doesn’t need a doctor.

As Bertie spends the rest of the day preparing for yeast week, Tuca keeps interrupting by poking her head through the wall her asking questions for her remedies, and ruining her food in the process each time.

Tuca believes she feels better and gets back to her virtual sex game.

She meets Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69, a lonely horse man who’s girlfriend just dumped him. As she plays with him, she falls over in pain, and calls Bertie from the hole. Speckle is heard, but Bertie whispers to come into the bedroom, and tells him about how Tuca has been bothering her all day, and calls her “so needy”. Tuca hears all of this from the vent however. When Bertie calls from the hole asking if she’s ok, Tuca lies and says she is and good night. Tuca weakly says help into her microphone and passes out.

Bertie is at Yeast Week, in awe of everything, she even starts to break into song, but Pastry Pete interrupts, saying only first timers sing by the fountain.

Tuca wakes up to find Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69 in her bedroom, he drove 7 hours to check if she’s ok (she yelled her address and a very complicated pizza order). She reluctantly accepts his offer to take her to the hospital

Pastry Pete walks Bertie through the “nerve center” where all the worlds most famous chefs are. He is amused by her innocence and her geeking out and pointing out the chefs and what they’re known for, when he already knows. He leads her to the Grand Hall, where the other chefs are performing their demos. He tells her that’s where they will introduce the crünt, putting his hands on her shoulders as he says this, making her chuckle nervously.

Speckle visits Tuca’s apartment to check in on her , and ends up starting to play Reali-Tease after realizing Tuca has his laptop, innocently thinking it’s an open-world video game and that “jerk” is for punching and the character is calling someone a jerk.

At the hospital, the doctor does an ultrasound with “Ultra-Sam ,“ an ultrasound machine that was created to comfort scared patients, as teaching doctors empathy didn’t take. When the doctor steps out of the room, he tells her to plug in his wife, a lap in the corner of the room. He says cherish the moments she has with her loved ones before the doctor comes back. She tells Tuca they need to get x-rays.

Back at Yeast Week, Pastry Pete is on stage, presenting the crünt. He introduces Bertie to perform the demo. She’s nervous, but she prepares and performs the move for the crünt perfectly.

The doctor reveals to Tuca she has an egg stuck in her ovaries and if she doesn’t get surgery it’ll rupture and she’ll die. She assures Tuca they have the best doctors. There’s is a black and white and stylized/limited animation flashback of a young Tuca in the hospital waiting room with her Aunt Tallulah after her mother’s fatal car crash. Tuca asks her aunt if her mom will be ok, and Tallulah assures her the hospital they’re at has the best doctors.

Bertie and Pastry Pete toast in the limo over his crünt, and he reveals that he has brought her to The Bead Bowl - an exclusive dinner gathering for the world's most famous chefs, much to Bertie's delight. However, just as they’re about to enter, she gets a phone call from Speckle revealing Tuca is in the hospital (which he learned from running into Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69 while playing as Tuca in the sex game) and she’s about to go into surgery. She sadly has to reject Pastry Pete’s one-time offer, which he says is fine and she’s an adult and can’t force her to make the right decision for her career.

Tuca is being prepared for surgery, and sings about her anxious and vulnerable feelings over everything before she’s put under anesthesia.

In the hospital waiting room Speckle is comforting Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69 over his breakup when Bertie arrives. Speckle tells her she’s still in surgery and all they can do is wait. Bertie sits down and has her own flashback to when she and Tuca were in college, and at a party a black-out drunk Tuca was taken away by ambulance to get her stomach pumped. She’s telling herself she told Tuca it was too much and to stop drinking, and when she asks the EMT what she can do he tells her all she can do is wait. In the present Bertie begins to cry.

The egg is shown being removed from Tuca and put inside an Easter basket.

As Bertie helps Tuca into the car, Speckle and Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69 say goodbye to each other. Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69 reveals his name is Joel, but as the hug Speckle tearfully says he never will. In the background Ultra-Sam and his lamp wife hijack an ambulance and drive off together.

Bertie carries Tuca back to her apartment and puts her in bed. She takes notice of how cluttered and filthy her apartment has become and begrudgingly starts attempting to clean up. Tuca wakes up and asks about it and Bertie retorts that if she doesn’t clean no one else will. Tuca is offended that Bertie thinks she can’t take care of herself, and reveals she heard her call her needy. Bertie says she is and she always needs her, she gets to be the fun care-free party animal and she’s stuck being the worry wart, but when she doesn’t have to take care of her she is fun, revealing she performed the crünt demo perfectly.

Tuca insists she doesn’t need her and had a weird acquaintance take her to the hospital, but Bertie angrily says she asked to take her multiple times and says she never listens to her, even mentioning the college incident. Tuca and Bertie end up having an extended argument, shown through a montage, where they call out each other's issues and past mistakes, at one point crying on the fire escape while eating Chinese food.

After they’ve had enough, Bertie says their friendship has just felt like nothing but work lately, and she says they need a break before she leaves.

As the sunrises Bertie is shown awake in bed with a sleeping Spence, teary-eyed as she sighs.

Tuca takes the egg that was taken out of her and fries it. She puts the plate over the hole that looks into Bertie and Speckle's apartment.

## Post Credit Scenes

Chef Dante’s (one of the chefs shown at Yeast Week) avatar is shown on Reali-Tease, when an avatar played by and that has the face of his grandmother that he stole all his recipes from arrives and begs to give her kisses and chases him.

## Cast

* Tiffany Haddish as Tuca
* Ali Wong as Bertie
* Steven Yeun as Speckle
* Reggie Watts as Pastry Pete
* Adam Conover as Joel aka Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69
* SungWo Chun as Ultra-Sam S380
* Jenifer Lewis as Aunt Tallulah
* Raphael Bob-Waksberg as Dapper Dog
* Nicole Byer
* Lisa Hanawalt
* Mike Hollingsworth
* Tig Notaro as Yeast Week MC

## Trivia

* Tuca and Bertie get in a huge fight and take a break from their friendship, with the following episode revealing they don’t speak to each other for a few months.
* This is the first appearance of Joel, aka Big\_Hairy\_Stallion69.

* Tuca steals Bertie's WiFi.
	+ The password is TuCa\_NO\_PorN.
	+ She also either borrowed or stole Speckle's laptop.
* Tuca and Bertie attempted to sneak into Yeast Week the previous year, which Speckle refers to as Tuca's felony.
* Bertie points out Chef Winter Garcia at Yeast Week, and she is also seen at The Bread Bowl. She would become a supporting character in season 3. She was the first chef to put a put a pickle in a biscuit .
* Speckle owns a mug that says **I Actually Like Mondays**.
* Bertie’s full name is revealed to be Roberta Songthrush.
* It’s revaled Tuca's mom died from a car accident where she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and she died in the hospital while under surgery.
	+ This made Tuca afraid of doctors and the hospital.
* Bertie and Tuca went to the same college together - Bird Town College:
	+ Its revealed there was an incident where Tuca drank too much at a party and got alcohol poisoning and had to be taken by ambulance to get her stomach pumped.

A few notable things are brought up during Tuca and Bertie’s fight:

* Tuca’s cut off jorts ruined Bertie's summer vacation once.
* They got kicked out of someone named Anita's wedding because Tuca insisted the buffet was all-you-can-eat.
* Tuca had Bertie’s ChapStick.
* A pelican frat boy named Spencer broke Bertie’s heart once .
* Tuca brings up Bertie's commitment issues saying she'll never have a happy relationship because no one is good enough for her.
* Tuca mentions the events of The Promotion and The Sex Bugs, citing she helped Bertie get her promotion and she’s too much of a wuss to leave the house without her.

* The Yeast Week MC addresses the weird nature of the world of the show
	+ "*Ladies and gentle-birds and plants, humans, and sometimes inanimate objects that can talk... what a weird world!…*"