Plumage

**Plumage** is the fifth episode of *Tuca & Bertie.* It aired along with the rest of Season 1 on Netflix on May 3rd, 2019.

## Episode Synopsis

Bertie is starting her apprenticeship at the bakery, but first it's self-care Saturday! Tuca and Speckle visit Tuca's aunt in the Beakshires.

## Plot

Bertie is baking a batch of scones when Tuca bursts in wearing a swimsuit and pool floatie telling her to get ready to come with her to her Aunt Tallulah’s house in the Beakshires for Tallulah's birthday. Bertie tells her she can’t go this year because she’s completely booked today with self empowering activities for a self care Saturday - she wants to get out and exercise, dance, attend the WTUS meeting and she’s staring her apprenticeship with Pastry Pete. She even picked out a romper outfit to wear. Bertie asks if Tuca will be ok since it’s the first time she’s been to her aunt’s house since she stopped drinking, but Tuca assures her it’ll be fine. After he overhears she’s going to the Beakshires Speckle convinces her to take him with her, due to loving the architecture there.

Not wanting to listen to his boring podcasts, Tuca talks about her aunt to Speckle, revealing she made her fortune in the plumage industry and married and divorced over a dozen of wealthy men.

Meanwhile, Bertie's is dancing and twerking along to a dance video online alone in her underwear. She is interrupted when she hears a knock at the door and finds out the landlord sent a maintenance guy over unannounced, and his off putting demeanor and borderline sexist comments make her uncomfortable, saying her boyfriend should leave his work boots by the door so people know there’s a man living there, and he has his own key. Bertie gets out of the house to go exercise but men in the park catcall her.

Tuca and Speckle arrive at her auntie's mansion and are greeted by the dog butler and her puppies. Tallulah and Tuca greet each other with passive-aggressive insults that they both laugh off. Meanwhile, Speckle is in awe of her house. He leads Tuca through a passageway through a wall clock. Tuca also starts giving him the alcohol her aunt gives her. He asks why she doesn’t tell her aunt she’s sober but Tuca says she doesn’t want to ruin her birthday with sobriety talk.

Bertie returns home, relived the maintenance man is gone, but she’s still anxious about what happened earlier and at the park, that she shreds the romper she wanted to wear in fear of being objectified in public.

Tuca and Speckle are shown with Aunt Tallulah as she shows them around the house and partake in activities, while Tuca has to either pour out the alcohol she’s by her aunt given when she’s not looking, or gives it to Speckle, making him more and more drunk.

Bertie arrives at the WTUS meeting, but she’s hesitant in participating, including putting a potatoe in her pants to put them in the headspace if a man when he “manspreads,” and reacting to hypothetical catcalls where she nods up going on a tangent about jams and jellies. However when they make their own personal mantras, with the leader telling her reach deep inside. Bertie vents that’s she hates how it’s a man’s world, and she’s tired of feeling scared of people bigger than her. She wants to be treated like a person not an object, and she declares no man will invade her space or she’ll break their face. Everyone applauds her, and they all embrace.

Tuca ,Tallulah and Speckle are in the pool. Tuca is looking a photo album and reminisces on her mother, and how her once happy albeit poor family fell apart after she died. Speckle is remorseful, so is Tallulah but only because of how she died young with nothing to show for it, and says it’s good Tuca chose to stick close to her.

Later after dinner, Tallulah tells Tuca she give her her check for rent, saying it’s what she came for, her insults now becoming more biting as she’s now drunker. Speckle asks Tuca about this and she laughs it off saying that’s just how her aunt is.

She writes Tuca her check, taunting her on how she mooches off her and is irresponsible. The last straw is her insulting her mother. Tuca tells her to not dare insult her because even if she died young she spent her life putting nothing but love and positivity into the world.

Tallulah mocks the fact her mother had no career and no man, and says at least Tuca has sense to take her money. Tuca rips the check in half, refusing to accept her money anymore, and after revealing she’s been sober for six months, storms out. As she does Tallulah calls out everyone is eventually going to leave her, ironically as she herself is left all alone.

Bertie arrives at Pastry Pete’s excited to start her apprenticeship. However, he starts getting in her personal space and telling her to work faster, stressing her out, and tells her to only respond “Yes Chef!”

Tuca drives her and a very drunk Speckle back home. She has no idea how she’ll pay rent, and if she’ll get her life together. Speckle assures her she’ll figure it out and she always has him and Bertie as a family. It’s revealed Speckle left his pants at Tallulah’s house, and they’re torn up by the dog butler and the puppies playing tug of war with them.

Pastry Pete tells Bertie to come over to him, and asks her to look at and smell a Fruit Roux he’s preparing in the pot. However, he grabs her head and forcefully holds her closure to the boiling pot. After she gets out of his grasp she excused herself to the bathroom, after splashing water on her face she begins to feverishly masturbate.

## Post Credit Scenes

Bertie’s romper and Speckles pants meet each other at the gates of heaven. The Gamby Cake is playing a little harp.

## Cast

* Tiffany Haddish as Tuca
* Ali Wong as Bertie
* Steven Yeun as Speckle

## Trivia

* It’s been a week since *The Sex Bugs.*
* This is the first appearance of Aunt Tallulah. She was mentioned in *The Sugar Bowl* by Tuca.
	+ This is the first time one of Tuca’s family members is introduced.
* This is the first mention of Tuca's mother:
	+ It is revealed she died when Tuca was a child.
	+ It is revealed Tuca and her family lived in poverty and her mother raised her siblings as a single mother.
	+ It is revealed Tuca has four other siblings, and their bond fell apart after their mom died.
* Bertie's psycho-sexual issues stemming from her childhood sexual assault are foreshadowed when she masturbates in the bathroom after Pastry Pete physically overpowers her. She likely did it as a way to take back control, especially after a day where she was intimidated and objectified by preditory men.
* According to Aunt Tallulah’s check, the episode takes place in "Birdvember" 17th, 2019:
	+ She only gives Tuca 1,275 a month. She puts "mooching money” as the memo.
	+ Tallulah lives on 4050 Banyan Blvd, The Beakshires, Bird Providence.