Tuca & Bertie reveals the beautiful sadness of nighttime

In a capsule episode of sorts, the fourth episode of Tuca & Bertie‘s second season follows Tuca’s quest to defeat her insomnia as she roams Bird Town at night.

While the season has primarily focused on Bertie’s issues and anxieties and left Tuca to function as the zany comic relief, “Nighttime Friend” focuses almost entirely on Tuca’s inner life.

Throughout the episode, Tuca repeats a pattern, trying to sleep but unable to, and eventually walking to visit her Aunt Tallulah (voiced by the always pitch-perfect and iconic, Jenifer Lewis) in the hospital.

Tuca’s nighttime roaming is wide-ranging, from visiting her mother’s grave at the cemetery to engaging in a back and forth with multiple strangers (some in person, some via wall graffiti). Each moment affords Tuca & Bertie an opportunity to shine either through animation or weird comedy.

As a result, “Nighttime Friend” neatly picks up on many threads in Tuca’s life that were revealed in the first season but hadn’t yet been explored thus far:  her difficult relationship with her aunt and how that interacts with her alcoholism; her grief for her dead mother; her relationship with her distant sister.

One of Tuca’s nightly walks around Bird Town leads her to interact with another, much younger insomniac in Bird Town who explains to her he can’t sleep because his parents are each other’s “nighttime friends” but he has to go to sleep alone.

The same could be said for Tuca, Bertie and Speckle. Though Tuca and Bertie are codependent, Tuca is still deeply lonely, seeking something deeper in her life and someone to share it with.

But the episode’s title hints at both Tuca’s loneliness and her new companion, her aunt’s nurse, Kara, who joins her on her night off to roam around the city. While the routine had become increasingly anxious for Tuca, Kara helps Tuca to reframe not just the routine, but her perspective on her aunt and herself.

Which makes the episode’s closing that much sweeter as Kara finally lulls Tuca to sleep, allowing both of them a moment of pure friendship and Tuca some comfort and rest in one of the show’s standout moments.