Tuca goes on a date with Deli Guy, while Bertie tries to liven up her sex life with Speckle.
This episode provides examples of:
- An Aesop: It's important to know of one's limits. Bertie likes the idea of being at the sexual mercy of her partner, but also still hasn't fully processed the trauma of being sexually abused as a child, which is why she starts crying the first time she roleplays with Speckle spanking her and masturbates after Pastry Pete puts his hands on her. However, she reacts much more positively to Speckle's second, more cheeky roleplay where they both know what he's doing. So the moral? "Kinkiness should be safe, sane, consensual and, above all else, distinct from regular behavior" (or, to borrow a phrase, "It's fun to have fun, but you need to know how!").
- Acrophobic Bird: Bertie mutters to herself that she's afraid of heights as she climbs up the fire escape to meet up with Tuca.
- Comfort Food: Tuca drowns her sorrows in donuts after her disastrous date.
- Comically Missing the Point: After seeing how aroused Bertie gets by a chaste BBC drama, Speckle assumes Bertie wants him to do what the man in the show did to his girlfriend: ignore her for fifteen years and then give her a tiny peck on the beak.
- Death Is Cheap: Tuca dies (read: her entire skeleton jumps out of her body!) when the Deli Guy touches her finger. In true cartoon fashion, she's perfectly fine in the next scene.
- Description Cut: Well, zoom-out, but it has the same effect: when Speckle pushes a naked Bertie butt-first up against the window during their roleplay, he declares, in-character, that he wants the whole world to see how beautiful it is. The camera then pulls out to reveal that not only is nobody looking at Bertie's pressed ham but that there are so many more interesting bits of business and visual humor going on outside that it's easily the least-noticeable thing on the screen.
- Everyone Has Standards: The Deli Guy is a pretty nice and laid-back person, and he takes most of Tuca's antics during their date in stride. However, Tuca flashing her boobs in public on an amusement park ride proves to be too much even for him, since that's the point where he starts to lose his cool and tells her that she's acting out of control.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The porn Speckle shows Bertie is called Two Birds, One Nest. It's literally just two birds moving in together and having sex in their shared apartment.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Bertie facepalms from Speckle not understanding why she finds BBC dramas sexy, you can see the words "Why bother?" written on the inside of her eyelids when she pulls on them in exasperation.
- Furry Confusion: An anthropomorphic dog is shown walking a normal dog.
- Ikea Erotica: Bertie worries that her sex life with Speckle is becoming this, illustrated with literal IKEA assembly instructions.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Bertie cries like this after Speckle calls her a 'bad bird'.
- Kinky Spanking: Bertie and Speckle try this to spice up their twice-weekly sex ritual with disastrous results.
- The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: Apparently, there's a company that manufactures mirrors specifically so the reflections can come to life and berate whoever it is they're a reflection of. Tuca is bewildered why anyone would make something like this.
- Mooning: An unintentional example when Speckle pushes Bertie up against the window while she's in a towel, which accidentally rides up, resulting in Bertie making an involuntary "pressed ham."
- Naughty Birdwatching: Taken quite literally with a human kid watching Bertie and Speckle make out through binoculars.
- Parodies for Dummies: Bertie picks up a book labeled "Slutting Around for Dummies".
- Poor Man's Porn: Neither Bertie nor Speckle have particularly adventurous tastes in pornography: Speckle's favorite kink video is of a couple moving into an apartment together and having respectful, vanilla missionary sex. Bertie's idea of eroticism, meanwhile is extremely chaste BBC romantic dramas. Subverted, however, in that she seems to find them sexy specifically because the hot and heavy romance is only implied.
- Safe Word: Bertie and Speckle settle upon "Warm Potato" after dismissing "Hot Potato".
- Shout-Out:
- In the first scene, several posters can be seen promoting concerts for A Flock of Peoplenote , Indigo Gulls and Modest Grouse, as well as a bird flu benefit concert called FlyAid.
- The name of the porn that Speckle shows Bertie is called Two Birds, One Nest, a reference to the notorious porn video Two Girls, One Cup.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: The Deli Guy has the same idea as Tuca about building a desk with a drawer for deli meats.
- Visual Pun: One of the couples at the amusement park is a pair of lovebirds.
- Wildlife Commentary Spoof: This series' first human watches Bertie and Speckle making out through the window with binoculars while narrating the whole thing like this. Twice. And both times, she's interrupted by her mother calling her over for a meal.
- Written Sound Effect: Tuca's and the Deli Guy's animal noises end up filling up the entire screen.
- You Need to Get Laid: Tuca assumes this of Bertie when she recites a bizarre, kinky fantasy, calling her "horny as shit" and asking if Speckle isn't putting out. Bertie assure her that they are having sex, it's just really boring.
