Bee and Puppycat Isn’t Just a Comedy, It’s a Mystery Box Show
Bee and Puppycat made its long-awaited return on Netflix in the form of Bee and Puppycat: Lost in Space. It’s a pseudo-second season that reconfigures the plots of the original series and uses them as the basis for the first few before departing into completely unknown territory. The show follows Bee (Allyn Rachel) and Puppycat (VOCALOID Oliver) as they do odd temp jobs and generally just live their day-to-day lives. The show doesn’t have much in terms of an overarching plot, instead, it spends its time firmly entrenched in the happenings of each episode taking us from one surreal job to the next. Bee and Puppcat has a beautiful pastel aesthetic and at times a rather juvenile sense of humor that could easily lead to one thinking this show is similar to the likes of Steven Universe. But in truth Bee and Puppycat is much more mature and somber than its quirky premise would have you believe. Despite the goofy antics of a lazy girl and an easily angered vocaloid cat-dog, we quickly understand that there is much more at play in the world of Bee and Puppycat than meets the eye.
Each episode follows a pretty standard set-up. Bee and Puppycat are going about their day until they encounter some problem that requires money before they head off on a temp job to earn the necessary cash. Each job takes them to strange, surreal new places. They babysit a giant baby head, cook donuts for a mysterious portal, crack open hotel rooms with an ax, and none of it really contributes to an overall plot. The show thrives on creating atmosphere and giving us tidbits to create intrigue. The real meat of the Bee and Puppycat story happened long before what we’re witnessing, and we end up stumbling upon mystery after mystery as we learn just how much context we’re missing to what’s happening. The events of the show are often comedic, sometimes melancholic, and always surreal but there’s a clear history that weighs on every single character we see and a lot of the intrigue for the show comes in the form of these giant questions we’re left with. It’s a mystery box we can’t help puzzling over even if the exact contents aren’t pertinent to what’s happening on screen.
Since the original series, Bee has been an enigma. At first, she seems like a very straightforward character, the kind of aimless twenty-something you could find anywhere. But once she’s forced into a fight with the mysterious cosmic hands that can’t seem to leave Puppycat alone, her true nature is revealed. Bee is a robot and that creates far more questions than it answers. We’re left to wonder: Why was Bee created? And with that we wonder what happened to her father who she often mentions but is clearly missing from the narrative. We can guess it has something to do with whatever led to “Bee’s stuff”, as Wesley (Arin Hanson) refers to it, to end up in the ocean, but that again leads to more questions. It’s clear from the absence of her father and the presence of all these remnants that something big occurred in the not-too-distant past, but we have little to go off of. These mysteries are not something the show is actively trying to solve as all the characters have far more context than we do, but it operates under the assumption that these things will be revealed naturally in time.
Puppycat is equally intriguing, if not more so than Bee. In the present, he’s a mouthy and often selfish thing that goes on quirky magical girl adventures with Bee, but there’s clearly more at play here. In both the original series and Lazy in Space we hear the tale of the Space Outlaw (Steve Blum). A man who fell in love with the Space Princess and was ultimately betrayed for it. It’s first told like a fairytale, but it quickly becomes clear that this is actually Puppycat’s story and with that realization comes a myriad of questions and mysteries to unravel. How did he end up in his current form? How did he end up working with TempBot (Marina Sartis)? Are the two related to each other? And, with the context of Lazy in Space, how did he and his crewmates end up on Earth? We get glimpses of backstory but nothing that helps to fill in the massive gaps. Puppycat remains largely an enigma to both the audience and Bee.
The Series Is Built On Mystery as Much as It Is on Humor
Along with these more foundational questions there’s a myriad of smaller mysteries that relate to them. Since the original series we’ve seen Cardamon (Alexander James Rodriguez) take care of his mother (Jennifer Tilly) who’s been stuck in a mysterious coma. With the context of Lazy In Space we know her to be one of Space Outlaw’s old crewmates and this only leads to more questions as to how she got here and ended up in her current state. Through flashbacks, we see that Bee and Crispin Wizard (Tom Sandoval) were in a committed relationship sometime before she met Puppycat. And we can’t help but wonder what went wrong when we see how close the two were in the past and remain today. All of these mysteries start to grow around each other as the different threads are loosely tied together but the larger picture is still lost on us.
It’s these mysteries that offer a form for the show, we want to know the answers. But the pace of the show means we’ll have to wallow in this kind of aimlessness that lingers over most of the characters. The show itself isn’t a mystery, but it’s impossible to ignore how much is omitted from our view. The mysteries bring texture and intrigue to the show, offering direction even where it lacks a strong sense of plot. We, like the characters, are along for the ride and will, with time, come to understand what’s been obscured. The questions we are left with only serve to increase our engagement with the show, encouraging us to look beyond the beautiful, weird events before our eyes to understand the larger context and emotional weight of what’s happening. With time and luck, hopefully, we will get to see these gaps filled in with future installments. For now, though, the mystery box of Bee and Puppycat will continue to puzzle us.
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