In 2013, Adventure Time character designer Natasha Allegri premiered Bee and PuppyCat, an animated series about a goofy gig worker and her adorable alien pet. The show, initially hosted by producer Frederator on its Cartoon Hangover YouTube channel, was an immediate hit. A campaign to fund the complete first season set Kickstarter records by raising more than $872,000, and Bee and PuppyCat became one of the most prominent IPs on the Cartoon Hangover channel.
Nine years later, the second season of Allegri’s animated fantasy has landed at Netflix. The new episodes of Bee and PuppyCat, which carry the collective subtitle Lazy in Space, retell the initial web series storyline before taking it in a new direction. The vibe is still as strange and wondrous as it used to be, even if some devoted fans are bristling at changes that have been made during the show’s extended hiatus.
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So, what took so long?
After Bee and PuppyCat‘s resounding Kickstarter triumph, there was plenty of excitement surrounding the series. Animation, however, is a time-consuming art, and details about Bee and PuppyCat‘s second season took years to come to light. In 2018, Frederator revealed that the new episodes would launch exclusively on the AT&T-owned streaming service VRV in 2019.
By 2019, VRV was running into trouble. The niche subscription service had launched in 2017 as a bundle of nerdy channels, one of which was Cartoon Hangover. Numerous setbacks soon followed, including the departure of key channels and AT&T’s increased focus on a different streaming product, HBO Max. By 2022, remaining VRV subscribers were encouraged to transfer their subscriptions elsewhere.
Enter Netflix. The streaming giant picked up Bee and PuppyCat in 2020, with a plan to release the show’s second season in 2022. Allegri’s project is a great fit in a Netflix lineup that also includes other sophisticated animated shows, such as BoJack Horseman and Arcane.
An unusual development process has led to an unusual episode structure.
In total, 16 episodes of Bee and PuppyCat dropped on Netflix on September 6. The first three installments cover the same territory as the first season, though some plot points have been rearranged and some jokes have been changed. The remaining 13 episodes continue the story of the titular companions. If you want to get caught up on your Bee and PuppyCat lore before diving into its next chapter, Cartoon Hangover has you covered.
The plot isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the course of Bee and PuppyCat‘s decade-long journey. Japanese studio OLM has worked with Allegri to give the new episodes a slightly different look than their predecessors, though the show still features a blend of Eastern and Western animation styles.
So this version of Bee and PuppyCat is not exactly the same as the one that captivated YouTube all those years ago. But it’s still a relief to see such a charming and creative series stick around. As one commenter put it: “This show is roughly nine years in the making and I love its inability to die.”
