‘Love’s’ Wonderfully Weird Claudia O’Doherty Needs Her Own Show

Every time a new season of Netflix’s Love drops, Team Decider falls in love with the scene-stealing Claudia O’Doherty all over again. On more than one occasion, Josh Sorokach and I have pitched articles about just how generally awesome O’Doherty is, only to realize that Kayla Cobb already wrote that piece. But what was true two years ago remains true today, as Love’s third and final season arrives: Claudia O’Doherty is the gosh darn best and her adorably weird energy cannot be contained.

But there’s a new angle to our O’Doherty ovation, because Love finally does what we’ve wanted it to do since the awkward Aussie Bertie first arrived in Mickey’s (Gillian Jacobs) apartment: Love gives O’Doherty’s Bertie the lead. The Season 3 episode “Bertie’s Birthday” is more than just a quirky detour from Mickey and Gus’ (Paul Rust) love story. It proves what viewers have known all along: O’Doherty deserves her own show, preferably one that debuts next week or, if time travel gets invented and is used to make mundane alterations to history, last week. We just need more, ASAP.

O’Doherty’s voice stands apart from literally every other comedian working today, and I’m not talking about her accent. As a performer, O’Doherty is so thoroughly aware of who she is and how she’s perceived, and every word out of her mouth works to simultaneously confirm and subvert all expectations. She’s cute and a little weird, and that weirdness adds a hiccup to her upbeat energy. Unlike other perky roommates, a true sitcom trope, O’Doherty plays Bertie with a conflicted inner life, one that’s always threatening to chip away at her image. Bertie’s smiling, but her eyes dart around, silently saying the things she can never bring herself to say (like break up with her well-meaning but perpetually couch-ridden boyfriend Randy). That inner struggle makes every line out of O’Doherty’s mouth a mystery right up until she’s done talking. You know how she’s going to say it, but you never know what she’s going to say.

Love knows O’Doherty is their secret weapon, too, and that’s super evident in the Season 3 premiere “Palm Springs Getaway.” The show’s lead quartet (Mickey, Gus, Bertie, and Mike Mitchell’s Randy) go on a Palm Springs-adjacent getaway and crash a republican fundraiser. Watching Bertie adopt a fake identity as a celebrity hairdresser and schmooze is h i l a r i o u s.

Bertie complicates her story with needlessly mundane tidbits about her imaginary working relationship with the “difficult” Tina Arena, and makes this one of the best jokes of the series . But none of that compares to what I’m really here to talk about: “Bertie’s Birthday.”

The episode hits close to the halfway point of the final season, and it is totally the kind of gutsy move a show would do in its last go-round. Why is it gutsy? Paul Rust and Gillian Jacobs are totally out of the spotlight; Rust isn’t even in the episode. This is The Bertie Show, basically a backdoor pilot for a series we need to see. The episode follows Bertie on her first birthday from home, which starts out painfully lackluster. First she’s reminded of how alone she is when her family videochats her in the middle of the night. Then, determined to make something out of a birthday she was presumably going to ignore, she tries to rally her friends for a night of drinking but her roommate is busy with work and her boyfriend has to prep for a colonoscopy.

The morning doesn’t get any better. An out-of-place Bertie gets intimidated by an aggressive fitness instructor, and then she gets trapped in a TMI convo with a co-worker. And when she invites another co-worker (this time a handsome dude) to go out with her for her birthday, he has to decline because he can’t handle platonic relationships with women (“if it’s in front of me, I’m probably gonna fuck it”). This bummer birthday gets a turnaround when Gus’ friend Chris (so, a friend of a friend of a friend of Bertie’s) sends her a birthday message letting her know that his restaurant will give her a free cake if she comes by. “Free is my favorite flavor,” Bertie cheerfully reasons when she arrives at the Smoke House.

Then Chris, another upbeat person that’s been beat down by disappointment, invites Bertie to go somewhere he’s never taken anyone else: his favorite underground wrestling show in Van Nuys. Bertie started her birthday aggressively alone and ended it with unexpected company, company whose number she favorites in her phone.

Throughout the episode, O’Doherty lets Bertie’s inner life poke through to the outside. The sullen look on her face as soon as she gets off the phone with her mom, the way she outwardly undersells her wish for a fun birthday so as to not upset those around her with plans, her origin story monologue delivered in a sweaty locker room–these moments let us see how depressed Bertie is despite her constant cheery demeanor. She’s settling, she’s comfortable, she’s all the things that led her to blow up her life in Australia and execute a last-minute move to LA. And of course all of this is done in-between classic O’Doherty moments, like her complimenting the Smoke House as the kind of restaurant where someone could get “gunned down by the mob,” or her jokingly asking Chris to pick her up “chewing tobacco, lots of it!” The way O’Doherty plays Bertie, she has always been a three-dimensional weirdo, albeit on the side. “Bertie’s Birthday” puts that weirdo front-and-center, flaws and all, giving us a lovely chapter of Love.

So this settles it: Claudia O’Doherty needs her own show, Netflix. If there was any doubt that she could handle the load required of a series lead, “Bertie’s Birthday” politely says “have no doubts, thank you.” Let her cut loose with her own Lady Dynamite, or drop her in a plucky Kimmy Schmidt-esque sitcom, or let her continue to mix sadness and joy like on Love. Just give her the keys and let Clauda O’Doherty take us someplace we’ve never been before.

Watch the "Bertie's Birthday" episode of Love on Netflix