Bonding: Season Two, Episodes Four, Five, Six, Seven and Eight

 Episode Four: Threesomes

"Was he always this crazy?”

The plot lines continue to unravel cleverly. Pete, in a club, sees Josh’s somewhat unhinged ex, someone physically very similar to himself, and realised that he fits a pre-existing type for Josh and that, perhaps, Josh may be a little shallow. Meanwhile, Tiff is studiously avoiding Doug after he declared his love last episode, and Pete discovers that Tiff has been lying to him about Mistress Mira’s sessions. He seems to take it rather well, but this hints at future ructions.

Most interestingly, and unexpectedly, Doug is in hospital after having been hit by a taxi, and Tiff (assisted by some weed, in a hospital in all places!) ends up bonding rather well with Doug’s ex, and ends up telling her she can’t love him- overheard by Doug.

Episode Five: Nanci

"I love you, Nanci.”

Interestingly, a large chunk of this episode is devoted to Tiff helping a rather rich old school friend to have her first ever orgasm- a problem for many women, and not necessarily so easily or unconvincingly solved. It’s a sweet scene, but Tiff doesn’t seem to do enough to justify the adorably explosive result.

Meanwhile, Pete and Doug talk, and Doug makes unconvincing promises to come out.

Episode Six: The Lost Egg

"Waddle for me, baby!”

Penguin fetish man is back, which I’m sure is the one thing all of us Bonding fans were hoping for from this second season. Alas, though, he ends up telling Pete he’s no longer interested, meaning Pete now has no clients as a Dom, and this no real connection to the BDSM world other than his tenuous one with Tiff. He’s becoming unmoored. This does not bode well.

We learn that Josh’s conservative dad is... Mistress Mira’s sub. And she also has a vanilla husband called Keith. She’s a wise, decent, emotionally intelligent person. He’s lucky to have her.

Alas, things between Tiff and Doug are not so sweet. We end with quite a nasty row. Have they split up?

Episode Seven: Stand Me Up, Stand Me Down

"This is not your story to tell...”

This is the penultimate episode, so everything has to hit rock bottom.

Josh’s coming out to his father is probably as much of a disaster as it could possibly be. His dad upstages him by coming out first as a submissive masochist, reacts with vague homophobia (he is indeed a Christian conservative, but “Jesus was a masochist”), and Pete does the coming out for him. Oh, and he learns that his late mum was his dad’s Domme, which is, er, nice.

Unsurprisingly, he and Pete split up... and Josh’s workmates are actually totally fine with his sexual orientation.

Just as bad, Pete overhears Tiff talking about him, how he fathered her baby and getting rid of the foetus without telling him, and how she literally pays him to hang around. Ouch. Cue a massive row... and Pete ends up having to do a comedy gig, with an agent in the audience, when really not in the mood. This is nicely structured plotting, even if it does tend to fit the template for penultimate Netflix episodes.

Just as nicely done, we end in a none of hope as Tiff cries in Doug’s arms.

 

Episode Eight: Permission

"I can't explain why I love you..."

So we end with a broadly satisfying concluion but on that deliberately leaves things unresolved. Tiff and Doug get together again and she declares her love at last, which is lovely. Pete accepts that Doug was never for him. Mistress Mira decides that the Dommes of New York need to flee the nest and look after themselves. 

Yet there are big question marks about Pete. He and Tiff part on better terms after clearing the air, but they part without reconciling. Pete is still in the wrong, I think, seeming to accept a TV comedy gig to mock a world which was never his and that he has no right to mock. Is he really going to be that much of a dick? Alas, the ending is ambiguous. But, yet again, the characters are superbly written and acted.

Here’s hoping for a third season.

Bonding: Season Two, Episodes One, Two and Three

 This time I'm not blogging the whole thing in one sitting, probably wisely.

 

Episode One: The Kinks

"Domme 101..."

Overall, considering Tiff and Pete were seemingly in very srious trouble at the end of last season, they seem to have got off rather lightly, with Tiff merely having been banned from using any of the dungeons in town and ostracised from the local BDSM community- which seems fair enough, given the litany of faults recited by Mistress Mira, a character I really like already; Nana Mensah is truly impressive here, and frankly the best performer in this.

It's an entertaining premise, with both of them having to go back to BDSM school before Tiff can even think about being a domme again, let alone a dominatrix. And we also have some promising character stuff, with New Year's Eve falling a bit flat as Doug's ex turns up while Pete's boyfriend turns out not to be out to his wanker frat boy friends. For a series with such short episodes this sets things up rather well.

 

Episode Two

"It's cause I have a big dick."

I'm enjoying this second series earlier on than I did the first; it doesn't need to establish the characters or premise so it can get on with things. It also helps that, with episodes being just eighteen minutes long, there's only a certain amount of plot per episode so we can still take time to savour the characterisation and witty dialogue.

I love the submissive bloke getting off on the humiliation of bombing on stage, like Andy Kaufman. And there's some nicely nuanced stuff on Pete's reaction to Josh being to some extent still within the closet. There are also hints, making a lot of sense, that Pete may actually be submissive. And there's some clever character stuff around puppy play. There's a lot going on here.

Episode Three

"May I hold the German?"

The BDSM class proceeds, this time through a rather entertaining montage, but the plot thickens. Tiff is doing well in class, blossoming as a fin sub- and is the financial submissive actually Josh's "conservative" dad or am I being misdirected? But Pete, as Mistress Mira has noticed, is taking things rather less seriously. Hence the beginnings of what is perhaps an inevitable rift between between him and Tiff. 

Meanwhile, the spotlight turns to Frank, and his worries not only about supporting his regnat wife but his (rather gendered) self-esteem as a man. Meanhile there's also some contrasting development for Doug, who may himself befeminist enogh to teach other men about the Patriarchy, comes to realise aspects of his own unexamined misogyny. There's a lot going on, again. Moreover, he and Tiff, with shades of McLuhan, are unable to communicate their feelings to each other well. This is good stuff.

Bonding: Season One

This is a new (last month) series from Netflix, but it’s seven episodes long with each episode being only sixteen or seventeen minutes. This means the whole season is about as long as a film, split into a series for pacing and structural reasons although, naturally, Mrs Llamastrangler and I binged it. The point is, though, I’m not blogging individual episodes as I otherwise always do with series because that would be silly. Here’s the whole thing...

Old Friends, New Names

“I don’t want any connection with your bum hole, Frank.”

So Tiff is a dominatrix under the name of “Mistress May” and her gay best friend Pete, an aspiring but nervous stand-up comedian, signs up as her assistant. This is the premise, and one with plenty of scope for humour and indeed seven episodes of exploring these two characters, their pasts, their relationship with each other and others. And right away, in spite of the first episode need to set things up, it’s hugely entertaining. We have a bloke with “Barney Rubble” as his safe word, and a bloke who gets off from Pete mocking his tiny penis.

Most refreshing, though, is that we can have a comedy treating the full range of sexuality as healthy and normal, something which, even ten years ago, would have been unthinkable.


Pete Shy

“I made your soul jizz.”

More character development here as Pete chickens out of a comedy gig, yet accidentally pulls Josh in a urinal, and we get a sense of the texture and depth of Tiff and Pete’s thirteen year friendship. Most interesting, though, is Tiff’s discourse on how the patriarchy oppressed everyone- “masculinity is inherently constricting” and what she does as a dominatrix helps to free men from the constraints of their gender roles. We also get hints about an oppressively religious background.

We end with Pete peeing on a client, in a scene shot like a Rammstein video..



The Past Is Not Always Behind

“It takes two to tangle genitals...”

Three episodes in and time for some revelations about backstory. And, er, Pete fingering his flatmate’s butt. Interestingly, Tiff’s fellow postgrad Psychology student Doug gives a presentation about his past that reveals an unexpected sensitivity and self-awareness about how the conventions of masculinity have constricted and emotionally repressed him, echoing Tiff’s thoughts from last episode and hinting that he may not be the arse we have so far been casually encouraged to believe him to be. We also meet Chelsea, an old school “friend” of Tiff and Pete who is outwardly successful, with a job in advertising, yet who spends her evenings drinking alone, trapped in twentysomething ennui.

Eventually Pete makes Tiff and himself don masks so they can symbolically speak of their shared past with a kind of anonymity- and they had sex, many years ago. It was bad sex. And there is nothing so arse-clenchingly, soul-destroyingly embarrassing as bad sex.

Let’s Get Physical

“Well, here we are, looking at dicks with coffees.”

Speaking of embarrassment, stereotypical housewife Daphne’s has invited Tiff and Pete to her house, as a birthday treat for her husband... to mercilessly tickle him. This is something Daphne can’t do herself because she’s disturbed by all things non-vanilla, and damagingly repressed.We can certainly see the themes developing here.

Daphne is, naturally, incredibly jealous as things unfold, far more so than she had naively expected. So much so, in fact, that a very considerate Pete allows her to vent her frustration by punching him in the face. Which is, er, nice.

Pete, meanwhile, has a date with Josh, besides whom he is himself the repressed one. This whole subplot is extremely sweet. Significantly less so is where Tiff catches her professor when he's just about to sexually abuse her friend Kate. But just when one man turns out unexpectedly not to be a dick, there's the nice and self-effacing Doug, who gets Tiff to agree to a date. This is, unexpectedly, rather subtle character drama.


Double Date

"I'm sorry I fingered your boyfriend."

We begin with a big row between Pete and a still-upset Tiff, understandably outraged at her male professor's behaviour and the patriarchal structures which lie behind it, so much so that she says some uncomfortable things which dismiss the experience of growing up gay in society so being female. It's a bitter parting, and Kate carries her mood to her initially disastrous date with Doug. But he' essentially by being nice, ensures she has a good time. And that's it, really; we live in a world full of patriarcgal structures and we are all part of it- but men are still free to choose not to be dicks.

All this is, of course, juxtaposed with a much less awkward date between Pete and Josh, who continue to be sweet together. It's clear that the Tiff plot has had more thought, with Pete being a character whose existence is somewhat tied to hers, but this is impressively written.


Penguins

"You look like Wonder Woman at a funeral."

I shouldn't mock people for their harmless fetishes but, well penguins...?

Anyway, after an establishing shot of a blissfully post-coital Pete- in contrast to Tiff masturbating but being unable to cum- it's back to, er, work. But this is an episode of healing, as Tiff opens up to Doug while they, ere, sit on public toilets, while Pete is now able to use his experiences as assistant to a dominatrix to perform a rather good comedy set. We then move to Tiff's postgrad class- where she gets the lecherous prof reported... and opens up to everyone, climaxing by tying Doug to a chair. Wow.


Into the Woods

"Oh shit..."

So, with all good again, complete with a quadruple date including both Josh and Doug, and with Tiff and Pete best friends again, where is there to go for the season finale? Well, there's a flashback to prom night, and that bad sex, in a cramped car, ending with both of them running into the woods to escape the police- separately. In the present day, after a comical second meeting with Daphne and her put-upon husband, they find themselves trapped in the home of a rich psychopath, forced to fight their way out, and again pursued by cops- and who will be believed, the rich, white, straight male or two sex workers? Satisfyingly, though, they now run into the woods together. They are best friends whatever happens.


This falls a little short of the very best drama, perhaps, with the two leads not quite getting equal treatment. But it's well-written and thoughtful in how it treats its characters and themes, and it's good to see this kind of subject matter treated with respect, but with humour. More please.