Bonding
ボンディング ～男と女の事情～
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A grad student dominatrix and her gay best friend as assistant; real dommes objected to season one, and a BDSM consultant was hired for season two.
Pete Devin is a gay waiter in Manhattan who wants to do stand-up comedy and freezes on stage. He needs rent. His best friend from high school, Tiff Chester, who cut him out of her life after they graduated, is now a psychology graduate student who works nights as a dominatrix, Mistress May, and she hires him as her assistant and bodyguard under the name Carter. He is appalled, then curious. The clients arrive with very particular needs: a German man-servant, Rolph; a wife, Daphne, who books Tiff for her husband and ends up punching Pete to let out her own frustration. Pete starts dating Josh, a customer from the restaurant, and Tiff, who keeps everyone at arm's length, tells her classmate Doug what she does at night. The friends quarrel over Tiff's need for control, and a flashback to prom night shows what broke them: they slept together, Pete's first time, and then she disappeared. In the last episode of the first season they take a client they have not vetted, Trevor, who locks Pete in the bathroom and attacks Tiff. She fights him off, and the two run as the sirens come.
The second season opens ten months later, with their names ruined. Tiff's former mentor, Mistress Mira, makes them sit her beginners' course before they may work again. Pete pushes Josh, who is still in the closet, to come out to his father, and his interference ends the relationship; the return of Doug's former fiancée forces Tiff to decide what Doug is to her. Then Pete overhears Tiff telling a friend that after prom she became pregnant and had an abortion without telling him. He turns his hurt, and her work, into a stand-up set that wins him an agent. When he asks her permission to perform it on television, she will not give it and tells him to do as he likes, and they agree to go their separate ways. Pete heads for the late-night circuit. Tiff tells Doug she loves him, leaves graduate school for the work, and, when Mira closes her dungeon, is asked by the other dommes to lead a new one. The series ends as she calls the mother she has not spoken to in years.
Starring
Zoe Levinas Tiffany "Tiff" Chester
A psychology graduate student who works nights as the dominatrix Mistress May and keeps everyone, including her oldest friend, at a distance.
Tiffany "Tiff" Chester’s story
Tiff hires Pete, the friend she dropped after high school, and runs him like a client until he tells her she always needs control. She beats up a professor she sees harassing a classmate, lets Doug in on what she does at night, and makes peace with Pete. When an unvetted client, Trevor, locks Pete away and attacks her, she stabs him, and they run. Ten months on she retakes Mistress Mira's course and is told she has talent but should stop working with Pete. Pete overhears that she had an abortion after prom without telling him, and puts it in his act; she refuses him permission to use it on television, and they part. She tells Doug she loves him, leaves graduate school, is asked to lead a new dungeon, and calls her mother.
Brendan Scannellas Pete Devin
A gay waiter and would-be comedian with stage fright who becomes Tiff's assistant, Carter, to pay the rent.
Pete Devin’s story
Pete takes the job with Tiff appalled, and stays curious. He lets a client punch him, starts dating Josh, and finally gets on stage as Master Carter. He tells Tiff she always needs control, and a flashback shows what broke them: she was his first, on prom night, and then she vanished. After the attack on a house call they run together. Ten months later he pushes Josh, still in the closet, to come out to his father, and his meddling ends it. Then he overhears that Tiff had an abortion after prom and never told him. He turns the hurt, and her work, into a set that wins him an agent, asks her permission to perform it on television, is told to do as he likes, and heads for the late-night circuit without her.
Micah Stockas Doug
Tiff's patient psychology classmate, who learns what she does at night and wants a real relationship with her.
Theo Stockmanas Josh
A customer who leaves Pete his number and becomes his boyfriend, while not yet out to his father.
Nana Mensahas Mistress Mira
Tiff's former mentor, who runs the dungeon they work from and makes them relearn the job in the second season.
Why it matters
Bonding began as a comedy about the embarrassment of kink and turned, under criticism, into a show about consent. Its creator, Rightor Doyle, drew on his own time assisting a dominatrix friend, but professional dommes and sex workers told Rolling Stone that the first season played clients' desires for laughs, skipped the negotiation real sessions depend on, and leaned on the cliché of the sex worker with a traumatic past. Doyle said he would listen, and for the second season the production hired a consultant, Olivia Troy, who had worked in BDSM for fifteen years. What the show then puts at its centre is permission, in the dungeon and between friends: whether a secret abortion was Tiff's alone to keep, whether a painful story is Pete's to tell. It leaves open what two people owe each other once they have stopped owing each other love.