By Julie Tran
Confession No. 1: After watching its trailer, I didn’t think that ‘Bonding’ was a show worth watching.
Confession No. 2: By God, I was wrong.
“Bonding” has a strong start: the opening scene where Pete, played by Brendan Scannell, first visits his old high school friend, actress Zoe Levin’s character Tiff, in her sex-dungeon turned office is hilarious. The thrilling sense of horror clashes spectacularly with the awkward humor of Pete, leading the viewers to completely sympathize with his opening lines, “F***… What the f*** is this?” and to let out laughter as the tension breaks completely with the emergence of Tiff, kinkily clad and winking, “Welcome to my office.”
Understandably, Pete is alarmed when Tiff offers him a night-time job as her “dominatrix assistant,” but as his waiter/stand-up comedian career isn’t panning out so great, he eventually caves to the lure of being able to pay rent. Critics of the show have voiced distaste for its unrealistic portrayal of the dominatrix and its clichés, but the truth is the inaccuracy and clichés don’t matter, because the show at heart isn’t about the dominatrix at work — it’s about hypocrisy, and all the clichés that it has works toward this theme. Whilst some of its moments might be familiar to avid TV watchers, they sure aren’t trite.
From the beginning, the show establishes two very different versions of life: a normal one with the grad student Tiff and aspiring comedian Pete and the surreal sex realm that is located underground with domineering Mistress May and her sassy assistant Carter. It also raises the point about role-playing as a tool to connect to hidden emotions and resolving inner conflicts, which Tiff is all about. But when does it become too much? It becomes too much when we realize that she never stops role-playing. She never really stops being Mistress May — the cold, distant, short-tempered feminist who is all for girl power, yet shies away from human emotional power. In a confrontation scene when Pete asks her about their best-friends years in high school, it takes literally putting on a leather mask “for protection” that Tiff was able to confess her old fears about men seeing her as merely a source for sex and how she struggles to fix this feeling. Mistress May is her fix, a shield behind which she hides from her doubts. Mistress May, the liberator of men from social expectations, is the jailer of her original self.
Pete, on the other hand, lets his Pete-like qualities control Carter, flat out refusing to let himself get emerged in the dominatrix’s abnormal world. And yet, when tempted with the right motivation — rent money — he readily performs sexual favors as well as leans into his stranger desires that he so long denied himself trying to fit what society considers normal. Through all its characters, “Bonding” relentlessly exposes the notion of normal and its hypocrisy.
It is unwise for everyone to just spill their innermost thoughts out onto the streets for everyone else to see. While strict separation of the normal persona and the inner self can be damaging, the wild collision of these two extremes can be downright catastrophic, as Tiff learns when she gets date-crashed by a smitten client, and Pete learns when he gets punched in the face for his paid sexual favor.
Hence, bringing up the other theme of compromise with a hint of hypocrisy coming through. Compromise grants insight and growth, which in turn gives Tiff the fix that she has been craving, that she has mistaken with creating an anti-normal identity. It is the common ground between vulnerable Tiff and tough Mistress May, between shy Pete and sassy Carter, between idealistic Daphne and her husband.
With fantastic hilarity and a general sense of bewilderment punctured with sweet, mellow moments, “Bonding” is a short, sweet show that’s worth your time and your thought. While amazing you with the quirky take on sex, it also invites you to ponder the question “Who am I for?”
