“Bonding,” the short-lived Netflix dramedy from creator Rightor Doyle, is one of those shows that slips into your queue and surprises you with how quickly it moves. Each episode runs barely fifteen minutes, yet it dives into a world most comedies avoid — the underground of professional BDSM. It follows Tiff, a grad student who moonlights as dominatrix Mistress May, and Pete, her broke, gay best friend turned awkward assistant. Their reunion after high school becomes an odd partnership, half business, half emotional rescue mission.
The series thrives on brevity. It moves fast, never wasting a scene, and its humor carries a wry self-awareness that lets it flirt with taboo without turning exploitative. When it works, it’s a whip-crack blend of comedy and vulnerability — especially in the sharp back-and-forth between Tiff and Pete, whose chemistry feels like a practiced dance between affection and exasperation. The writing captures that New York hustle energy, where self-discovery is squeezed between unpaid rent and bad decisions.
Still, “Bonding” stumbled out of the gate. The first season drew heat from real members of the BDSM community for its unrealistic depictions of consent, safety, and power play. The dungeon sets looked too clean, the negotiations too casual, and the emotional nuance too thin. To the show’s credit, it listened — bringing on a BDSM consultant for Season 2 and giving its characters more room to talk, to check in, to make mistakes like actual people in kink culture rather than caricatures.
Season 2 feels more lived-in. It swaps shock value for sincerity, trading latex laughs for conversations about control, trauma, and trust. The characters still stumble, but there’s more honesty in how they process pain and pleasure. The tone steadies. It’s less of a quirky sex comedy and more of a dramedy about friendship, boundaries, and the courage to own your weird.
The performances do a lot of the heavy lifting. Zoe Levine’s Tiff walks a fine line between ice and ache — the kind of woman who cracks jokes instead of showing wounds — while Brendan Scannell’s Pete brings the jittery vulnerability that keeps the show human. Together, they make “Bonding” oddly tender beneath all the leather and snark.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes it reaches for depth and finds cliché. Sometimes the humor undercuts its emotional beats. But for a show that tries to humanize sex work without apology, it earns respect for even trying.
If you binge both seasons, you’ll notice a glow-up: the rough, impulsive first act maturing into a show that actually listens to itself. It starts like a secret whispered in the dark and ends like a conversation between friends learning how to love and hurt responsibly.
Final take: Bonding is messy, brave, occasionally misguided, but rarely boring — a 7 out of 10 for its boldness, charm, and growth. It may not master domination, but it definitely deserves a safe word of appreciation.
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