# Bonding (2019)

> A New York City grad student moonlighting as a dominatrix recruits her gay best friend from high school as her assistant.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/75135

## Facts

- Seasons: 2
- Episodes: 15
- Episode runtime: 18 min
- Status: Canceled
- Genres: comedy, drama
- Created by: Rightor Doyle
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Zoe Levin, Brendan Scannell, Micah Stock, Sathya Sridharan, Martin Pfefferkorn, Sebastian Conelli, Jade Elysan, Chad Burris
- TMDB rating: 7.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7718088/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: none
- Tone: irreverent, frank, bawdy, sardonic, warm, breezy

## What critics say

Audiences find the series a frank, good-natured comedy about sex work and friendship, with mixed reception that praises its warmth and candor while finding its plotting uneven.

## Synopsis

Bonding (2019-2021) is a US Netflix comedy-drama series created by Rightor Doyle. Tiff, a New York City graduate student who moonlights as a dominatrix, enlists her high school best friend Pete (Brendan Scannell), a gay man, to become her assistant. Doug (Micah Stock) rounds out the central trio as another friend whose own romantic and personal entanglements keep the group tangled. The engine of the show is money pressure, professional juggling and the messy romantic lives of three young adults, with each episode built from client sessions, grad school demands and the friends' social mishaps. Across two seasons and fifteen short episodes of about eighteen minutes, the story stays a single continuing thread rather than a case-of-the-week format. The series is frank and irreverent, with sexual candor treated as everyday workplace business and an undercurrent of warmth between its leads. Set in contemporary New York City, it has a bawdy, sardonic and affectionate register. Fans of Insecure, Looking and Dropout will find resonance in its frank millennial humor and its portrait of queer friendship. It was canceled after its second season.

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