As Mistress Mira’s class proceeds, through ball gags, corsets, strapons, floggers, and straight jackets, the rift between Tiff the teacher’s pet and Pete the class clown grows.
Mira decides Tiff/May has come far enough to handle a scene with her personal submissive, a wealthy man known as MJP who is a masochist and finsub. Tiff explains financial submission to Pete and says “we” will take it.
Most of the second episode is Tiff going back to school. She’s one of many women (of various ethnicities and body types) who are in Mistress Mira’s intensive course, though the other women give her the cold shoulder. Pete is the only man present, apparently on the grounds he is “Mistress May’s” assistant.
Mira enters and announces that she had to remove their links from the dungeon website, because of SESTA-FOSTA, much to their disappointment. (This suggests that all of these women are pro-dommes.)
Mira brings up puppy play as an example of a key concept in their work: ownership. She notices that Pete and Tiff are talking in class, and calls Tiff up to the front.
As I watch Bonding, I’m torn between my impulse to say to Tiff and Pete and Bonding in general, “That’s not the way you do this!” and my recognition that, in reality, some people play fast and loose with BDSM’s supposedly sacred principles. Especially if they’re inexperienced and/or money is involved. Likewise, pro-domme work might be a calling for some, but for others it’s a way to pay the bills. My problem isn’t that the show is unrealistic, but that it is unflattering.
In Season 2, for the first time, Bonding breaks out of the narcissism of the Pete/Tiff dyad and shows there is a kinky community and what they do in it matters.
