Maron S1E04 - Dominatrix

Review

This is my first review of the show Maron. I'm a big fan of Marc Maron's podcast "WTF With Marc Maron" and I want to like this show and wish him all the best, but I don't think this series will last very long.

In this particular episode, Maron gets the news that his ex-wife is doing well and has a child. When he doesn't take the news as well as he could, a friend of his tells him he needs to move on and says she knows someone that she could set him up with. The girl in question is a bookstore owner named Megan and is a good ten years younger than Maron. They meet at a live reading at her shop and he hits it off with her rather well, but he's more drawn to another woman at the reading - a dominatrix. And thus begins the story.

The dominatrix's name is Justine and she's not particularly well written. This is a woman who is likely in her early 40's yet she tries to convince Maron to get kinky with her even when he has indicated that he's not comfortable with it. She calls him a coward and later goes as far as to lie in order to get him to show up to her day job while she's actively dominating a client. Then, once Maron has broken up with her, she sleeps with his dad to get back at him. Ugh. These aren't the actions of a forty-something adult.

What's more problematic is that Marc breaks up with her because she bakes him banana bread. To him, this spells commitment and he's not at all down with that. This would be fine, were it not for the fact that the episode didn't play out the way it did. This wasn't "Marc is afraid of commitment". This was "Marc is nervous about getting freaky with this cartoony dominatrix who publicly talks about putting her foot up a client's ass".

The commitment issues came out of left field and the break-up moment felt cheap even though it was played for laughs. Maron does eventually sleep with the nice girl. He also tells her he's bad for her. It's too bad that the show had to explore Maron's love-life in such a clunky way. An unsatisfying end to a very unsatisfying episode.

2/10

Odds and Ends

• Love the Maron theme song, or at least I think I do. It's a song by Reel Big Fish called "Sell Out"
• Is "The Jerusalem Syndrome" actually a book written by Marc? Now I'm curious...
• I'm surprised Marc is a recovering addict. I didn't know that about him.
• This episode made Marc really hard to like. I felt sorry for Megan throughout. She seemed so sweet.
• I liked Marc's acting when he and Justine were in bed and he awkwardly talked to her about being able to do the BDSM thing but not wanting to. I wonder if the episode would have worked better without this scene, though. It tricked me into thinking I was watching an episode about Marc's weird sex adventures. I shuddered at the thought of that. Maybe I would have preferred it.
• I really liked the previous episode. Don't watch this one. Watch that one.