Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories S1 Ep 5: The SSL Review

Great Job!

So, let's talk about Tim and Eric. You might know them from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! which you might have seen on Adult Swim between 2007 and 2010. Maybe not. I was a bit of a fan. It's some wierd fucked up shit in that show, and it's not everyone's bag. Below is the show opening just to give you a little taste of it.

Okay, so I recently watched Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories, which apparently originally aired in 2014, but I only noticed on Hulu last week. These are very much Tim and Eric -ish, but with a very different production quality aesthetic and more of a narrative format. One of these, "Roomates," Season 1 Episode 5 has an SSL Reviewable moment in it, and that's why I'm here - to review that.

An SSL Review

As my loyal readers know, an SSL Review is a critique of depictions or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation. That is it. Nothing else gets critiqued in an SSL Review (unless I feel like critiquing something else). In general I'm focusing on how realistic the depiction discussion is and how it fits into the larger cultural narrative about female orgasm and women's sexuality.

If you'd like to see all the SSL Reviews I've done, check 'em out for MOVIES and for TV.

Mutual Masturbation with Mamacita

I discussed above how wierd Tim and Eric stuff is, and this episode of Bedtime Stories is no exception. It makes it a little hard to SSL Review because nothing in these shows can be taken seriously, but at the same time, all depictions/discussions are part of the cultural discussion, and I find them all worthy of some scrutiny.

Here's the details, it's pretty simple. One guy, Franklin Bing, gets suspicious of his mother who is visiting and his roommate, Tony Dort. Franklin comes home to his apartment and hears some muffled sexual moaning and grunting. When he opens the bedroom door, his mother and his roommate Tony are kneeling on the bed facing each other. They are pant-less with shirts on. Their private areas are scrambled so  we can't see the details, but they are clearly masturbating. Both are making kinda moany vocalizations as they rub their own junk. They stop and try to cover up when they are discovered.

Franklin goes into the living room and the two follow him in. (p.s. -There is kind of a running gag in this episode where the two men sprinkle Spanish words in their talking, but they are sometimes incorrect or off in some way.)

Tony: Franklin, las siento mi hermana, but me and your mom have something special, something real, and I guarantee you it's not sexual in nature. All we're doing is looking into each other's eyes, and then we mutually masturbate, comprende?

Franklin: No comprende. Masturbation is sexual. Masturbation is sexual, Ton!

Later after thinking about it, Franklin tells Tony he's okay with it, and they hug it out. As they're coming out of the hug, Franklin says to Tony in a jovial way, "Why didn't you tell me you jerked off?

To which Tony replies very seriously, "We don't touch," before Franklin seemlessly moves into another subject.

Later they go looking for the mother and find her with a guy who makes juice (it's related to the story kinda - you'd have to watch). He's hot and has an accent. The mom says it's over and it was just a fling. Then the juicer guy identifies Tony as "Tony Cheese" a porn personality with a tiny penis. He denies it at first, but we find it's true and see a clip of him in a porn where two women kick him in the junk.

Juicer Guy: I always say to myself, what would life be like having such a small penis, you know, having all the girls make fun of you. (The mother kinda laughs)

Juicer Guy: You know because I have a very large penis so it's not problem for me. (The mom smiles in a satisfied sorta way)

Franklin then gets pissed because Tony didn't put that on his roommate application, and Franklin evicts him. As Tony's leaving the mom says

Mom: He does have a very small penis.

My Thoughts

First off, I am a longtime fan of mutual masturbation. It's fun, hot, low mess, no fuss, disease-free, pregnancy free, and everyone comes in the end. Please feel free to read more about my love for it, HERE and HERE.

Point is, I like seeing it depicted because it is largely not something that one sees in TV, movies, or books. I also like that the small snippet of the mom masturbating while looking into Tony Dort's eyes was realistic. She had her hand over her vulva area and was moving it around. So, basically it was stimulation of the outer genitals in the general clitoral glans region - which is certainly the kind of stimulation that could bring a woman to orgasm. So all is well there. Mutual masturbation is also treated here as something loving and that the two people involved really enjoyed (I think this sense of mutual masturbation exists even despite the general weirdness of the show's tone).

However, that sense of mutual masturbation, I think, is then taken back after the conversation with the juicer guy. I feel like the choice to have Tony turn out to be a dude with a micropenis and for the mother to have left him for a hotter guy with a giant penis puts the mutual masturbation they were having into a whole new light. I don't know what the actual intention for these choices were (honestly, one may never know such a thing for a Tim and Eric episode), but I think the audience could easily come away from this with the sense that the two were mutually masturbating not because it was what they really wanted to do, but because Tony's dick was too small to have intercourse with...and that he's a lesser person and lover for it.

Granted, all these plot points are also just wierd and may be there for wierd-sake, but I think in the overall scheme of things this episode reinforced incorrect ideas about large penises being better for ladies. Penises, even large ones, do not create female orgasm. Stimulation of the outer clitoral glans does, and do you know what sexual act involves plenty of orgasm-creating stimulation of the outer clitoral glans? Mutual masturbation, that's what. This show could have given a nod to orgasm equality by allowing their characters to genuinely choose and enjoy a little discussed sex act that is equally orgasmic for both men and women, but instead they held the status quo and passively mocked it while endorsing the incorrect feeling that big penises and intercourse are more pleasurable and desirable for women.

Still, they did utter the words mutual masturbation and depicted it with physical correctness, and that in itself is a feat, so it's not all bad. I give this episode 3 out of 5 vulvas.

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