Just Cuddle taps into millennial awkwardness
The show: Just Cuddle, Season 1, Episode 4 The moment: The waffles A professional cuddler (Winter Tekenos-Levy) is with a client (Nan- cy Mamais) who recently learned she has a rare, debilitating brain disease. (Both women are in their 20s.) Client plans to kill herself with painkillers and wants Cuddler to hold her as she takes them. But first she wants to use the waffle maker her aunt gave her.
As they eat, Client asks Cuddler how she began cuddling.
“English degree,” she says. “Saw a Craigslist ad.” “Something more,” Client says. Cuddler explains that when she was young, her uncle had MS. One day she was home alone with him and he called her name.
“I could see he was in pain,” she says.
“I went into my room and shut the door. What kind of a person does that?”
The press release for this web series, created by Michael Kimber and Elias Campbell, was savvy enough to include an Atlantic maga- zine article about real-life cuddlers, who work for agencies with names like Snuggle Buddies and earn up to $80 (U.S.) an hour.
These webisodes (four so far) sound an alarm about, and offer a solution to, a type of anxiety that feels particularly millennial.
The characters have tons of empathy for causes.
Face to face, though, they find empathy awkward (and they hate awkward). Their lives are stuffed with virtual friends but starved for human touch.
Cuddler is an answer, especially because she’s utterly non-judgmental.
This series is “Eleanor Rigby” translated to digital video and Cuddler is a human safe space. Just Cuddle can be seen on vimeo.com. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.