Goddamn, this show has some gut-wrenching emotional moments!

After the first few episodes, it was already becoming clear that we weren’t dealing with a show that was only going to point out sexual absurdities and chronicle the scientific component of the sexual revolution.  While both of those elements are certainly present in the overall makeup of the show, it’s been clear since early on that the real meat of the show comes from the interpersonal relationships constantly evolving between Bill-Ginny-Libby-Ethan.  And holy fuck did that shit blow up this week.

First, the big shit.  I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more emotionally jarring moment on TV than when Bill Masters had to deliver his own stillborn baby.  Of course there have been more impactful moments on other shows, but those involved characters that the audience had invested several years in.  And not only is it completely fucked up that he had to do it, but his personality doesn’t allow him to ever show any sign of weakness or vulnerability.  So here is Bill Masters, who by all rights should be completely devastated, but instead is bottling up everything, so much so that his wreck of a wife wants nothing to do with him.  Yes, he’s behaving completely like a child by the end of the episode when he asks Ginny to close her eyes so that he can cry.  But this is obviously a dude who has been so fucked up by his parents that he almost never allows himself any type of release, and the pressure that builds up in someone who is confronted with losing a child that he seems to believe he was indirectly responsible for killing is almost unimaginable.  I feels for the guy.

I also loved the visual stimuli provided by blood in this episode.  We first see blood on the sheets after Ethan realizes that he has inadvertently taken gayboy-soliciting provost Beau Bridges’ daughter’s virginity.  I’d like to know who in society is continuing to perpetuate the myth that men want to take a girl’s virginity, and it was nice to see Ethan’s realistic reaction when confronted with the situation.  This blood serves as a counterpoint to the blood that Bill is shocked to see on the back of Libby’s dress when it becomes clear that she’s likely having a miscarriage.  The way that the blood was used to tie in sex with life, death, innocence and loss was at once very obvious and at the same time sublime.  I don’t think it was an accident that the stains were roughly the same size.

I was less than thrilled with the treatment of Ginny in this episode.  Children can be beyond cruel and by their very nature are capable of doing far more damage to someone’s psyche than any adult can do, and Ginny’s son drops some fucking bombs on her with his apparent hatred of her and his desire to go live with his dad.  But my interest in Ginny isn’t to see her as the Damsel waiting to be rescued by Ethan’s White Knight.  That’s a story that’s been told far too many times, and I know we haven’t seen a lot of her yet, but I just don’t believe that Virginia Johnson is the type of woman that would cry on the shoulder of a man that punched her in the face because she refused to fall in love with him.  I’m far more interested in seeing a Ginny that is dealing with the taboo of being a divorced single mother during a time when that stigma was far more troublesome than it is now, and I want to see her thrive in the role.  TV’s historical representation of prominent women can only really be described as shameful, and I just don’t need to see another broken woman scooped up and saved by a troubled but persistent and faux-courageous man.

I certainly feel that over the next couple of weeks we will be seeing further into Bill’s past, since his relationship with his mother is so obviously destructive and is causing the deep rift between him and Libby.  The sleepwalking was a nice touch, especially since the first time Bill was shown doing it the audience had no clue what was going on.  I do feel that while what Libby was going through and has gone through over the course of the series has been hideous, her treatment of Bill has been altogether unfair, especially in this episode.  It’s clear that this is who Bill is, and who he’s been for all of his adult life.  To expect him to change is a mistake many women would make, but it’s still a mistake.  Crises rarely bring about drastic changes in people, they instead usually serve to drive people back to who they really are.  Bill Masters is emotionally repressed and underdeveloped, with a massive comfort zone in the rigid formality of science.  To expect a different response from him when confronted with terrible circumstances is more than a bit foolish.  It does beg the question, why are these two married to begin with?  It’s a question that I’m reasonably confident we’ll get an answer to over the coming seasons.

This episode only served to strengthen my affection for this show.  It’s progressing at a fairly deliberate pace, but everything doesn’t have to sprint headlong into the future to have merit.  There are some tweaks that need to be made, and at least one potential show killer that needs to be addressed as described above.  But the first five chapters of what on a few different levels feels like a visual novel have given me faith that there’s real quality on the horizon here, and I’m excited for next week.

8/10

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Season Ones can be fascinating to watch, because even the worst, low concept garbage can show glimpses of potential.  Masters of Sex is hardly that, as there is a creative vision here that is almost a prerequisite for a show to get greenlit in the 21st century premium cable landscape.  Even Hung had enough to get three seasons.  Episode 4 seems to be the moment for me where Masters has shown that it has that little something extra that elevates it over some of its more mundane yet glamorous contemporaries.

This episode finally showed some growth for young, up and cumming Dr. Ethan Haas, who heretofore has only been an unrepentant horndog, other than his violent outburst toward and unhealthy obsession with Ginny.  Now we see him drunk and acting like a child, until he is rejected for the fifth or sixth time.  This seems to bring about some clarity in him, and we get to see his calm inner sociopath.  Showing him so absolutely hammered that he pukes outside the operating room, yet presumably still goes through with performing the surgery was a brilliant touch.  The 60s, yes they were different, but not all of the differences were as wonderful as some might like to remember.  It finally seems to have gotten through to him that Ginny doesn’t want to be in love with him.

But it’s still completely unclear who, if anyone, Ginny does want to be with.  It’s certainly the mystery of this first season.  Here her ex-husband and father of her children is introduced, and he ends up worming his way not only into her bedroom, but also into the sex study as an “anonymous” participant.  Ginny’s still fucking him, but obviously regards him with near the lowest form of distaste.  She definitely wants nothing to do with Ethan, but is she enjoying toying with him a little too much?  She also seems to have a thing for Bill, but it almost seems to be more of a quest to seek out fatherly affection than anything else.  What does this woman want?  I have a feeling we might not find out until the final episode of the season.

More importantly, did women and relationships like this actually exist in the 60s?  We have a tendency to treat the relatively recent past like it was the stone age.  So when a show begins to explore the complexity of sexual relationships, it seems somewhat difficult to believe that people faced many of the same issues and misunderstandings that people do now.  Until this episode, I kept thinking that the show was primarily focused on the study of human sexuality.  But the show’s actual focus seems to be on the sexual and personal relationships of these five or six people, which seems to be infinitely more interesting.

Bill Masters is equally fascinating in this episode.  He’s obviously a sexual deviant, who would be shocked and appalled to be called a sexual deviant.  He’s equally enthralled with Ginny, but has the ability to successfully disguise it where Ethan doesn’t.  He’s also still very childish when it comes to sex, so when he discovers that Ginny’s ex-husband participated in the study, of course he brings him back in for an interview, in order to get some subtle insight toward eventually pleasing her genitalia.  But it’s pretty fucking creepy when he is obviously rewinding and re-listening repeatedly to a dude talking about how he gets his ex-wife off.  Bill needs a release, sooner rather than later.

It still isn’t as intriguing as its cousin Mad Men, but few shows in the history of television are.  After the barrage of fantastic TV that we’ve been hit with over the past decade and a half, it’s inevitable that we begin comparing each show to the best of the best.  Masters will never reach that level.  But this week it managed to surprise me and exceed my expectations.  I thought that I knew the direction for this show, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find out that I was wrong.  It probably doesn’t have enough impact to ever become one of my favorite shows, but there’s enough meat on this bone, enough layers to this onion, to keep me cumming back for more.

8/10

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Thus far, Masters of Sex has been a bit of an enigma for me.  I may have period piece exhaustion, as I’m continually finding myself thinking that I’ve seen these characters before.  Bill Masters as an emotionally underdeveloped scientist hopelessly devoted to his craft is particularly problematic, since that archetype has been ridden to death over the past few decades.  I know that I’m personally guilty of holding all shows to an impossibly high standard when it comes to character originality, but I need something fresh, especially from a main character.  And in this third episode, there are scenes that begin to show cracks in Masters’ egotistical facade.  He’s now shown to be unbendingly rigid in matters of science, but as he is confronted with new social situations he is gradually opening his mind to new possibilities.  This is all happening while it is becoming increasingly clear that his personal life is heading for a horrific crash that he is directly and solely responsible for.

Love triangle plot lines are also something that can be passé when nuance is lacking, but the same driving force behind the subtle development of Masters’ character makes the show’s love triangle unique.  Libby Masters is obviously on a crash course with her Young Buck doctor, Ethan Haas.  Ethan miraculously helped Libby get pregnant, after she and Bill had years of difficulty.  Bill and Ethan have a smoldering hatred of each other, now boiling over after Masters’ delivery of quadruplets and the resulting fame and glory.  Bill Masters has yet to explain to his wife that it’s his low sperm count that contributed to the pregnancy difficulties, not Libby being barren.  Ginny Johnson told this to Libby in confidence, but Libby has yet to reveal to Bill that she knows.  And in the pilot, Bill proposed to Ginny that they fuck, “for the good of the study”.  Yes, yes, if told poorly this has the potential to spiral out of control into some serious soap opera shit, but the pacing and the acting performances combine to make it work.  It’s been heavily implied that Libby is going to fuck Ethan, and now that she is overflowing with anti-Bill venom, she has a vested interested in allowing him access to her vagina.

There are still some questionable moments.  The flashbacks of a young Bill Masters receiving bits of wisdom from the younger Barton Scully (still played by Beau Bridges, and for some reason I keep getting a creepy vibe from him.  And this has nothing to do with Masters threatening to out him for soliciting male prostitutes at the end of this episode) have got to go.  They remind me of the young Dexter/Harry scenes from Dexter, and anything that reminds me of Dexter right not is immediately infuriating.  I almost want to go back and watch a few of the Dexter episodes from the Jimmy Smits season to remind me it wasn’t always as terrible as it ended.  Aside from that, this is the second straight week in which the director has used a cheap visual storytelling technique that could have used more effective methods to get the same information across.  Visual flashbacks are fine, but present them in a creative way, not just with fake Technicolor and some makeup.  Don’t emulate Dexter.  Please don’t emulate Dexter.  I was disappointed in the resolution of the head of the brothel wants children plot line.  It seemed rushed and needlessly depressing.  Why crush the hopes and dreams of a promising character three episodes in?  I hope this isn’t the last we see of her.

At this point, viewers of the show are waiting for the blowup between Bill and Libby Masters.  I don’t think Libby has been featured enough at this point (not nearly as much as her season 1 of Mad Men counterpart, January Jones as Betty Draper), but her role has expanded a little and should continue to as the season progresses.  I think extending the explosion of the marriage is a mistake at this point, if it’s going to happen.  Nine more weeks of demure, passive Libby Masters isn’t something I’m looking forward to.  I’m rooting for her to demand to be part of Bill’s study.  Here’s how I would set it up: Libby finds out that Bill wants to fuck Virginia as part of the study.  So she then demands to be allowed to fuck Ethan, also as “part of the study”.  Ethan of course agrees in order to get back at Bill for stealing his quadruplet-delivering thunder.  Trust me, I got this shit locked tight, with brass knuckles and flashlights.  See you guys next week.

7/10

Oh shit!  I almost forgot the prostitute masturbation montage!

9/10

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“Race to Space”

Masters of Sex hasn’t settled in yet.  The show is still in its infancy, so it still has loads of potential.  It didn’t trip coming out of the blocks, but it isn’t breaking away from the pack either.  Enough with the clichés, on with the show.

The number one opportunity for this show to distance itself is to present the audience with a strong female character who is able to function without always falling back on a man, or breaking down completely.  Masters follows Homeland, which had a similar opportunity with Claire Danes winning Emmys, and instead threw her into a mental institution when things got tough.  So far, Lizzy Caplan is acting the shit out of this part thus far, even when the dialogue and the setup is sometimes underwhelming.  Her interactions with Bill Masters are far and away the highlights of this second episode.  I could do without the “possibility sequences” (the episode is shot with several scenes being presented as happening a few different ways, before they eventually play out as they actually happen.  It’s effective the first time as a small shock to the audience, but it’s also a bit juvenile and reminds me of something that would happen in Clueless or 10 Things I Hate About You) since all they really show is a character’s insecurities.  I’m far more interested in Caplan’s Virginia if she’s a woman of the 50s who ISN’T insecure.

Up to now, the show has been far too heavy.  The lighthearted moments are few, and since the subject matter is extremely dense even when it isn’t heavy on the science drama, I find myself pausing and restarting repeatedly to break up the dramatic weight.  Sex is funny, so there should be comedy in showing how uncomfortable discussing sex made people in the 50s.  And there are moments, like any time the giant glass dildo is shown.  They just aren’t exploited as a release valve for the crushing pressure of the dramatic intensity we are confronted with.  The answer is: SHOW THE GODDAMN GIANT GLASS DILDO MORE.  Annaleigh Ashford, playing the madam at Dr. Masters’ experimental cathouse, does serve as a ray of light through all the sexual gloom.  However, she’s only listed as being in two episodes.  I’d have to think that’s a mistake, since her story isn’t anywhere near resolved.  She’s a walking prostitutional cliché at this point (why not make the prostitute cultured and intelligent?  Haven’t we seen the gum-chomping whore with the Brooklyn accent enough?) but at least she forces her way through the morose malaise.

I’m holding out hope that Masters of Sex isn’t going to turn out to be a pulpy B+ movie that just happens to be 12 (or 24, or 36…) hours long.  I held out mentioning it as long as I could, but so far Liam Neeson’s Kinsey told the same story as Masters in a much more palatable manner, mostly so because I knew the story would be over an hour and a half after it started.  If Masters is only envisioned as a single season show, I can see it working to a limited degree.  However, as of the second episode, I can’t imagine a way for this to be interesting past the first season.  I’d love for the producers and writers to come up with a way to prove me wrong, but I’m not seeing it.

5/10

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“Pilot”

This past weekend, the scientific sexual revolution themed Masters of Sex debuted as Showtime’s next dip into the HBO-dominated premium cable arthouse ocean.  The show, based in the notoriously repressive 1950s (as much as the American 50s are regaled by so many as an idyllic utopia, there are dozens, if not hundreds of movies and TV shows that point out how prudish and racist and sexist and homophobic everyone was (maybe that says something about those who worship the 50s…) that features Lizzy Caplan as a recently divorced secretary with upward (and horizontal) ambitions and Michael Sheen as a prominent MD desperate to study sex while experiencing little joy in participating in it and demonstrating little understanding of any female motivations, pleasures, basically anything whatsoever.  The show is amusing enough, but needs a few nudges in the right direction.

About ten minutes into the pilot, anyone who has seen an episode of Mad Men will begin to make inevitable comparisons.  I won’t write off Masters of Sex after one episode, but the creators have to figure out a way to distance themselves from Mad Men pretty quickly, because they’re losing that battle.  Obviously the subject matter will be a little different, but there is enough of an overlap to the time period and the content that an unavoidable “Mad Men does this waaaaaay better” reaction is going to pop up.  There’s room in some genres for multiple shows airing alongside one another, but a relatively hypersexualized section of 1950s Americana isn’t one of them.

Masters of Sex probably could hope to achieve the distinction through character development, particularly with the strength of its leads.  Mad Men has always been more of a true ensemble rather that just the “story of Don Draper”, which has been largely successful.  Caplan and Sheen both bring immediate gravitas to their roles, and both characters have achieved admirable depth by the end of the first hour.  Most shows struggle with that accomplishment over the course of an entire series.  The secondary cast could use a little fleshing out, especially Nicholas D’Agosto as the aggressive, young up-and-coming (cumming?) doctor.  But I feel like I already know Masters’ wife, played by Caitlin Fitzgerald.  Beau Bridges is completed wasted in a guest spot as an angry administrator completely opposed to all things penis and vagina.  Why not just have John Lithgow reprise his Footloose role?  The roles of the two initial test subjects, who are rather nondescript and are introduced late enough  in the episode that I didn’t catch either of their names, are written and acted well enough that there is quite a bit of potential for both of them if the characters stick around.  Sexual nervousness can be difficult to project onscreen, and their scene together is entirely believable.

Also, there is a gigantic glass dildo that is hooked up to sensors that chart its effect on a woman’s body, and there is a shot from the pussy’s perspective of Beau Bridges watching it being used.  I’d say that’s probably a TV first.

Most of the pilot is run-of-the-mill, oh-my-god-talking-about-sex-in-the-50s, with the added bonus of plenty of gratuitous Showtime tits.  The cliffhanger ending, however, is probably jarring enough to carry over through the rest of the first season.  While not wholly unexpected, the manner with which Masters delivers his, well what does one call it?  Penis proposal?  Orgasm offer?  Basically Masters informs Virginia (Lizzy) that he believes that if they are to conduct proper sexual research, then they should be participating in the research, together.  The most scientifically proper booty call ever.  It really is a scene that catches the viewer off guard, and given that Masters knows that Virginia is fucking another doctor who beat her ass, and Virginia knows that Masters’ wife is participating in the study, it’s doubly shocking.  The scene alone lifted the episode from average to good, and definitely is enough to pique my interest in what happens next.  I’ll be looking forward to the next episode, and probably the rest of the season.

7/10

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