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Masters & Johnson met in 1956 and published their groundbreaking sex study in 1966, so we've got some time to kill and a lot of interesting questions to ask. One thing I didn't expect was to be left crying so many times throughout the hour. It's ... moving. It's relevant and it's touching and it's smart and it's so, so inclusive of the actual experience of being a human person. I knew it would be cool but I didn't think it would be like this.
Like, you know how you can't watch some HBO shows with your parents, and other ones you think you can and then you remember you shouldn't? That kind of awkwardness? It's not here. I could watch these people fuck all day while having Thanksgiving dinner with your parents, it just simply never registers as weird. Damned if I could tell you how they did it, but frankly the sex scenes are so neat and wholesome that they're as touching as the more usually emotional beats would be. (Here, given the players, those are -- by design -- the harrowing ones.)
The plot is pretty sketched, because we have to get to know all these people and because it's the hour-long story of a venture being mounted: Stymied at every turn by prudishness and institutional cowardice, Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen, aka 30 Rock's awful Wesley Snipes) finally follows the advice of a fantastic hooker and gets himself a female secretary/associate -- Virginia "Ginny" Johnson (Lizzy Caplan, of course) -- so he's not flying blind: The dearth of basic, scientific Our Bodies, Ourselves-type knowledge, in what's really the recent past, is a huge button-masher, leading us to questions of privilege and feminism that are as astonishing to contemplate as they have been in any successful period piece.
But Masters is dealing with his own stuff: Unable to conceive even with his frightfully clinical methods, his wife is just about losing her mind. Only Ginny knows, thanks to a tipster, that the problem is actually his incredibly low sperm count, which means all the treatments and weirdness -- and concomitant invalidation of his lovely wife, Libby, "as a woman" -- is purely in service to his ego. He's not a Don Draper, he's fairly progressive and an excellent guy in a lot of ways, but that timeline-specific stupidity leads everybody into some pretty bad scrapes. His lack of integrity is matched only by his determination to have integrity, which has just got to suck.
Otherwise, Ginny responds just as quickly and audaciously to their instant, instinctive connection as he does. Weathering hideous Nice Guy overtures from a colleague (the reliably fantastic Nicholas D'Agosto, as Dr. Ethan Haas) that eventually get abusive -- think a mid-50's (500) Days Of Summer -- it's only in the last ten minutes or so that Ginny begins to rethink her passion (and skill!) regarding the project... Which is when Masters, disastrously, decides that they should take part in the research themselves. Yeah. It's enough of a fuckup that we fade out on that cliffhanger, with some lovely (2006) Icelandic crossover electro-pop leading us out to contemplate where we came from, where we are now, and where we're going.
We're asked to deal with a lot, pretty much from the jump: Everybody hassles Ginny about getting her degree when she's already got two kids and two marriages under her belt, nobody understands what she's talking about when she talks about how cool no-strings sex actually is, Ethan is a total fedora-wearing monster to her... And worst of all, we don't even have the vocabulary yet to describe all these things: No words for male privilege; post-Pill feminism is in its infancy; sexual harassment is like, a job perk. Ginny's silent acceptance/bristling rage about every shitty thing is like watching an entire branch of philosophy come to life. Like watching somebody invent trigonometry using just her native, febrile brain.
Moving forward, it seems we'll get a good look at the doubtlessly fascinating internal world of Libby Masters, long-suffering wife and general sweetheart who isn't half as passive or as blind as she makes out. Ethan Haas -- and I think this is brave, considering what a polarizing dude he's set up to be in the pilot -- is sticking around for good, which should fuel a good quarter of the internet's outrage for a while. Beau Bridges' Provost seems to have more than the normal share of hangups, so that should get weird -- especially when you consider his wife's played by Allison Janney, which generally signals a rollercoaster of some kind. And the few subjects we meet as the story gets started -- sparkling, all -- seem to have their own stuff going on, so that should provide some interesting interplay with the major dramas of the leads.
If you were assuming it would be about old-timey social outrage, or basic-black feminist diatribes, or merely the summit of the softcore premium-cable pornography that people seem to think they're watching when they're watching good TV, none of those things are applicable. If you were thinking, "This is what was supposed to happen when we finally got female showrunners," you're hella closer to the mark, Not to get essentialist about it, but once I was able to speak that's the only thing I could really think to say: There's a generosity of spirit and an emotional insight that regularly comes with the territory, over the past several years. In any case, whatever it is, I feel respected, and a little bit loved. I don't know how else to say it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, 1956
Dr. William Masters is being honored with a special evening for being the best obstetrics surgeon in the history of ladies. During the Provost's (Beau Bridges's) opening remarks, he's nervous enough that he circles the rim of his glass with his finger, over and over. It is the only remote sexual thing he is going to do this week; his wife Libby calmly rests her hand over his, comforting him long enough to pull it together and get to the stage.
Masters: "This is very fancy but I don't understand human things! I have to go deliver babies now instead of public speaking. A well-known common fear."
Provost: "But what about your honors? Your innovations in obstetrics!"
Masters: "I have to go do them. For I am a man of science!"
BETTY
Just kidding, "baby" is code for "go hide in a hotel closet and watch a john named Ernie fuck a hooker named Betty DiMello doggy-style." When he shuffles around to click his stopwatch because Ernie is about to have an orgasm, Masters drops his pen, leading to Betty mouth at him to pull it the fuck together. Then she pretends to have an orgasm so Ernie will come. "Good for you," she says, patting him sweetly when he is done. Ernie, you are part of science now!
Masters: "Arousal states for clients 1 and 6 were instantaneous. 4 took ten minutes, making him the slowest, and 7 achieved no arousal at all. The last client... how long did he stay in the plateau state?"
Betty: "For fucking ever!"
Masters: "In science we would say 11 minutes. I wrote it down. Put your napkin in your lap, we are at a nice dinner."
Betty: "Actually we are at a creepy dinner. But I like getting etiquette lessons from somebody who invented their job to be watching people hump."
Masters: "It is not just humping, it is science. By the way, do you think you could write all of these things down yourself?"
Betty: "No, for at least two reasons. More importantly, what is wrong inside your head?"
Masters: "We study what we must conquer and we must conquer what we fear."
Betty: "You are taking the long way around to understand something that you already understand by virtue of being a person."
Masters: "You vastly overestimate my ability to do that. Tell me more about your orgasms."
Betty: "Well, they are pretend."
Masters: "For real? That's amazing! Is this a thing everybody does, or just hookers?"
Betty: "Vaginally? Yes, everybody. But the first rule of faking orgasms club is, you don't talk about faking orgasms."
Masters: "Still not clear on this. Are you telling me penises are not magic? I am asking for science."
Betty: "If you honestly don't understand why women do this, you need a female partner. Or even just a female friend. Or like any friends."
Masters: "I am friends with science."
Betty: "No offense, but I love how you're so weird and you write everything down and pretend that you are a robot. I wish I had more robot friends."
WORK
Dr. Ethan Haas is a youngster in Bill Masters's department, whose main things are -- like in every role Nicholas D'Agostino plays -- a bright-eyed idealism and a little bit of trepidation. Today what he is all about is that Lizzy Caplan has come to work in the insurance processing department for Obstetrics, and he is in love with her even though he has never talked to her, which is a problem men have sometimes.
Ethan: "I can't wait to tell her how I am in love with her, she's going to be very happy."
Masters: "That seems backwards to me."
Ethan: "No, I'm pretty sure that when you like a girl, she has to automatically like you back, or else she is a bitch. And how could I be in love with a bitch? So therefore we are in love."
Masters: "I have to concentrate on my secret sex study right now, stop expositing at me."
Ethan: "I can't! I am a runaway freight train! She was a singer in a band and she's getting divorced from the bandleader."
Masters: "So she is not afraid to cross the streams w/r/t employers? That might matter later."
Ethan adjusts his fedora and climbs out of the raft he has built of imaginary love for a sec.
Ethan: "Now you exposit at me. Are you really doing your secret sex project?"
Masters: "I think that the Provost will present my proposal to the Board, even though he has tried to subtly tell me that is never going to happen."
Ethan: "He's friendzoning your proposal? You should totally ignore that shit and act like you're entitled to a reality where he does whatever you want. That way when he doesn't, you can punch him in his whore mouth."
LATER
Margot Martindale: "Dr. Masters, are you firing me?"
Masters: "Kind of, Miss Horchow. Because I need a secretary who is a woman, like you, but also a space alien dream girl that thinks about sex as weirdly as I do."
Miss Horchow: "But I grew up on a farm! I saw chickens fuck, I am down as hell."
Masters: "Did the chickens ever fake an orgasm?"
Miss Horchow: "I cannot believe you just said orgasm to me. Martindale out."
Masters: "See, that's what I am talking about."
EOB
Masters notes Virginia Johnson for about the tenth time as they're all heading out: Ethan's already offered to give her a ride home. One wonders whether or when he would even have noticed her existence if Ethan hadn't talked about her nonstop and made her sound like a magic vending machine of womanhood. Or maybe it's just her boobs, which are majestic.
Back home, Libby has put on a nice dress and made a soufflé and lit candles and made it very sensual. She is girlish and sweet but clearly smart and very clearly a champ at Being A Woman In 1956, which was a particularly dicey time to pull it off. Can you be a little girl but also a grown woman? Can you pretend that you have no ego but also be constantly on alert for your own safety? Can you trust a fool blindly but also have enough honest respect that you don't mistreat him outright? Can you raise your children without coddling them but also without being a refrigerator mommy and giving them a psychosis? Can you be an object, and never drop character?
Libby: "Daddy's home!"
Masters: "Are you calling me that because we are trying to get pregnant, or because the Fifties are super fucked up?"
Libby: "Shut up, my basal temperature is spiking and I got chocolate. I heard that it's sexy."
He takes a million years to take off his shoes and arrange them in the walk-in closet, because he is weird about sex. He is not very good at Being A Man in 1956, but luckily he is already on the winning team and also it is always easier to be a man regardless of what year it is. Even if he wasn't doing something pretty gross, he would be generally weird about everything because he is weird, but in particular he feels weird about this: Their infertility is on his end, not hers, but if anybody finds that out, his penis will disappear in a cloud of fag-colored smoke, so that's obviously a no-go. Fingers crossed.
Libby: "Before you fuck me in this twin bed from behind on our sides like two spoons who are terrified and confused by the modern world -- and then go back to your twin bed on the other side of the room -- we should pray."
Masters: "What will we pray for?"
Libby: "A baby!"
Masters: "Yeah! Okay, and also science. And then anything else we can think of so we don't have to do it."
MEANWHILE
Virginia: "Thanks for the ride, Dr. Haas!"
Ethan: "Here is my card with my personal numbers on it. Also, I am lonely and sad and need a woman to look after me. Also a blowjob."
Virginia: "I have two kids and I am fucking exhausted right now, but you're sweet."
Ethan: "Huh? That sentence didn't contain anything about my needs I just listed."
Virginia: "Sorry to confuse you, but we are just friends."
Ethan: "But if we're just friends then how will I have sex with you? Are you a bitch?"
Virginia: "No, I'm just... When you close your eyes I still exist? I am a person?"
Ethan: "Not hearing you. I am honestly trying, though."
Virginia: "Fine, come inside for a blowjob. As long as you don't get confused about the boundaries between us."
Ethan: "That is a generous expectation."
After some sad sex that makes Ethan's existential selfishness all the more adorable and pathetic, Masters withdraws his penis from his wife's vagina and asks her to roll over onto her back and pull her knees to her chest, for purposes of semen.
Libby: "First of all, both of us staring at the same spot on the wall was pretty creepy. Second of all, we could try doing it like people some time. Like you could take off your fucking necktie for example, or look in my beautiful eyes."
Masters: "That's a bridge we will cross when you get pregnant, which will be never. So even though we are technically having sex a couple times a month, really we aren't ever going to have sex. I have ninety-problems."
But love and sex aren't the same thing.
Libby: "Daddy? What do you see when you look at me?"
Masters: "Love."
They don't even have to go together.
WORK
Ethan: "It. Was. Astonishing. It was like one of those films, you know the ones? She said no, friendzone, and then boom! Blowjob. Fellatio!"
Masters: "I know what a blowjob is. I read about it in a book."
Ethan: "What it is, is awesome."
Masters: "It sounds pretty awesome. Too bad I am a royal mess. It would have been nice to get a blowjob sometime."
GINNY & JANE
Jane is the secretary running Ginny through her first day in the insurance department, and boy is she sassy!
Jane: "Get ready because doctors are the worst. Your whole job is basically pretending that they know best and doing whatever they say, like they're God, even if it's just arbitrary or personal quirk nonsense."
Ginny: "Male doctors?"
Jane: "Redundant. Okay so like, these are the insured patients' files, which Dr. Phillips insists be kept separate from the walk-in ward patients, so they don't catch poorness. It's a hassle because this is a teaching hospital. Then, you've got Dr. Hunt, who wants all his shit in storage..."
Ginny: "I need a directory so I can see all the names and departments and..."
Jane: "Quirks, incomes, marital status, their availability despite marital status..."
Ginny: "We are bad! I love bein' sassy because it's almost like being considered a person in the workplace. I can't wait until the Pill is approved for contraceptive use in the US in about five years. We'll be a lot closer to being actually people then. Anyway, in the meantime, how would I look up this dude Haas...?"
Jane: "Ethan Haas, first-year fellow, OB/GYN..."
Ginny: "And who's his boss?"
Jane: "Dr. William Masters. The alpha dog of coochie medicine. Why did I even say that? What a crass thing for me to have said. Sometimes the sassiness gets away from ya."
UPSTAIRS
Ethan: "It was so sexy! But what does it mean?"
Masters: "What does a blowjob mean? What are you, a girl?"
Ethan: "Uh, is your secret project not entirely about that?"
Masters: "No, men still give women's sexuality its meaning. I am only studying physiological responses."
Ethan: "You're right. Who cares what goes on inside the machine, as long as it gives excellent head? I better think of more ways to get blowjobs out of that machine. I mean girl. Girl that I love! Because she is elegant, smart, and gives you blowjobs on her own initiative. I can't wait to marry her!"
Masters: "I hope she says yes, then."
Ethan: "You ... wait, what? Yes to what?"
There is a Code Blue! A black lady from the black area of the hospital is having an emergency c-section! Ethan and Masters jump into action -- Ethan grabbing Virginia so she can see her, quote, "man" in action -- and then she watches from the gallery as they say medical words and do medical things and save the lady. Who, coming from the black ward as she does, has not received the best possible care up to this point.
Ginny stares at him, only just his eyes and not even his whole crazy face, and watches and listens to him save the lady. Maybe she thinks, why would you date the bass player when you could work with the bandleader? But there is more to it, there is a vibe. They vibe and vibe, and the time we see her, she's offering to drop off files at the office herself.
INTERVIEW
Masters: "Finally. My intuition was wondering when you'd get here and our crazy partnership could begin."
Ginny: "Same thing. Do you want to interview me for your job that you have open? Because I am already hired."
Masters: "I know that, but also I don't know that. You are like female sexuality to me, in that I simultaneously feel intimately connected to you but also like you are a strange problem I need to solve."
Ginny: "You are like a weird robot to me, which is hilarious but also intriguing."
Masters: "So Miss Johnson, we are both hard workers and seekers into mystery. Do you have any medical education or training?"
Ginny: "No, I studied Music back home at Drury, but got married. I'm enrolled here at Washington now, though. Studying behavioral science or something. I should graduate whenever."
Masters: "Are you just making things up? Never mind. Why were you married?"
Ginny: "The first time it was for dumb reasons, whatever. I dropped out. The second time was for kids. A boy and a girl."
Masters: "You didn't love your spouses? You married for reasons other than..."
Ginny: "Once I know you better that is going to be a much more interesting question. But uh, how about you back the fuck off?"
Masters: "Don't be offended. I am speaking robot to you."
Ginny: "Okay, well, my personal theory is that we got sold a story that love and physical attraction..."
Masters: "Sex."
Ginny: "That love and sex are the same thing. That women believe this, or that it's generally true, and it's bullshit to me. Women are kept in the dark about everything, so then the first time we get turned on, we think we're in love, so we get married, and that way every man gets to marry a virgin, and every woman is trapped in a box of thinking that everybody is having the same kind of sex they are, and they should just submit."
Those dummies! Women, always confusing sex and love. Good thing men are too smart for that, huh Dr. Haas? I guess it's a good thing those dumb girls haven't been allowed from childhood to express their anger physically, or trained to think that sexual service is a right, and that they're on average smaller and have less upper-body strength, or else one single friendzone tantrum and those bitches could put you in the hospital!
Ginny: "Yeah but they don't have to be. They don't even have to go together. Sex can be perfectly good on its own, whereas love is..."
Masters: "This is fascinating! It's like seeing a dog wearing people clothes!"
Ginny: "I guess so. It seems kind of obvious. I mean, I don't exactly bring up this stuff at dinner parties, but..."
Masters: "I feel like this interview is suddenly over for some reason."
Ginny: "Okay, well... Hey, did that lady live? The black lady. She doesn't have a name because it doesn't matter. Think of her as a Magical Uterus."
Masters: "I don't see race. But I do see a lot of vaginas, and I think she's gonna be okay."
Ginny: "That sounds really rewarding for you, as a doctor. She would have died, had you not stepped in?"
Masters: "Yeah, the level of care in the black ward is pretty close to nil. Not that I've been down there or otherwise helped to change that, but this one uterus was special."
Ginny: "Good for you, Dr. Masters. Good. For. You."
Masters: "Hey, why do ladies fake orgasms?"
Ginny: "Because it turns you on to imagine that you have power over something toward which you actually feel powerless. Kind of like your entire job."
Masters: "So it's like a favor you do, so we'll feel good about ourselves? Just like everything else you think and say and do?"
Ginny: "Partly that, but mostly it's so you'll come, and then we can get back to whatever we'd rather be doing."
Masters: "Good thing this is just for science, or that might freak my entire brain out."
REGISTRAR
Ginny: "Hey, could you sign me up for a bunch of classes right now?"
Lady: "Women don't need college. Just a jar of cold cream and a healthy womb."
Ginny: "Nice. I want to study nurture versus nature..."
Lady: "That's not a major."
Ginny: "Uh, duh. But would it fall under behavioral sciences, or..."
Lady: "We don't have a department of that."
Ginny: "Huh, because I lied about it earlier so I kind of... Listen, I am very into this topic. I have kids, do you have kids?"
Lady: "Yeah and it didn't matter because I was a mother to them, not gallivanting around college campuses in tight sweaters making up imaginary college classes like it's Tisch over here. I was a mom. That was their nature and their nurture. Just me."
Ginny: "And I'm sure they enjoyed every fucking minute of it."
Lady: "If you want my advice..."
Ginny: "I do not."
Lady: "Go home and think about what you really want."
Ginny: "What I really want is to push your face into a punchbowl until you stop kicking, but I'll settle for you, enrolling me undeclared, in the Sociology Department. Now. Thanks."
PROVOST SCULLY
Masters: "Even though I wrote it specifically to highlight that it's about body parts and not about fucking qua fucking?"
Provost: "Even so, I can't do this. This is somehow pornography and prostitution at the same time. Come on."
Masters: "In the real world you're so fond of, there are libraries on how babies are born, but not a single study on how babies are made. Your body does stuff. Weird stuff! That's what being a doctor is literally all about!"
Provost: "Through the study of live adults flopping around on beds and jacking off?"
Masters: "Yeah, doesn't it sound great?"
Provost: "Do you realize you have a good thing going here at the hospital? We gave you honors at the beginning of the episode, Liz Lemon. Honors!"
Masters: "My practice, like my own sex life, is a revolving door of cripples. Women disappointed, confused, even tortured by sex. Or at least by their husbands. And no matter how desperate they get, all I can tell them is to get a divorce, get used to suffering, or get a side piece. That's not what a doctor is supposed to say! I'm not Dr. xoJane over here, I actually believe in self-respect. Also science."
Provost: "So send 'em to the head shrinker!"
Masters: "But the crazy is not in the ladies! It is in what you are doing right now! This is about me getting a Nobel Prize, okay. Go big or go home."
Provost: "Mainly I'm concerned with contributing to your delinquency. I am already your bro, so when this goes down I am going to look like a pervert. A pervert who gave another pervert a party on the school's dime. Therefore, I am saving you from yourself."
Masters: "Denying my agency because you don't understand what I am about? Piffle! How disrespectful since I'm a man."
BACK HOME
Libby: "Elvis Presley on TV makes me feel like sex is not a huge secret, and that was just a lie we were told by our mothers. Discomfiting."
Masters: "Listen, if it weren't for the Age of Enlightenment we would have to keep telling that lie, but now we have science so we can make it still be super weird -- but with our brains!"
Libby: "So which came first, the self-reinforcing need to regulate women's sexuality like a rare commodity, or the dehumanization that comes along with being treated like a commodified Other?"
Masters: "Don't wear yourself out, sweetheart. Either way we all get to be repressed as hell."
Libby: "Okay, daddy!"
Masters: "Anyway, I have a rare feeling of emotions."
Libby: "Daddy, oh no!"
Masters: "Yeah, I feel like I'm not doing a great job because Scully is being mean."
Libby: "No! I won't allow it. Let's instead look at this shiny object where I can't do my job. By crapping out tons of babies! Because I'm a woman!"
Masters: "Did I not throw you one like, earlier this week?"
Libby: "I had a visitor."
Masters: "I love how you don't call it menstruation or even relate it to your own body at all. As an obstetrician I don't mind, but as a dude I really hate thinking about vaginal bleeding. Bleeding out of your vagina. That's two scary things at once! Like a tornado with sharks coming out of it."
Libby: "Either way, I have failed once again. No matter how much sperm you creepily cram up there..."
Masters: "I have an invention for that! You will find out about it later. It won't help."
Libby: "Anyway, my bad."
Masters: "Yes. Yes it is your bad."
WORK
Virginia: "Your wife? You're including your wife in your cervical-cap trial? Which I totally know all about?"
Masters: "Yeah. She's real dumb and useless, like a cow that doesn't give milk, so she's gonna need your help with the paperwork and whatever."
Virginia: "I bet it's really hard being barren in 1956."
Masters: "I guess. She seems pretty bummed."
Virginia: "Are you not also bummed?"
Masters: "Why would I be bummed? There is fucking nothing wrong with my junk."
Virginia: "Because she's your wife?"
Masters: "I mean, I wish I was a better scientist that could make her shit work. I feel bad about that. Mostly annoyed, but yeah. A little blue, I suppose."
Virginia: "Thank God I'm not married to your robot ass."
Masters: "Spoilers, darling."
Virginia: "So my shift ended an hour ago, and my not-boyfriend is here..."
Masters: "Don't be an idiot. Reproduction happens all the time, you can't go by the clock."
Virginia: "I totally get that? I just need to get a babysitter when you do this."
Masters: "Fine. Fuck you. ...Uh, just kidding, you did a good job today."
Virginia: "Good job almost acting human! Nice save."
HOME
Ethan: "What a good job you're doing blowing me! Now for the main event."
Virginia: "Whoa, buddy. We had a deal. Get downtown."
Ethan: "But how am I supposed to give you a blowjob! You don't even have a penis."
Virginia: "True enough. But also, think about it..."
Ethan: "But oral sex is about making a man's penis feel good!"
Virginia: "Right, but... Come on, work it out..."
Ethan: "Oh! I know nothing, Jon Snow."
Virginia: "Good job!"
Ethan: "You mean it? I wasn't sure. At first I was like what and then I was like okay and then I think I really got the hang of it."
Virginia: "Actually you did okay, kiddo. But thanks for making even that somehow about you."
Ethan: "It was very sexy! I like doing it!"
Virginia: "Because you like me to enjoy myself?"
Ethan: "No, because we have to conquer what we don't understand. Going down on you is like fighting the dragon. It's up-close magic. And because it's less like thinking about your sexuality as independent of my own, and more like finding out I have a whole other penis! I wish I had a telescope for vaginas. I really want to get in there and figure it out."
Virginia: "Just you wait, buddy. That's in Phase II. Now, let's fuck."
Ethan: "Can I just gaze at you and can you stop moving so I can tell you how beautiful you are?"
Virginia: "I mean, I kind of want to fuck."
Ethan: "Hang on, let me just be in this movie that is all about me for one more second. Me and this beautiful creature, that belongs to me, who I just went down on."
MAGIC BLACK LADY
Mrs. May: "Everybody wonders why I'm here and not in the black ward. Including me."
Masters: "Because I am obsessed with you and saving your old black vagina!"
Mrs. May: "I am really bummed out about my miscarriage."
Masters: "Get over it and let me work my magic! Not everything is about you, lady!"
AFTER THE DEED
Virginia: "...I lied and said I know all about cervical caps, of course..."
Ethan: "Actually he invented it. It's like a little rubber bowler hat you can use to either not get pregnant, or if you reverse the polarities, you can smoosh all the dud sperm up against the cervix with it..."
Virginia: "Dud sperm?"
Ethan: "Or in Bill's case, zero sperm. All the subjects have a low sperm count, but Masters's is close to zero."
Virginia: "No way. That would make him a huge asshole, he told me himself it was her womb that was a dud."
Ethan: "Way. Have you not ever met a man in 1956 before?"
Ethan: "I mean, I love the man. He has always been my biggest hero and bestie and mentor and darling and all that. My crush on you may have changed his entire life, is how up in each other's shit we are. But his ego is plenty intense. He's not going to admit anything so fundamentally lame about himself."
Virginia: "But I mean, science. It's a true fact, not a thing that means anything about..."
Ethan: "Either way. I read his file myself, it's his fact to interpret. And frankly, his wife to torture with it."
Virginia: "Huh. Okay, this was fun but you have to go home now."
Ethan: "See this face? This is my disappointed face. It is very close to my punching-you face."
Virginia: "Good thing we're not dating then, huh?"
BOYS
Ethan: "I don't even pressure her into the sex part! You could almost say she pressures me!"
Masters: "Cool, tell me more about this thing I don't need to know about."
Ethan: "It's like the kind of sex you have when you're married!"
Masters: "I am not the control group for that."
Ethan: "...Or on your honeymoon, I mean. Or like, with a prostitute! Not that I have ever been with a prostitute or that Ginny is a prostitute. I'm just very excited!"
Masters: "You seem to be mistaking regular normal sex for magical sex. Not that, again, I'm any kind of control group for that either. I just wish you would stop. I can think about either of you having sex, separately, but put them together and it makes me want to punch a hole in a wall."
Ethan: "Bill, I am in love with her. And she doesn't seem to think that's as important as it is. So I need you to order her to be in love with me. Or at least talk me up."
Masters: "Or neither of those things, and shut up and go away."
Ethan: "I mean, what is it she wants?"
Masters: "What does the woman you're sleeping with want? The riddle of life itself can't come close to the unfathomable mystery of that question."
Your first mistake is thinking those are two separate things. Your second mistake is thinking they're the same thing. Your third mistake is thinking they aren't. And so on. Unfathomable mysteries aren't built to be fathomed. That's why we have science, because science never ends.
But your last mistake is asking anyone but her; and you couldn't hear her if you did.
LIBBY
Virginia: "So this is what's called paperwork..."
Libby: "Being married to William Masters is like, so weird."
Virginia: "I am positive that's true."
Libby: "I mean, everybody was staring at me when I walked in."
Virginia: "The garden in the courtyard is nice. We can sit there like two girlfriends, fill out the forms. No one will be the wiser. How does that sound?"
Libby: "Sounds like you just became my best friend. Hope that works out okay."
Virginia takes her time arranging Mrs. Masters on the table; a pillow, under the knees. She isn't going to tell Libby to run for the hills, to punch her husband in the face,
WAITING RM
Betty Dimello: "What's up? I'm here for some unrelated shit you don't know about."
Virginia: "Cool, let's do some paperwork."
Betty: "No thanks!"
Virginia: "I mean, this is the procedure."
Betty: "Fine, you write it down and I will dictate. In addition to being fascinating all over the place, I maybe am illiterate."
Virginia: "No prob. I'm pretty easygoing. First question, What is your overall pregnancy deal? Your works and all that."
Betty: "I've had three abortions, if that's what you mean."
Virginia: "That is no kind of way to get pregnant, Miss Dimello."
Masters: "...Oh, crap Uh, Miss Johnson, please put Betty in Room Five and send Ethan in to fit my wife's cervix for a cervical cap."
Virginia: "So while you're in Room 5 with an illiterate hooker, a little boy she only knows from cocktail parties is gettin' right up in there?"
Masters: "I can't very well do procedures on my own wife. It violates medicine, and also study protocol, and also decency."
Virginia: "If you gave a shit about decency you wouldn't be subjecting your wife to a stranger's speculum for no fucking reason."
Masters: "Hmm?"
Virginia: "Nothing."
Masters: "So uh, apparently this is going to suck. Have fun with that, I've got better shit to do."
Libby: "But you'll be back? After we're done following protocol..."
Masters: "I let you follow the rules, so I can break them. We're the perfect couple!"
Libby, verbatim: "Careful, Bill. Careful about making me the boring one."
Masters, verbatim: "You're the tough one, Lib. I think we learned that long ago."
Ethan: "Hey it's me. And my cold tiny hands, tossing that pillow Ginny carefully arranged for you on the floor because it's symbolic of I don't give a fuck and women are screwed in this lifetime."
Libby: "Daddy, please don't leave me here with this Nice Guy tool."
Masters: "This is the cruelest thing I will do in this entire pilot. Therefore, watching it go down would make me feel bad about myself, and that's a non-starter."
ROOM 5
Betty: "So I'm the first guinea pig?"
Masters: "I don't understand metaphors. My first guinea pig was year two of medical school. Then came rabbits. Then dead people. Then alive people. Then women. Then whores."
Betty: "Right, I forgot you have that thing in your head that makes you like this. What I meant was, I'm your first human subject on day one of your secret creeper study. Which is great, because you are paying me to jack off, which is like my regular job but better, because of the significantly lower chance of me getting murdered or beaten up."
He attaches electrodes -- "Mother always said I'd end up in the electric chair..." -- and then he's like, "Okay, go for it. Stimulate yourself to the various levels of arousal."
Betty: "I'm gonna need a vibrator or..."
Masters: "You didn't mention that."
Betty: "This is why you need a female..."
Masters: "Working on it. I'll get you a vibrator time."
Betty: "Magazines?"
Masters: "I don't have any gay ones, so like..."
Betty: "Work it out. Come on."
Masters: "I mean, I have nudie mags but they're... They have pictures of ladies..."
Betty: "Almost there, champ..."
Masters: "I mean, the ladies are nude. In the pictures. They are of a sexual nature."
Betty: "And here you said you didn't have any gay porn."
Masters: "Why would a gay man like pictures of naked women?"
Betty: "...No, girl."
Betty: "I have a long-term partner, female, named Helen. She gets naked, just like those ladies in the pictures, and we do it. Sexually."
Masters: "But then how can you have sex with men for your job?"
Betty: "You just answered your..."
Masters: "Got it, got it. All caught up."
Betty: "I love her. Do you love somebody? Who is your lover, who do you love?"
Masters: "Sex and love aren't the same thing. They don't even have to go together."
Betty: "You're married, right?"
Masters: "Yeah."
Betty: "When you look at her, what do you see?"
Masters: "...I'll go get you some porn."
OUTSIDE
Virginia: "What to start with first? The hooker in Room Five? The porn you're toting around the hospital right now? Your wife's privates getting a beatdown door?"
Masters: "Betty is awesome, this porn is for her, and... What was the last one?"
Virginia: "Your wife. That you are literally torturing. Right now. Via my sex-friend. The other ones I don't really care about because I don't judge other people's stuff. But the Libby one kind of sticks in my craw, I'm not gonna lie."
Masters: "Do you want to get fired or something?"
Virginia: "You and I both know that's not fucking happening, so fess up."
Masters: "If I were capable of admitting the truth about my sperm to you, I would be okay letting my wife off the hook. You are actually a higher level of difficulty than her."
Virginia: "Too bad I know it for a fact, then."
Masters: "Seriously, are you looking for termination right now or what."
Virginia: "Fine, whatever. Robot mode engage, and tell me about Room Five."
Masters: "Okay, secretly it's why I hired you. It is for pervy shit."
Virginia: "Cool. Like how pervy, though."
Masters: "Imagine the perviest thing that could happen in the obstetrics wing of a teaching hosp..."
Virginia: "Oh my God is she in there fucking somebody right now?"
Masters: "Your instincts are dead on. But no, partners is down the line. Right now it's solo. Which is why this porn. Although I wonder if her being a lesbian is..."
Virginia: "An orgasm's an orgasm, right?"
Masters: "Let's have a super weird talk about that later, okay?"
Virginia: "Okay but why me? We were vibing well before Ethan could have told you about my futuristic sex ideas."
Masters: "That's why, essentially. Instinct. Vibe. Intellectual chemis..."
Virginia: "Even though I majored in music and now, soft science. A female MD would..."
Masters: "Uh, lose her job? Make it so women can no longer be doctors? Cause a worldwide riot?"
Virginia: "Mostly the first one, but yeah."
Masters: "That's why you. The study's not approved, and I wouldn't ask a woman with a real career, especially one so hard-won, to jeopardize..."
Virginia: "Meaning yours is jeopardized, too."
Masters: "Yeah, but it's hardly the same thing. I mean yes, I'm very very brave, thank you."
Virginia: "Mister, I am IN."
JANE (INSURANCE DEPT)
Jane: "But so wait, like what are you actually talking about?"
Virginia: "Secret amazing things you will be into. Trust me. You said coochie. Out loud."
Jane: "So I'd be volunteering..."
Virginia: "To prove things we always thought, but through verifiable and indisputable science. To establish female sexuality as a thing-in-itself, rather than simply a place to keep babies and dicks."
Jane: "Seems ambitious."
"It is going to be the biggest thing for women since the Vote. It goes suffrage, us, the Pill. And then not a whole lot, because that's a lot to deal with, but because culture speeds up in tandem with technology, then you get Roe v. Wade, and then the ERA and that whole tragedy, and Gloria Steinem, who gets a real raw deal eventually even though she's actually one of the most important Americans of the entire century. Then it's like, Clarence Thomas and Ally McBeal, which is really just part of a larger bunch of scary '90s bullshit because of AIDS, and Baby Boomers realizing their true horror potential and blossoming into these selfish, undying monsters. Then, Wendy Davis and the idea of "women's healthcare" being a pejorative term, which is when a very good TV show about us gets made. Then eventually the government will shut down, because even fifty years from now the worst kind of men will still not have entirely died. Some of them will still be alive, fucking everything up out of fear and hatred for a world that's long-since passed them by."
SOLD.
Jane: "Ginny told me you have quite a waiting list!"
Masters: "Well, that was an awesome lie. She is kind of a hustler. Now, about the ground rules..."
Jane, disrobing: "Ginny already told me. Ginny is basically the biggest badass since Buffy."
MEANWHILE
Virginia: "I mean, it's interesting. You look at the data and it's all very clear. What's happening to the subject, physically. But then... This is your number one thing. This is your entire life. Think really hard about what you're about to say."
Masters: "It's almost like scientific data has nothing to do with subjectivity. I'm trying to give women agency on paper, but by doing it on paper it still remains mine. There's no narrative except for Bill Masters's narrative."
Virginia: "Right, which is why you need to stop sexualizing me. Not because it's wrong, but because you're bad at it. You take the long way around. You use your brain because you've never gotten a phone call from your body."
The map is not the territory. Jiddu Krishnamurti: "Sir, it is like a man who is hungry. Any amount of description of the right kind of food will never satisfy him. He is hungry, he wants food."
Masters: "Then like, what am I supposed to do? Ask a woman what it 'feels' like to have an orgasm? What am I, a girl?"
Virginia: "It's not quantitative. It would be like trying to describe salt to someone who's never tasted salt."
Masters: "It's like getting all these telegrams about sex, when every part of you is screaming to just pick up the phone."
Virginia: "You get points for trying this hard to resolve that, though."
Masters: "I mean, I've tasted salt. Oh boy."
Virginia: "...But never the way I've tasted salt."
Masters: "So go for it. How does an orgasm feel for a woman?"
Virginia: "Fantastic."
Jane, masturbating busily: "I CONCUR!"
SURGERY
Black lady's under the knife again. With a medical text watching carefully from the gallery -- Essentials Of Anatomy -- and Ginny staring, delighted, Bill walks Ethan through it. All the words for all the parts; all the countries on the map. Ethan hates it because he's showing off for Ginny; Bill can't hear him hating it, because he's showing off for Ginny, too.
Outside Room Five, a tall blonde hunk of a doctor, Austin Langham, has a stethoscope to the wall. Ginny catches him at it, ribbing him playfully.
Langham: "There's money trading hands, about what goes on in there..."
Virginia: "Lol. And what have you decided?"
Langham: "I think it's a decorator right now. Moving furniture."
Virginia: "How much do you stand to lose?"
Langham: "Twenty bucks."
Virginia: "Sorry to tell you this, but..."
ULYSSES & JANE (DOE)
Virginia: "This glass dildo with a camera inside, it's awfully large."
Masters: "The vagina expands, we know this from science."
Virginia: "I mean, sure. But Jesus, it's like a baseball bat."
Scully: "Okay so to review, I told you to stop being gross, so you developed a new hobby of making giant glass dildos?"
Masters: "Giant glass science dildos."
Virginia: "We call it Ulysses, after that Kirk Douglas movie with the giant Cyclops."
Scully: "Okay, this is a big fella! I don't like where this is going."
Virginia: "Vaginas? You've made that abundantly clear already."
Masters: "But look how science! It doesn't overheat, there's a tiny camera... Nobody is doing this now, true. Thanks to bros like you. But in five years, everybody will be."
Jane: "Whoa. I refuse to masturbate with a giant dildo in front of the Provost."
Virginia: "Chill, Jane. He's not watching you, he's watching science."
Masters: "She'll be controlling the speed etc., so all you have to do is lean in. Just don't get poked in the..."
Scully: "Watch out for the dildo. I get it."
Masters: "Think of yourself as... Sir Edmund Hillary, leaving basecamp."
Scully: "The Mount Everest guy? That just got to the South Po... Gotcha. Nice one."
LATER
Scully: "Okay, that was awesome. A lot goes on in there, I won't deny it. But it's hard to take that feeling of science and put it into words that don't make us look like creeps."
Masters: "The map is not the territory. I understand. But it's the cartographer's job to draw the map, in a way that can be read by anyone. Men have been trying to tame the donut for literally as long as there have been people, though. Don't you think the global sigh of relief that we've mapped it -- Here Be No Dragons, Just A Delicate And Beautiful System Slightly More Complex Than A Car Engine -- would overrule any such..."
Scully: "Nobody is more terrified of vaginas than me, Bill..."
Masters: "I'll take that bet, Barton."
Scully: "...But at the end of the day I'm still holding the bag, and on the bag is a picture of a woman riding Steely Dan. I can't..."
Virginia: "-- It's not just the technology, it's the revolution. The new data we're collecting dispels years of myths about how a woman's body anticipates sex. We've already debunked many established theories, plus charted clear-cut stages of sexual response... We're starting to see that some women are capable of multiple orgasms!"
Scully: "Why does your secretary keep talking to me?"
"I've made this hospital a fortune. Our patient base has tripled. We're ranked second in the country. Our donors can't write checks fast enough, in large part because of me. I got us to where we are now. And this study, this is where we're going. This is the future. But if you won't support me in blazing that trail, then I'll find another hospital that will. I need an answer by the end of today."
Barton Scully goes home, thinks about it, has a fight inside himself. It's a fight you know well. Every sexual experience you've ever had that meant anything, you've had this fight. Anything personal that changed things whatsoever, sex or not, you've had this fight, which goes: Are you gross, or was that okay?
When you're with Bill Masters everything seems clean and above board. It's cold and clinical and white. It's like winter. No smells, no mishaps, nothing unclean at all. It feels good, and even the fact that it feels good feels okay, untainted, unselfish.
And but then you go away again, and the light fades from the room, and you start hearing other voices -- besides his, besides even your own -- and there is no muse, just the fear. You think you've transcended to a higher level of being, but what if the cage of your perversion is just cunningly described as the real world? Make a deal with the Devil, it'll feel like Christmas every time. Wouldn't it? No downside, only pleasure, until you're caught and reminded how filthy you are.
Literally the oldest story in the book. Everything is fine until it's not fine, and you realize you were gross and stupid the entire time, and how dare you. And the thing you know, you're looking for somebody to blame.
But then you have to remind yourself, again, that you aren't bad, or gross, or creepy: You're clean. And Bill is in love with science. There is no man behind the curtain. You've stepped out into the sunlight -- not a simulacrum of the sunlight, not another cage, but a whole way of being.
And the zoetrope light like that -- winter brightness, and then dark -- over and over again. You're in a cave and the light that keeps changing, because you're in the places where you keep your stuff. It doesn't come up very often, in the day-to-day, so it's in the cave usually. We have a bad habit of thinking those things are in the cave because they're dirty, or dirty as a consequence of being in the cave; we forget we are not dirty, and the cave's just there to make us good neighbors. There's nothing bad down there, just things we've said no to. And the questions.
Are you disgusting? Are you so far-flung into the future that you are a messiah? Are you joining a cult, are you under the influence of a strong and charismatic figure (two of them!) or are you being your best self today? Are you so enlightened that you're beyond reproach, or so convinced by your own sickness that you'll never dig out?
If you think about her, that woman today, Jane Doe Jane, you get a little bit of an erection. Not a rager, just a maybe/maybe-not. Is that perfectly fine, is that science? Or is that your body being smarter than you, telling you something you need to hear?
Winter sun, and then the muggy dark. Over and over again, until nightfall.
ETHAN
Arrives, in his little tux, while they're waiting. Tonight was the NICU benefit, and to Ethan it is the most important thing because he doesn't know how deep they've gone, or what rides on the phone call that never comes.
If she told him all about it, she'd lose them both. He would go haywire, and Bill would feel betrayed. They would both be fine, but she'd be out in the cold: Everything depends on her, because she's the only one that gives either of them any concrete validation. Without her presence, in different ways, they don't exist. Without Virginia, Masters knows now he'd be a rapist. Without Virginia, Ethan would drop off the edge of the earth, unloved by the only woman he can see in color.
So it's her responsibility, to carry this burden on her back, and it starts now: With Ethan angry that she takes the NICU benefit for granted, when he showered and put on his best suit and showed up with flowers.
It's the only time her shoulders slump.
Masters, tone-deaf: "For God's sake, Ethan. Go! Ginny can come with me and Libby, a bit later."
Virginia: "Actually, Libby's already had me over twice this week. I'm not a third wheel."
Ethan: "Do I matter in this conversation at all?"
Them: "Sshhhhhh."
Ethan: "Fine, I'm waiting fifteen more minutes and then that's it!"
Virginia: "Oh my God, like I care. Look, I'm giving this another hour. Just meet us there already."
Masters: "Is that still going on?"
Virginia: "What. We're just friends. He's all... We're just friends. It's my call."
Masters: "I mean, and I am trying not to come off as a douchebag here, but I think it's in our best interests -- scientifically -- for you to not be dating hospital staff while we're doing secret scandalous shit. I mean, we must be above reproach."
Virginia: "So if I were merely subjecting him to unnecessary and invasive treatm... Nope, not gonna go there. I hear you, Bill. And I know you're nervous about Scully, but..."
"I'm not talking about Scully! Every museum in the world is filled with art created from this basic impulse. The greatest literature, the most beautiful music. The study of sex is the study of the beginning of all life, and science holds the key. Yet we sit huddled in the dark like prudish cavemen, filled with shame and... and... Guilt... when the truth is, nobody understands sex."
Virginia: "Quite an autobiography. Not that you're wrong..."
Masters: "And now, nobody will. I'm not nervous, I'm mourning."
Virginia: "Fine, let's go get drunk at the NICU benefit already."
Masters: "Cool, let me grab my..."
Ring-ring.
NICU BENEFIT
Libby: "Sweet! Whatever Scully decided, you have something like a smile."
Virginia: "He is very persuasive."
Masters: "I persuaded her to marry me. And now I'm persuading her to find some champagne? So we can celebrate."
Virginia: "I'm coming too!"
She looks lovely in her gown; Bill pulls back on her with his smile, for a moment.
Masters: "I know, I look goofy. But it's just such a great day."
Virginia: "Would you have done it? Left?"
Masters: "Guess we'll never know."
Careful, Bill.
Virginia: "Oh, I've got my eye on Langham. He's married, but he's also had affairs. He's a gigantic sexy Aryan, which goes well with Jane. He's into nurses..."
Masters: "Okay, I can handle it from here. Good talk."
Virginia: "Have you not noticed I am hella good at this?"
Masters: "Yeah, but he's a doctor. He's a man and a doctor, that's two levels above your usual prey. I'm not saying women are gullible whores, I'm just saying he's a doctor who is a man."
Virginia: "Yeah? So are you, and I worked your shit like a master."
Masters: "Uh, I picked you for this."
Virginia: "Okay, buddy."
Masters: "I love it when you patronize me. I get the superficial ego stroke, and I also get to know you respect me enough to keep it above the table."
"See if you can get him away from his wife," she says. I wonder if she hears herself yet.
LIBBY
Libby: "I mean, and then you just lay there, legs up by your ears, everything completely exposed... And even with his tiny hands, it was... It's like cramping, but worse. They keep taking blood for labs, one of my veins has collapsed..."
Virginia: "In lieu of wrecking your marriage, which would wreck all three of our lives at this juncture, I am going to halfheartedly assure you that everything is going to be okay. As much as I love you, we both know you're pretty basic."
Libby: "Like because I want a baby? Fuck that. I want a baby because he wants a baby. I am a failure as a woman because I can't help him succeed as a man. My own desires don't even signify. This shit goes a lot deeper than you think. I mean, I pray before we fuck."
Virginia: "Wait. This is about giving him a child? Dr. Roboto?"
Libby: "Didn't you get married the second time so you could have kids?"
Virginia: "Yeah, but I didn't go all Mengele on the guy to get me there. Jeez."
Libby: "You know him. Having a wife grounds him, keeps him from turning to stone. He is human because he has one of me. Who knows how lifelike he'd be if he got a baby? My marriage might actually turn real! I mean, we have no way of knowing. Until then, it's just me and my broken guts, annoying him at every turn. Can you imagine? Being this brilliant doctor, and he's stuck with me. A barren lonely beast."
Virginia: "Can I imagine being a rich white man? Yeah, everybody's lives are spent training for that leap of compassion. But can I imagine being married to you and not appreciating it? Not at all. That's where it falls apart."
Libby: "You're right. He's very important."
Virginia: "Oh, girl. I will be back and then we are getting super fucked up."
Virginia: "Boys, just discussing anonymous sex in a clinic, correct? Can I ask who's gonna win the pool?"
Langham: "Nobody. I'm still pretty weirded out. I mean, look at me. People would pay to watch me masturbate, for sure. But I just..."
Virginia: "Oh, we're not doing that one with you. This is couples."
Langham: "Nice! But I mean, my wife won't even let me look at her naked. That's why I am so gross."
Virginia: "Yeah, I'm sure that's why. But no. We're recruiting tons of the hottest ladies even as we speak. Singles in your area."
Langham: "Ladies? What kind?"
Virginia: "We preserve the anonymity of our volunteers. But we've got a secretary, and I'm working on a nurse, and a hospital administrator's wife..."
Langham: "No way. Only hookers and insane coeds would agree to this."
Virginia: "Rude! There is a hooker, but..."
Langham: "Why are you offended, are you in it? Because that is a horse of a..."
Virginia: "No, because I am doing the study. But I would have no problem doing it if I were just some insane coed down the street. And you know why? Because sex is not bad, and because this is about science."
Langham: "Okay, now close the deal."
Virginia: "I am talking hot bitches. Young ones."
Masters: "Trust me on this."
Langham: "This whole thing feels like Christmas or something..."
And just as Bill and Ginny are giving each other a silent high-five, who should run up but stupid Ethan, who's been told by Libby that they're working the crowd while she sits, patiently, alone at the bar. He drags Ginny off into the cold night, and things get shitty.
OUTSIDE
Virginia: "Ethan, let go of me! What the fuck? Like you're actually hurting me!"
Ethan: "So?"
Virginia: "Nice."
Ethan: "How many times have we slept together?"
Virginia: "I can see the end of this from here, and I'm not doing it without a crowd of people in a well-lit area. Come back inside."
Ethan: "How many times? How many times have you let me fuck you?"
Virginia: "Not doing this now. You are in meltdown."
Ethan: "I haven't seen you in weeks!"
Virginia: "You see me every day."
Ethan: "Not like that! Alone! You work late every night, I can't even give you a ride home thanks to that bow-tied asshole..."
Virginia: "Yeah, this really isn't about my transportation logistics."
Ethan: "You're always giving me bullshit excuses..."
Virginia: "I have priorities. I have a life. I have a career that is making me feel like God. Those are not excuses and they're not bullshit. When you close your eyes I still exist."
Ethan: "Stop talking about your career and your life and all this! I'm talking about what's really important and you're deflecting!"
Virginia: "Get it all out, little guy."
Ethan: "You're freezing me out."
Virginia: "No, I'm just freezing. Please come back inside."
Ethan: "Just talk to me! Just tell me..."
Virginia: "What. What unfathomable mystery could you possibly..."
Ethan: "Just tell me!"
Virginia: "All I have to say is, it's cold and you're drunk and you're insulting me, and if you think that's how you win a girl's heart..."
Ethan: "Why would I insult you when you're all I think about?"
Virginia: "That is a very fucking good question, bro."
"I have been in your bed. I have been inside you. What am I not doing? Or doing too much of? You know? What can I do better?"
Virginia: "You act like there's a secret, but there's not one. There's not a magic combination of words or deeds that is going to make reality match the movie in your head. Stop treating me like furniture onstage in the play about your life, for starters, and maybe you'll get a better response."
Ethan: "But I don't want to be your friend!"
Virginia: "Then why the fuck should I want anything past that?"
Ethan: "Friends don't fuck, Virginia. Lovers do. People in love with each other, they do."
Virginia: "I care about you, Ethan."
Ethan: "But you don't love me."
Virginia: "Which is fine. It's sad for you, I guess, but you knew it was a cul-de-sac when you drove in. So either you get your ass turned the right way, or we can't even be what we are. Which is good friends who have great sex."
Ethan: "Right? You'll make love to me. You'll let me do anything, everything to you..."
Virginia: "Not let. Participate. We have sex. There are two people in the room, doing themselves a favor. It's not about me letting you fuck me. It's about us fucking each other. We both like it, we both enjoy it. Why are you making it gross?"
Ethan: "I fundamentally cannot hear you on a very basic level right now. But when I fuck you, it's because I love you."
Careful, making me the boring one. They don't even have to go together.
Virginia: "Welp, you fucked it. Puppy, we're done. I'm sorry that you're drunk and hurting and I am sorry to be the cause of it. Even if you're the one actually doing it, no matter how many times I tried to help you not do this to yourself. But I'm going inside."
Punches are at this point exchanged. It just gets colder and colder. But no brighter.
"Fine. Wear the lab coat, Virginia. Run the study. Play doctor all you want. At the end of the day, all you really are is a whore."
HOSPITAL
It hits her again, with her shiner in the hallway, as she's picking up some magazines from the mailbox. When her boss asks about it, she'll make some excuse. Not because she's afraid, or embarrassed, but because it's none of his business. He'd do something unpredictable, or say he told her so, or worry aloud about the impact on their study, the interdepartmental drama he was so afraid of.
And what if Ethan's right? The bright winter sun goes dark and muddy and suddenly she's a whore. Is she gross, or is this okay? All it took was somebody saying it. Out of love, even; that makes it worse. Whatever it was, he thought it was something beautiful. At least she hit back.
Mrs. May is pregnant. She throws her arms around Dr. Masters's secretary, the kind woman that watched them operate when the last one left; she weeps. The light comes back, for a moment, as they weep for joy. Mrs. May feels warm, like the sun on winter snow. He did that.
COUPLES
Masters watches from behind the glass; Ginny gets Jane set up, before Langham arrives.
Virginia: "So then I attach the leads..."
Jane: "We're just laying there naked?"
Virginia: "Yeah, you can cover up with sheet if you feel weird. I mean, figuring this stuff out is part of the fun. Being the first. Pioneers!"
Jane: "Cool."
Masters: "She really is, like, so good at this. How would you even classify it?"
Langham: "Nice to meet you, I'm... Anonymous."
Jane: "What a coincidence! Me, too."
Virginia: "This is going well. So you guys just hop up here and get comfortable. There aren't any rules, per se. We're just testing physiological responses, so think about running through the four stages we've identified. Excitement..."
Langham: "Done. Check. Ten-four."
Jane: "Lol."
Virginia: "...And then plateau, which is usually intercourse if you're vanilla but could also be freestyle. Then orgasmic, which you know about from that giant vibrator and/or being a dude. And then refractory, that's the part with the cigarettes..."
Langham: "I feel, like, every possible feeling right now. It's like being at an audition in front of God."
Jane: "What about the wires?"
Virginia: "Just go slow. That'll make it better anyway. Remember? Because being a pioneer is fun!"
They are wonderful, together. They're classic looking, blonde white people with nice bodies, but it's the laughing and the weirdness and the trepidation and the excitement; then the intensity, and then the recognition, it's... There is something about this moment, about this entire show really, but particularly this most high-stakes moment, that is just so kind.
So unutterably kind, and compassionate, and excited, and smart. It's back-to-the-Garden stuff, like, just for one second it's not Ulysses that isn't judging, but the whole world. Normally you would say, "Nobody's watching, do what you want," but this takes it one more step toward divinity: "Somebody's watching, and it's still okay."
"Can I kiss you?" Austin Langham asks, and Jane sighs.
We watch the Olympics to see holy machines, doing what they were built by grace to do. We have sex is to remind ourselves that we're no different.
GALLERY
In this moment, of all moments, Ginny feels more like winter than ever before. Excitement, plateau, orgasm, refractory: All of them the unfathomable mystery of life itself. All of them used as weapons, until now. The jackboot on your throat. For a second Ethan is invisibly tiny, at the other end of a telescope, crying because he doesn't get it, because he doesn't get what he wants; because he thought she was cheating on him with science, like he ever had her in the first place.
Clean and white and above board; cold and clinical. It feels good, and even the fact that it feels good feels okay, untainted, unselfish. You're clean. And Bill is in love with science. There is no man behind the curtain. You've stepped out into the sunlight -- not a simulacrum of the sunlight, not another cage, but a whole way of being.
Until he speaks.
"I do have one concern... About the possibility of sexual transference between us and our patients. We're going to be watching couples have sex, and those couples know we're watching them. But the likelihood of us transferring all this libidinous energy onto our patients is high."
Virginia: "Is this something you're struggling with? Because we can..."
Masters: "Not me! Never me. But I could see the beginnings of it already, between you and Langham."
Virginia: "That golden retriever? Come on."
Masters: "He flirted, you responded."
Virginia: "I made him comfortable, just like every single woman we've had in here."
Masters: "Yeah, but he had an erection."
Virginia: "By virtue of the fact that... Are you kidding me right now?"
Careful, Bill.
Masters: "Which is why we need to implement a system, uh, that ensures this kind of transference doesn't occur..."
Virginia: "Which it didn't..."
Masters: "So you agree to devising a ... system?"
Virginia: "There's another shoe about to drop. Just drop it already. You're twitching like..."
Masters: "The two of us should undertake the research ourselves."
Virginia: "Have sex with our patients? Bill, that would be textbook transference."
Masters: "Uh, no."
Clunk. Winter sun, and then the muggy dark. We study what we must conquer, and we must conquer what we fear.
Masters: "I've considered this carefully, and I... It's the best way to ensure the longevity of the project. We get the benefit of interpreting the data firsthand, plus it deflects any inappropriate projection away from our patients."
"Keeps it just between us."
Are you gross, or was that okay? Are you so enlightened that you're beyond reproach, or so convinced by your own sickness that you'll never dig out? Am I joining a cult, am I under the influence of a strong and charismatic figure? Or are we being our best selves yet?
You walk out of the cave and into the sparkling snow, and everything looks so clean. Under a clear sky, strong sun, blue and white and clean. Maybe it's still a cave, though, cunningly disguised as freedom: Maybe you're being tricked. Am I the dumb girl of the century, and a procurer to boot, or are you really this much of a robot? And what am I risking, either way?
"Can I take the weekend to think about this?"
He says goodnight, and they retreat to their corners. And she goes home and she has a fight with herself, one we've all had. He's shown his cards; it becomes dangerous. But for now, it's still winter.
WEEK
When the study is thrown off-premises, Virginia loses this job she's not even sure she still wants. Trying to save the study, deal with college politics, and take care of her kids means not a lot of time to think. But the chaos at his new science digs -- a brothel, of course -- means Masters might need Johnson to rescue him, yet again.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, Ravenswood, and Masters Of Sex for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.