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Second episodes are tricky so the main question up first is: Is it awesome? Yes, in fact it is awesome.
Ginny imagines various scenarios in which she might reply to Masters's disastrous offer at the end of the pilot: In some, she's firmly negative; in others, only slightly less so. But by the time she gets to work, it doesn’t matter anyway: The study has been canceled, after somebody -- Ethan? -- told Scully about phase two, where the people are actually fucking. Masters is beyond nasty as he blames her for this, for sleeping with Ethan in the first place and basically for everything bad that has ever happened. Then her kid, an adorable comics nerd and natural actor, gets suspended from school for spitting.
At a loss, Masters moves the study to Betty's brothel, who strikes several hard bargains because she is awesome. Part of the deal is that she be hired on as a hospital receptionist, which is only part of her life-overhaul: She wants to get pregnant by the Pretzel King of the Midwest, who fancies her, and is willing to leave both her lover Helen and her job behind to get there. Masters doesn't want to reverse her tubal ligation, and (during several days in which he dicks around about rehiring her) he sends Ginny to talk her out of it, but a talk about a woman's right to choose -- free of both the rhetoric and the helpful vocabulary we use today; it's suddenly a completely different and fresh topic -- puts Ginny on Betty's side.
Dr. Langham and Jane (Anonymous and Anonymous, collectively Anonymous) discuss doing the study on their own terms, but Jane points out that without the imprimatur of "Science" hanging over their affair, it just becomes an affair. They are both pretty great, especially working -- like they all are -- without any kind of net at all.
The hookers at the cathouse are pretty great; one of them thinks she has a brain tumor which turns out to just be astigmatism and another one is just crazy looking and funny. They find Masters a good deal less charming than Betty and Ginny do, so you get this neat dynamic of our ladies each trying to explain to them how Masters's creepiness is actually okay.
Less okay is Ethan Haas's burgeoning creepiness, which seems to have no limit, as well as being completely understandable. He keeps trying to find girls he can bone, and then introduce to oral sex, but it comes off as such a forced, self-centered fetish that most of the girls abandon on impact. The ones that don't freak him out so much by not being Ginny Jonhson that he makes them feel twice as awkward. He wraps up an episode of sorta heartbreaking sexual obsession and sadsack bullshit by stalking Ginny to her house -- but on the positive tip, he wasn't the one that blabbed to Scully about phase two. (We still don't know who did that.)
Forcing Ginny to interview her replacement candidates works for longer than it should, but eventually she's had enough and she decides to finesse her way back into the job she is already doing. Masters, shut down more than ever after a series of Libby's fantastic attempts to force his various issues (including sweetly masturbating in front of him, getting him out of jail after a whorehouse raid and finally demanding that he get Ethan back as her fertility doctor), can only think about her joining him in the study -- but Ginny finally gets him to take her back, in a way he pretends is provisional but which they both know has already become an essential part of his study, his work and pretty much his entire life.
Back home, all the trouble with the kids comes to a head after a secretarial candidate that Ginny had poached for her new nanny gets talked into reading the final issue of Ginny's son's favorite comic book with him: A treat he saved for days to share with his mother before eventually giving up. A sort of dorky comic-book collage effect combines Masters & Johnson's two unsatisfying home lives -- and archetypal journeys into the unknown -- as Ginny finishes the episode by reading the comic book all by herself. It is pretty great.
Week: Libby's still barren and it's still not her fault, but now Ethan's got quadruplets to be excited about, which I guess might leave her in the lurch. The brothel environment proves unhelpful, so the team needs to find a way back into the hospital. And Ginny meets a female OB who does not understand the concept of sistas before mistas, which honestly is probably the best thing for her: You can't breathe the rarified air of future free America forever, and sooner or later you need to see what conscious contribution to your own oppression actually looks like... And how much sense it tends to make.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Bill Masters has decided that science needs him, specifically lady science, and has formed a small army of ladies to help him help science. One of them is Ginny Johnson, who is so awesome that she has caused both Bill and his young protégé Ethan Haas to go a certain kind of crazy. His boss is very freaked out by the science, but that's mostly because of his own stuff he's dealing with (or not dealing with); the science also involves torturing Bill's wife Libby. Last week, with victory in his grip so to speak, Bill asked Ginny to join him in the science, which was weird for everybody.
CREDITS
The second episode is always fun because you get to see the credits. In this case, fucking equals the universe: Volcanos, Dick & Jane etiquette diagrams, champagne going just everywhere, and the occasional ECG lead. Trains going into tunnels and so forth.
DAY ONE OF HAVING IT ALL
Ginny: "So far, so good. Children, please eat your food and stop being annoying. Mommy has to practice ways this shit could go."
Ginny: "Frankly, on reflection I find your request unreasonable and kind of freaky."
Bill: (Perturbed silence, psychotically clicking his pen over and over.)
In the kitchen, Henry is too busy reading the titular comic, Race To Space, to bother actually eating. Henry is very into this comic, as we'll see; so is the episode.
Henry: "Captain Kai is moving #1 Prisoner Topknot to the spacepad.."
Ginny: "Good for him, eat your breakfast."
Ginny: "Here are all the reasons I am pleased to be involved in science, followed up by reasons that your request is freaky..."
Masters: "Yes or no, Virginia. I am very busy, and scary like an authority figure."
Henry: "Oh man, Mom! Sergeant Baldwin Black has forbidden Prisoner Topknot to enter the Iron Chamber..."
Ginny: "I hear you. Please get on the bus and..."
Henry: "It's why they go to the space rail, to cool down. Then the find the boy Joey, a stowaway..."
Ginny: "You gotta quit with this."
Henry: "No, I'm the boy Joey. I'm the stowaway."
Ginny: "No, I'm the boy Joey. Keep it moving, please."
She barely gets them aboard, Henry with a hundred comics in his arms.
Henry: "It's amazing because Captain Kai gives the boy Joey a real stun gun..."
Ginny: "I know, that's the problem."
Ginny: "If saying no means losing my job I'll do it, but that's the worst case scenario. You've made this a condition of my respect for you, is the problem. I can't say yes to you, and no to you, at the same time. I have already come farther than any woman can expect to, and you're messing it all up."
Bill: (A smile like the sun coming out.)
So that's how to do it; that's the best way to say it. Just keep telling him he's the best. By the time she reaches his office, Ginny's happy to see him. The imaginary Bill was so kind, when she spoke with him on the bus. Just a trip to the space rail, to calm down; Captain Kai hands the stowaway a stun gun and tells him he's a man now. Or at least just as good.
He's standing quietly at the window when she brings his coffee and his messages and notes: He's speaking last at the American Obstetrics dinner, Senator Ronson won't talk to anybody else and has already called twice this morning. She clears her throat, and tries to remember the best way to say it.
Ginny: "I've thought about your proposal, for the study..."
Masters: "Well, there is no study. I just met with Provost Scully, who has been informed about the couples phase of the study, and he flipped his shit."
Ginny: "That's crazy! Who would blow the whistle on such science?"
Masters: "I know, right? So I've decided it's your fault. For sleeping with Dr. Haas, and driving him loopy."
Ginny: "Ethan wouldn't tattle on you. He's a lot of things, but a jerk isn't an asshole."
Masters: "Well, you're fired anyway. HR's been notified. You'll remain at your desk until a replacement is hired. At which point you're no longer with the hospital. You defied me."
So you went to Scully's office, and your face got hot, and you wondered for a second if he was right about you and the work you were doing. You were ashamed, and you lashed out with the only weapon you could think of. Didn't even make it to your office before you'd dropped by human resources to have your revenge. Didn't even have a cup of coffee to make sure you weren't acting rashly, because you're William Masters, Man of Science, and you never ever act rashly.
And then you stood by the window and waited for me to arrive, and let me stutter out the beginnings of one of the scarier conversations I've ever had to have, while you stared at me like a bug pinned to a card, and then -- only then -- did you speak up. Which means a few things.
Number one is that you are still dangerous; the rattle's still going. But number two is that we're still in this. It's not half as over as you're pretending. You wouldn't put on a show if you didn't want it to count; you are involved, enough to want to scare me, and hurt me, as bad as you got scared and hurt. Which means there is a way through this.
But then, too, you couldn't wait. You didn't want to hear the answer to your proposal, in the heat of the morning, and then you changed the whole world. So when you calm down and pull it together, when you give yourself that moment, you're going to wonder what the answer would have been. You are going to wonder that forever.
He runs out of the office, Ginny still breathing, and when the phone rings she answers: It's Henry, he's been suspended.
THE SPACE RAIL
Libby: "Ethan, I'm not dressed!"
Masters: "It's not Ethan. Ethan is out of the game. Put your gown on so we can talk."
Libby: "I was coming after the appointment..."
Masters: "We can talk here, because I'm your doctor now. Don't bother questioning me, it's done. We're going to start again, from the ground up. Every test, again, and then we'll do the cervical cap tomorrow. On your back for 16 hours, this time."
Libby: "Well, clearly you've made your mind up. I guess it's sort of romantic. You and me, making a baby through science..."
Masters: "Rule number one of science is shut up. I am your doctor now. My wife deserves the best. Don't ask me a bunch of questions. It's not important for you to understand what is happening to your body or why."
Libby: "I suppose a vaginal swab and saline douche are... I mean, it stretches the analogy somewhat, this hospital gown is hardly fit for dancing. But at least we're together."
Masters: "Actually we're not. A nurse is doing this part. I'll be back whenever I feel like it."
He kisses her on the cheek and, by way of comfort, assures her that he's happy.
ETHAN
Ethan: "So maybe your wife can tell me why I'm suddenly off her case?"
Masters: "You would do well to remember I'm in control of your career. PS, I am really pissed at you."
Ethan: "What's this now?"
Masters: "You are indiscreet and untrustworthy!"
Ethan: "Is this about your sperm count? Because I am Bro Code all the way, I would never tell her that your constant torture has no medical basis. A wife's body is a matter strictly between her husband and God. Although if you ask me..."
Masters: "I didn't, and I don't need ethics lectures from your lying ass."
Ethan: "I still have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but okay."
BORDELLO
Visiting Betty DiMello at her cathouse, Masters has a sudden idea. It is nuts.
Betty: "Come in by the back door, huh? Not a shocker. Anyway, what's wrong?"
Masters: "Everything."
Betty: "I mean, you lied to your boss. Is this a surprise?"
Masters: "He already said yes to the study! He looked up Jane Doe's dress with Ulysses!"
Betty: "Actual people actually fucking is different and you know it. What are you here for?"
Masters: "Can I just do it here?"
Betty: "You mean hide in the closets of this bordello with a stopwatch? Uh, are you sure you're a doctor and doing science? That sounds like a very tricky kind of creep."
Masters: "I'll pay! The women what the guys would pay, and the men..."
Betty: "-- Nothing. Come on. They pay when they come. It's the oldest profession, trust me we have a system worked out. These guys aren't medical subjects, they're our client base."
Masters: "Fine so I will just have the ladies masturbate."
Betty: "And you'll pay double. And include medical exams. And also, you have to give me a job in your hospital. Something respectable."
Masters: "That's a lot of demands for somebody in the position of making a lot of demands."
Betty: "I am reentering Earth's atmosphere. I don't feel like talking about it yet."
HENRY
Henry: "To be fair, I was about to find out if Binty Vanem was going to live or die..."
Ginny: "You cannot be spitting on your teacher just because you're busy reading a comic book. I get that you're focused on the things you love, but I'm not raising Bill Masters over here."
Henry: "I am a little white boy in 1958. I'm pretty sure I get to spit on ladies who don't give me what I want immediately."
Ethan: "-- Somebody say my name?"
Ginny: "Go away. My kid got suspended and I don't want to talk about it. Three days of his weird ass hanging around here staring at ladies with vagina problems, and meanwhile I may or may not be fired..."
Ethan: "Did you get my numerous calls and bouquets? I am genuinely repentant."
Ginny: "For what? Punching me in the face? Or just getting me and my boss fired from science."
Ethan: "What the hell is anybody talking about today?"
OFFICE
Interviewees: "Ma'am, when are our interviews?"
Ginny: "Just shut up."
Masters: "Order two movers and a moving van, and also this is a secret. Don't go fucking any of my colleagues about it."
Ginny: "Hey, sorry about your life's work and whatever. I mean, I feel bad about everything -- not that I need to -- but especially that. I know how close you and science are. Ethan didn't do this, so I don't know why you're being such a dick, but if it's about you and me doing science together, we could discuss that."
Masters: (Very nearly reacts; doesn't.)
Ginny: "Whoa, that is not how I practiced it. Anyway, please don't fire me."
Masters: "I am way too into fucking with your head right now to give you a solid answer. Please keep doing the job I have fired you from and send in the girl."
Ginny: "Whatever. Can I at least tell the movers what they're doing or why?"
Masters: "Please keep doing the job I have fired you from and send in the girl."
RECEPTION
Ginny: "Wake up, Henry. Tough day all around. ...Whoa. Betty? Why are you behind that desk? Did you get loose?"
Receptionist: "This chick is crazy, dude."
(Ring-ring.)
Betty: "Obstetrics, this is Betty... How the fuck should I know?"
(Click.)
Betty: "Is that your kid?"
Ginny: "Wait, are you seriously working here now? Everything is backwards today."
LUNCHROOM
Ethan: "I just don't get it. You smack one girl across the face one time, call her a whore like five times tops..."
Jane: "Yeah, it's mysterious."
Ethan: "I am awesome! Look at my adorable face! I am seven feet tall and an obstetrics genius!"
Jane: "You should open with that."
Ethan: "Am I not a catch?"
Jane: "In certain ways I guess you are a catch. But we're not talking about marriage, we're talking about your hurt pride and your weird sexual obsess..."
Ethan: "Hang on, I have to hit on the first person I see sitting alone."
Jane and Austin Langham smile at each other across the lunchroom as Ethan strikes out. After lunch, they giggle all the way to Room #5. Betty notices, because Betty notices everything. Room #5 is empty now, though: Haphazard, beds and extra gowns.
Anonymous: "Oh no! Our science room!"
Anonymous: "Where we were going to have lots of science!"
Betty: "You guys looking for something?"
Anonymous: "Where is the science?"
Betty: "A cathouse on Third and Sutter."
Anonymous: "We don't get what you're saying!"
Betty: "Scully noticed that the study was about you two fucking each other, and that was the end of that."
Langham: "But I was so looking forward to it. To the science."
Jane: "Me too! But in reality. I thought I was doing something for humanity. In addition to having great science with you."
Langham: "Yeah, I was also feeling that way."
Jane: "I guess we'll always have Paris."
Betty: "You guys went to Paris!?"
BACK HOME
Ginny: "I just really need you to essentially be my wife, thanks to Henry's spitting."
Nanny: "This is not a fulltime job. I have many of these, not just you. Also, what about my raise?"
Ginny: "Can we do that week instead? I'm losing my shit this week."
Nanny: "You know what I do for my kids? Adjust."
When one person accuses you of leaning in, like the Registrar last week, that person is being a bitch. But when everyone in your life starts looking at you like a Martian, you don't have to take it personally. These are the lumps. It's not that you're wrong, it's that you don't fit.
The only time I ever recapped Mad Men, I got quite taken up with this idea that Joan Holloway, in the first season, was an astronaut: A new kind of person that didn't exist before the Sixties, before work and the Pill, and therefore the boundaries were different. She was an explorer of the very edge of what it meant to be a person, a woman, and everywhere this was happening, and all those people were surrounded by a whole social nexus of the mystified and superstitious, telling them to turn back. When nobody around understands what you are -- or that you are actually a person -- then what you're looking at is an astronaut without agency.
Laika died within hours of launch, but Sputnik 2 orbited over 2500 times before it burned up, on reentry. On April 14, 1958, if you were standing in the right place with the right equipment, I imagine you could've seen it. You could have told her goodbye.
CATHOUSE
Betty gets all the girls together while they're moving the equipment in -- "Watch the rugs, they're real Persian" -- and tries to explain how the intense Dr. Masters is going to work. They all look like hookers, meaning that they look awesome, but the most awesome one is Maureen, who looks like a busted-ass Baby Jane. Like when you imagine a crazy prostitute, that's this: Candlestick curls in side-pigtails, Punch & Judy circles of rouge on the cheeks, bright red lipstick around the fucked-up teeth. Fake beauty mark-type stuff.
Masters: "Somebody wanna climb on this table?"
Hookers: "Maureen is the most awesome one. She is down for anything and crazy as hell."
Maureen: "It's true, I look like one of Jack the Ripper's victims. I'll do it!"
Masters hooks her up to his million machines -- "You're not gonna climb up here with me?" -- and bores the shit out of the whole room by explaining what they all do. Considering that their job is 99% pretending to be interested in boring guys showing off their boring junk and talking about why it's important, even Betty is impressed by how hard it is to pay attention.
Hookers: "...This is boring. I got back problems, I got a UTI, I got headaches..."
Masters: "I am a doctor and I said I would do that for free, but right now I want to talk about my apparatuses and weird things I want to do."
Maureen: "Check out that motherfucking dildo!"
Masters: "It has a camera and it vibrates. It is the most scientific thing in the world."
Maureen: "A coochie flashlight! That is amazing!"
Just then, the house gets raided. The cops are friendly but businesslike as they round up all the girls -- "Grab a sweater, Maureen" -- and also poor Dr. Masters, who is a john in every possible way except for his idea about not being a john. And then he is in jail. In jail with hookers, just like if your life was a sitcom.
ETHAN
Girl #1: "You certainly are tall and attractive. I don't understand why our sex is so weird right now."
Ethan: "It's because I am in love with somebody and it's making everything awful."
Girl #1: "I hate to say this, but could you just act like a normal shitty guy?"
Ethan: "What if you gave me a blowjob?"
Girl #1: "That escalated quickly."
Ethan: "Or I could go down on you. Or both, or both at the same time, or..."
Girl #1: "Dude, you need to seriously chill. I didn't even know blowjobs existed until a second ago."
Ethan: "Fine, flip over and I'll go down on you and then..."
Girl #1: "Oh my God, can we not just fuck?"
Either way he'll be picturing Virginia, and either way his hard-on is not long for this world, no matter what he does. So by the time he rushes her out of there, he's managed to make her feel both weirded out and slutty, which is why you don't date guys like this.
They're always looking at the sky.
MASTERS OF JAIL
Sam: "It's cool that you know the Chief of Police and I am willing to do you the favor of bailing you out -- and my wife would kill me if I didn't -- but how embarrassing."
Masters: "Whatever, I can't worry about you and your three kids I brought into this world in defiance of fate. I have to worry about what Libby's gonna do."
Libby: "...Drive off the road if I fuckin' feel like it, you creep. What the eff is wrong with you."
Masters: "I told you I was doing science!"
Libby: "Vaguely, as usual. What does that have to do with it?"
Masters: "Well, this kind of science involves people. Doing it."
Libby: "Watching people do it. That's the science that got you thrown out of the hospital. Makes sense. You know why it makes sense?"
Masters: "Don't make it sound worse than it is. Watching people masturbate is..."
Libby: "I cannot believe that is a job. Meanwhile every woman we know is working multiple low-paying gigs babysitting kids or letting their husbands, in my case, experiment on their bodies in secret."
Masters: "I worked hard to get to a place where I could watch people masturbate all day, Libby."
Libby: "And yet one is left wondering if you're missing something at home."
Masters: "You say that like our marriage has a sexual component."
Libby: "Okay, I know you're a career-minded robot and I believe that you aren't purely getting off on this. But I gotta say, any study that gets you thrown in jail is maybe not the best use of your free time."
Masters: "I have no such thing as free time. This study is my actual job. The rest just pays the bills."
Libby: "The fact that I can even get my head around that proves that I am awesome."
She can smile, even as he threatens their life together, because of this: Confronted with his limitations -- his actual, internal directives; the things he does because he can't help it; the way they both leverage his success and his genius against these limitations -- she can feel like it's a choice. She is the one that's in power, because she's the human one. Not just the woman, not just the wife, but the one who makes it matter. Somewhere between his wintry cold brilliance and his muggy shambling blindness, she makes the whole thing work. And for that, he will always love her.
Careful, Libby.
DAY TWO OF HAVING IT ALL
Ginny: "You're the stowaway. Remember that. I barely have a job so you're barely here, but that makes us both vulnerable. Do your homework before comics, and I'll check on you in an hour."
Betty: "Cute kid. Getting suspended isn't so cute, but if you're looking for somebody to have low expectations of men, I'm your gal."
Ginny: "Can I just say that it's awesome you convinced Masters to give you a job? Kind of like the opposite of what I'm doing."
Betty: "He doesn't like doing favors, but man. That study, he's like obsessed. You could get anything you want, if you know what to leverage."
Ginny: "Yeah, well. Still working that one out."
Betty: "Is that why you weren't at the brothel last night? Your kid?"
Ginny: "No! I totally still have my job. He's a great boss. I am not fired. Wait, brothel?"
Betty: "He needs you. Wicked needs you, now. Trust me, come see."
ANONYMOUS
Austin: "I was not happy until I saw you. Everything is so weird."
Jane: "I know. It's been a real rollercoaster lately, in terms of science."
Austin: "You know how you were saying we were part of something bigger, the other day?"
Jane: "Yeah, I'm sorry it ended. Contributing to science and everything."
Austin: "I am also really trying to pretend I'm not pretending that too. So I have an idea that should make everything super weird."
Jane: "You want to continue the study without Dr. Masters? Dude, you're married."
Austin: "Yeah, but it's science!"
Jane: "No, honey. It's adultery. I actually still believe we weren't doing that."
Austin: "I can't tell if you're still faking and I'm supposed to go along with it, or..."
We set up a situation in the lab that has become a metaphor for the great conversation: We edge along, blindfolded and backwards and barefoot, because nobody wants to be left holding the bag. And then too, the deck is stacked (to this day, for heterosexuals) because if somebody is wrong about the coded message behind the message, it's got to be the woman. If a woman misreads and presses on, no harm no foul. If a man goes too far, the world ends. We are capable of infinite civility, but when it comes down to it, barring criminal behavior, the woman is the one that says yes.
It's part of the tragedy of Ethan Haas: He keeps coming to the door and knocking, waiting for a yes, because he can't be the one to supply the yes. But he can't hear no, because he's just a boy. So he has to keep knocking, and knocking.
Austin Langham has turned a conversation about medical ethics into the same question, using the same strategies to get a yes, because he doesn't understand that love and sex aren't the same thing -- they don't even have to go together -- so as many times as Jane says no, he's still looking for the yes -- and as many times as he asks, she's free to say no -- because that's simply how women (and men) are. You have to evolve your strategies.
But the thing we don't get, because you can't be another person, is that what seems like an equal game is not really that equal. Even in 2013 we don't really get this, because we come from the other side of wanting women and men to be interchangeable, so we forget the physical truths that adhere to the situation, but as Margaret Atwood said, men's greatest fear is that women will laugh at them -- for knocking -- and women's greatest fear is that men will kill them. It doesn't make the man's fear less profound, it just illustrates the pointlessness of equating them.
Which is the real way the deck is stacked: Women are the ones that say yes, but the entire rest of the universe is about men telling women what to do. If this were a free market, the banks wouldn't be writing laws for banks; the deck is stacked even after you shuffle. You could tell Jane she's ultimately in charge, and ultimately that it's fair: The man's job is to knock, to strategize and plead and knock again, and the woman's job is to open it, when and if she feels like it. But the whole house around the door is built of telling women they don't know what they want or what they're for.
Ethan: "Can I crash this party? I have no idea what's going on, and also why would I."
Anonymous: "Sure because there's nothing going on here."
Ethan: "Who, would you say, is the biggest slut in this hospital?"
Anonymous: "This is already going somewhere weird."
Ethan: "I won't say it is for science, but I am willing to lie that it's just for curiosity."
Anonymous: "That's better than we're doing. Try Bernadette, from Food & Bev."
Jane: "You dudes are being gross. Go away so I can read my book."
Boys: "I care about that. Ladies should read books. What book is it?"
Jane: "The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. She's this philosopher and feminist who ended up obsessed with Sartre and basically taming her own shr..."
Boys: "That says sex in it! How provocative. Read some aloud."
Jane: "You're not gonna..."
Boys: "Read it! Read it!"
"On the day when it's possible for woman to love, not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself: On that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life, and not of mortal danger."
Austin: "What's she even trying to say? When I think about love it's always the woman on top, because she's the one that gets to withhold. How is that not power?"
Jane: "You have the privilege of giving us that, permission to grant permission. You have the power to take it away. You can't cheat the banker in Monopoly, because he's the one that has all the money."
Ethan: "That sounds like men are rapists. I'm not a rapist, because that is a bad thing to be and I am great. Therefore, that book is stupid."
Jane: "Nobody's calling you an asshole. This isn't a win/lose situation, there doesn't have to be a villain in the story. It's a description of reality, not an accusation. I'm just saying, putting me on a pedestal doesn't mean you can't knock me off again. Either way, I'm still just me. Raised up or dropped depending on how you feel."
Austin: "Uh, I'm pretty sure my feelings are important and valid."
Jane: "Didn't say they weren't. They're just not the only thing worth talking about."
Boys: "We don't understand anything that you are saying."
Jane: "Trust me, I know."
SCULLY
Scully: "Bill!"
Masters: "Aw, shit."
Scully: "Did you seriously move your study to a whorehouse?"
Masters: "Is this the work of the Obstetrics Mole? Or just Betty running that mouth."
Scully: "Do you not understand that I have husbanded your career from day one? You are sinking fifteen years of my life along with yours."
Masters: "Then bring my shit back to the hospital! You can't have it both ways."
Scully: "Compromise on the couples fucking, and we'll..."
Masters: "No restrictions. You can have me, or not. Also, give me more money."
Scully: "That sounds like negotiating. Poorly."
Masters: "Au contraire, I'm not negotiating at all."
Scully: "You always do this. You start at ten and then just keep turning the dial up. Do you realize how nuts you're acting? You put on a suit of armor to attack a plate of whipped cream."
Masters: "Whipped cream my ass."
Scully: "You have no idea what I am dealing with. It's not about me being in authority and denying you things -- that's the little boy Billy talking. In fact, you are the one screwing me, by acting insane and then acting put-upon because I try to manage it."
Masters: "Look. All I want is everything I want, and zero compromises. Is that so unreasonable?"
BACK HOME
Henry: "Thank God you have the night off. This copy of the last issue of Race To Space is burning a hole in my pocket. It's all I can think about."
Ginny: "Trust me, I know, and I'm really looking forward to reading it with you. I love your love of science and stories and I enjoy our comic book time and I love watching you come alive with this stuff. But I have to run to a whorehouse real quick."
Henry: "A what?"
Ginny: "Sergeant Black wouldn't let Captain Kai into the Iron Chamber, so we had to take our show to the Spacerail."
Henry: "Gotcha."
CATHOUSE
Betty: "Oh, you didn't bring your kids? Just kidding."
Ginny: "Yeah, it's my babysitter's last night, apparently. Something about me being an unfit mother..."
Betty: "You are more of an astronaut than any woman I've ever met in the straight world, but you could still learn some things. Like who cares what that lady thinks, for one example."
Ginny: "Your whorehouse looks like a regular house. There's a kitchen, and..."
Betty: "Yeah, that's how we operate. Being people, we tend to do things like cook and eat food, and so forth."
Ginny: "...Okay, so I'm basically here for no reason, but setting that aside, let's talk about scheduling your various science activities."
Headache: "I am getting antsy about the medical care we were promised."
Maureen: "I also thought about it, and I decided I can't do this. It's weird. He's weird."
Ginny: "Lol. But who cares about that?"
Masters arrives, joining Betty in the foyer, while Ginny works.
Masters: "The hell is she doing?"
Betty: "Covering your ass? Like always?"
Ginny: "Okay first of all, you're getting paid. Are you not? And for easier work than most nights, I'd imagine. And second of all, the science of it. I am not bullshitting you, listen. People have been alive for thousands of years, having sex, and even after all that time we are still not very good at thinking about it. We are clueless, when it comes to sex. And you're the experts. He needs you, specifically you, to educate the world. They should learn from the best."
Maureen: "I do know a lot about sex stuff. We are definitely underutilized in that way."
Ginny: "So what about it? We could write a book that would change the world, with this information. Save it, even."
Headache: "Even maybe help him figure out how to have sex or even what it actually is."
Maureen: "Ha!"
Headache: "He's like that one john that never takes off his shoes."
Maureen: "I respond to this type of humor!"
Ginny: "Yes, yes. He is super weird and that is very droll. He's also one of the best women's doctors in the Midwest, and completely reliable. You can trust him. You can count on him..."
Masters: "-- That's enough of that. Betty, go round up the others. Ginny, no soup for you, but keep swingin'. Oh, and ladies? The Chief of Police said to tell you, there won't be any more raids. At least as long as I'm here."
Ginny: "Nice. Good boy."
ETHAN
Ethan: "Apparently they were right about you, Bernadette."
Bernadette: "Yes, I am immensely fulfilled getting fucked like this in the car. You want to do it backwards? Ya like it in the rear?"
Ethan: "You mean like in the backseat?"
Bernadette: "No, Ethan, I do not."
Virginia again; soft again. Bernadette, who is by the way a champ, decides to blow him instead of talking about it, and then things are terribly awkward as she requests guidance on the hows and wherefores of his personal preferences. He has none to offer because he doesn't know yet what they are. He's even young enough to be grateful; he thanks her. It's still not the same. His preference is for Virginia and that's all he knows.
CATHOUSE
Headache: "The deal is, my mom died of a brain tumor? So it's not like I'm just obsessing on this. I got the headache and I knew what was coming."
Masters: "That's sad, as I understand the term. How many fingers?"
Headache: "Not sure."
Masters: "Okay, well. Don't borrow trouble, let me see what I can research first."
Headache: "So just sit tight with my cancer I clearly have? Okay, thanks."
Masters: "How many girls?"
Ginny: "You're doing the medical exams you promised today and tomorrow, and then we'll do the study every night. 19 women ready to go."
Masters: "Cool."
Ginny: "Are you aware you didn't ask me to come tonight? Is that a thing you know?"
Masters: "I'm aware. Thanks for getting the girls onboard, and you can go."
Ginny: "You're really giving me the horns, doctor."
Don't think of it as me being absurdly childish, think of it more as me being a master manipulator. I'm brainwashing you while I test your loyalty. I can't ask you back until I know you really want it, and you can't prove you really want it using words, so the beatings will continue until I trust you, at which point I will stop being awful. When will that point come? I wouldn't tell you if I knew. Which I don't.
Masters: "BETTY!"
Betty: "Don't yell in here. Be nice."
Masters: "Where's the one?"
Betty: "Actually you're done. But I need to talk to you."
A short time later, Masters and Betty run back down the stairs in a heated fight: She's trying to extort him into reversing her tubal ligation, and he has ninety-nine problems with that. Whenever anything is so overdetermined, there's something deeper going on: If he had one objection, that would be the one to attack, but he has dozens, which means there's a root cause. The trouble is that, for somebody as pathologically intellectual as Masters, you can't get there with words, and he can only go places with words, so it's an impasse, but basically the root of the problem is that he cannot picture a universe in which women actually understand and can actively dictate the disposition of their bodies.
Masters: "It's irresponsible, not to mention stupid, and you still haven't told me why..."
Betty: "Uh, to have kids?"
Masters: "It's what women are for! But why you? You're a lesbian! And a prostitute!"
Betty: "You have no idea how shitty that is, but no. I won't tell you why. Space is cold, that's why. I've cleared a flightpath for reentry but explaining it to you would be tantamount to asking your permission to land. I know how you think."
Masters: "And how's that?"
Betty: "You know it takes a man to clear. If I bring him into this conversation, now I've got two men deciding. No."
Summarily, she starts pushing his machines toward the sidewalk.
Masters: "Wait, so you're gonna blackmail me every time you want something?"
Betty: "Yeah. Which would be shitty, if I were asking you for shitty things."
HOME
Libby: "How's everything going with the study? I want details. You should not have to ask me why."
Masters: "Today and tomorrow it's all medical exams. I looked at tonsils and bunions. No butts, no boobs, nothing. Are you happy? Bunions, Libby."
Libby: "On her feet?"
Masters: "...Oh, that was a joke. You're kind of awesome, I always forget that."
Libby: "Okay, but when you do... I mean, I realize that you don't do it to get off, but doesn't it... Your body is there in the room with you, you know? Surely it's..."
Masters: "Why are you sullying my work -- and our marriage bed(s) -- by asking such a perfectly valid question?"
Libby: "On the off chance that you do enjoy it, watching, I have an idea."
Masters: "Is it super sad and uncomfortable?"
Libby: "I don't know, does watching me awkwardly fondle my outer labia through two layers of cotton including this old-lady nightgown strike you as either?"
Masters: "Oh no! Girl, you need to stop that immediately."
Libby: "Why? Isn't this super erotic? In as bleak as possible a fashion?"
Masters: "No, it's horrible! I would rather fuck you than watch this happen!"
Libby: "Well, it's happening. It's grim for sure, but I'm committed."
"I love you too much," he says. "You don't have to do this." He means it in the nicest possible way. It's the only way to make her feel bad enough to stop.
MORNING
Secretary: "Is he seriously still interviewing chicks for this?"
Ginny: "Yeah. I think he might be doing it forever. I think this is his way of courting me."
She thinks about it and then makes another of her patented executive decisions, dismissing the lot. Except for one girl, whose résumé suggests a talent for childcare.
Masters: "Good morning, Libby. I made coffee."
Libby: "Great. Go to work, okay? I barely want to look at you."
Masters: "I was thinking. Maybe all this constant tinkering with your perfectly healthy uterus is the problem. Maybe we should do the cervical capping here at home, after work."
Libby: "Is this seriously your version of having sex with me? Fuck that, I want Ethan."
Masters: "But I have this great idea! We can make our bedroom all clinical, like a lab. It'll be like I'm Dexter, serial-killing your cervix in a sterile cocoon. It'll be fulfilling! For one of us."
Libby: "No, we are not bringing your work home. The whole point of having a home life is so you don't turn into a robot. You're even weirder at work than you are here, and I'm already losing that battle in both places."
"I wake up and try and be happy and hopeful, every day. But I also know that I'm barren. And the most basic thing in a woman's life is... I can't fail you as both a wife and a patient. I love you too much for that."
Points for the callback, Libby. That is some mastermind shit right there. Of course he can't say no, because he can never manage himself when you call his bluff. He fired Ginny, he spit, because she defied him. Here, it's happening again: The house should have no say in what color the door gets painted, and he can't imagine a world where that is possible. Betty's going to defy him as directly as possible. And without those three Graces to guide him, he'll go cold as the Moon.
What do you see when you look at her? Just love. So get your devices out of her crotch and leave 'em at work. The idea that Ethan was the one stressing her out is just phenomenally crazy anyway, and since he can't tell her the real reason he's punishing Ethan -- because he doesn't entirely understand them himself -- means he has no excuse for this plan.
Even though, in many ways, it would have been the perfect solution (for him). He'd be happier trying to thread the needle of love and sex and fidelity and masculinity if he could make his job and his marriage the same thing -- put his cold body and his hot brain in the same place, for once, through some magical science ritual that would put all the fragmented pieces together finally -- regardless of what it would to her, and who knows? Maybe by lining everything up that way, just right, he could take the stress off his little guys, and then nobody would ever have to know his secret, and then it wouldn't exist anymore.
I think in some ways Bill has it easier than guys have it today, because he's still in a space where homosexuality inhabits the same liminal real-but-not-real location as, say, the female orgasm: Outside the official narrative, just like their research. Today, you have these guys, the sweetest guys, but they get so tied up around the whole thing. Like, adjacent to the White Knight -- who wants to win feminism so he doesn't have to feel weird anymore, but ends up trying to run the whole table because that's what being a guy is also like -- you have the Gay Ally, which at its most virulent (with men, women have a whole other way to get weird on this one) ends up doing the weirdest performance of all. "You are sweet as you are!" you want to say. "Stop getting gay about being gay! You're not gay, I promise! I give you permission to stop worrying about it!"
But Bill, he doesn't know to be afraid of that, so he gets actually a much clearer picture of what's going on: He is unable to join in the big scam of performative male sexuality because of his social limitations, which ironically also disallow him from understanding just how much of the red-blooded American masculinity around him is a lie performed by men for other men. He just feels left out. While every man from the dawn of time desperately needs to figure out what's going on down there, what women's bodies actually entail, few of them (especially in 1958) decide to major in it.
So when you add his physical imperfections to the mix, he ends up with a radically incorrect but very powerful symbol of his inability to comprehend (master) not one gender, but two. A struggle that is universal, of course, it's just that most people don't have the objectivity to realize that's what they're doing. And they have other ways of mediating it -- experientially, intuitively, physically -- that he just doesn't. Which is kind of a bummer for him, but great for the rest of us, because without people like Bill Masters there wouldn't be any science at all. You have to be incredibly weird to save the world, because you are always fighting uphill, against what was agreed upon before you even showed up.
THE OFFICE
He's standing at the window when she enters, still pretending that's her job.
Masters: "Miss Johnson? I need good news."
Ginny: "I just came in here to give you some. That study, I thought about it and... It's a good idea. Good for the study, good for science. Good for something else, too."
But no, it's too soon. He knows it's too soon for that, so he's got to keep working. He's standing at the window when she interrupts his fantasy, still working like she knows he'll take her back eventually.
Ginny: "Sign here, and here. Oh, and we're all out of secretarial candidates. Strange, huh?"
Masters: "Yes yes whatever. Listen, I need you to talk to Betty tonight. Talk her out of this crazy idea she's got about having kids. I can't tell her no directly, or she'll wreck shop. You've got kids, tell her how hard that is. Point out how hopelessly ill-equipped she is to undertake such an enormous responsibility..."
Ginny: "Maybe not in those words."
CATHOUSE
Not unlike his approach with Ginny, with Libby, with Life, Bill refuses to defuse the cancer bomb the whole time he's getting Headache ready for her happy ending. She only needed glasses, all along; it wasn't cancer at all. But he doesn't just tell her that, he lets her get all riled up and then just puts the glasses on her, so that she can breathe a sigh of relief, and come back to herself, and call him God.
Headache: "Oh my God! You saved my life!"
Masters: "No, it just feels like I did. Really I just saved your eyes. Which is especially impressive because I'm not an eye doctor. Merely a genius."
Headache: "Whatever you are, you're getting a blowjob."
Masters: "That is actually really sweet! But actually your death's door relief and complete adoration were my blowjob. I'm a doctor, you see."
Betty: "You need a raise. You are the best secretary slash hype man in history."
Ginny: "Thanks, but I need a salary before it can get raised. Anyway, about your tubes."
Betty: "He seriously sent you to deal with me? What a dork."
Ginny: "I mean, this is a whorehouse."
Betty: "I met a guy. I met him at church, actually. I am very complicated as a person. So anyway, he asked me out and his car was really nice and it turns out that he's... You know the Pretzel King?"
Ginny: "You're dating the Pretzel King?"
Betty: "I mean, instant life. Instant reentry. Everything that women are supposed to want, that I thought I wasn't worth so I decided I didn't want it."
Ginny: "He wants to marry you? This is amazing. This is a crazy story."
Betty: "He wants to marry me. Specifically this version of me. A nice girl, works in a hospital. Wants tons of kids. Meaning I gotta get my works back in order."
Ginny: "Wait. Are you not madly in love with Helen?"
Betty: "I love the shit out of her! But she gets me."
Ginny: "I married for kids, the second time. And now I am alone, raising two kids. Do you really think you can be the Pretzel Queen forever? You don't see it ever going south?"
Betty: "Okay, hotshot. Why did you have kids?"
Ginny: "Because I would have felt like a failure, partly, if I didn't. But also because I knew kids were the only thing I could actually love, like forever love."
Betty: "And you deserve to have that. To make that choice. And you're telling me we're different in that respect, and I don't deserve those things?"
Ginny: "You win. Fine. Just think hard about it."
DRIVING HOME
Masters: "Fucking hell. Is that not the opposite of what I told you to do?"
Ginny: "She met a guy, she wants kids."
Masters: "She meets lots of guys. Why is this one different?"
Ginny: "You picked a weird time to stop being a robot."
Masters: "I hate her for having tubes that can be untied! If I do a thousand fucked-up things to my wife's body, she still won't get pregnant. Meanwhile, a whore can just suddenly decide to be pregnant and then boom, babies. It's not that she doesn't deserve it, it's that my wife deserves it more, and I can't give it to her."
"How many times have you said when it comes to science there is no room for God? Science simply is, the data tell us the story, and should be free from all judgment and all censor. Isn't that why you refuse to give up on your study? Because you believe in this journey in following the science? No matter where it leads?"
Masters: "Aw, fuck you."
Ginny: "Heh, fine. But look. I know that you're dicking me around, leaving me hanging. You're punishing me for my imaginary transgressions, which I'm willing to accede maybe is okay except it totally isn't. Insofar as I let you believe I wasn't dating that guy, and I was. I would say I've already paid for that anyway, but you don't need to know about that. So can we just talk about the actual shit that is on the table? Because you are driving me bats."
Masters: "Why, I don't know what you mean."
Ginny: "Fine, I'm exhausted and I've had this conversation a million times already, in my head."
Masters: "Me too."
Ginny: "But the truth is, you need me. So am I rehired or what?"
Masters: "...Nope, can't do it. Still a little too butthurt. Good night, Westley. Good work, sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."
Ginny: "You are the WORST. See you tomorrow."
UPSTAIRS
Nanny: "Your kids are great. Tess and I played dolls -- Miss Revlon won the swimming-suit competition -- and Henry is so weird and awesome..."
Ginny: "He didn't go nuts on you about comics? What else does that kid talk about?"
Nanny: "No, it was fun. He wouldn't drop it, of course, but so then I just read it with him, and I loved it!"
Ginny: "Race To Space? You read it together?"
Nanny: "It was so good! What an emerging art form! The future, science, everything. Really makes you think. I'm buying the whole thing. Two sets, one for my nephew. I just can't believe it's the last issue. The last one that will ever happen. The last chance you'd have to read that story, and I got to see it light up a child's face."
Ginny: "All I want to do is punch you in the fucking face. Or me. Or somebody."
Nanny: "Well, thanks for the great new job and I will see you in the morning!"
Inevitably, the children are asleep, and inevitably, Ginny picks up the comic from the kitchen table. She flips through it, but it's the end that catches her eye.
RACE TO SPACE
On Earth he had been different. Others had not understood him. He had been lonely. But now he found himself between worlds. The earth, a tiny dot behind him. The moon, a tiny dot ahead. When he got to the moon, would it be everything he dreamed of? And would it be worth everything he had left behind?
There's a lot there, not that the show doesn't get pretty heavy-handed letting you know -- comic-book panels dissolving, replacing Captain Kai's face with Bill's -- but beyond that, and the obvious parallels to Ginny's own life, and I guess a nod to the idea of the Moon representing womanhood, intuition, dreams, and the impossible (Kennedy's Moon Speech, which always makes me cry, is still four years away) and therefore making this entire show essentially a story about Bill reaching toward the Moon with his entire body, I will tell you two things. The first is from that speech, four years hence.
"...Condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about ten years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago, man learned to write, and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole fifty-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
"...Last month, electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power -- and now, if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
"This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait.
"But ... the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward."
Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky was one of the scientists on Sputnik 2, and he wrote a book afterwards charting the development of space medicine. In the weeks before the launch he took Laika home with him, to play with his children. He wrote, "I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live."
You have to be pretty weird to save the world. And you have to dream hard. Even if you knew what you're giving up, and we never do, you have to dream hard enough that you carry kindness with you, wherever you're going .
WEEK
The study needs back into the hospital, but Ginny comes up against a lady who is not about the Bro Code of Ladies, and no kind of astronaut. Libby's tortures are unending, and Ethan gets actual quadruplets to deal with, which presumably threatens Masters's self-image all the more.
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.