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Gini drags Jane to an Anna Freud lecture that gets them both steamed when she makes light of both sexual research and clitoral orgasms. Since Libby and Bill are in Miami recovering from the miscarriage, it's a fine time to hook Jane up and give her all kinds of orgasms, which is so scientific that Bill can't even focus on ignoring his wife. Eventually she sends his ass home and stays on, flirting with the horny old couple door (Caroline Lagerfelt!) and inventing a fabulous new life for herself.
Jane sends Austin to a therapist (Alan Ruck!) to get over his impotence, which leads to some funny strange interactions and odd insights into the way Austin works; Barton Scully allows our old friend the hustler to sweet-talk him out being mad even after lying point-blank about telling Masters about their relationship. Libby's reinvention of herself ends abruptly when the husband of the old people couple hits on her and everything gets gross, but it doesn't go dark. One wonders what her newfound clarity means for their marriage, now that they've both fairly admitted it's not working.
Speaking of, a deeply unfulfilled Margaret Scully learns about the couples study over mah-jongg, and works up the courage to visit Gini herself and try to get in. When Bill returns, they interview her together, but everybody gets really quiet and sad when it's revealed just how little her marriage has taught her about the joy of sex, and then since she's never had an orgasm she's not allowed in the study anyway. It's Allison Janney so she's pretty mesmerizing regardless of what's happening, and heartbreaking to see the hope drain out of her eyes, but that makes it all the more delightful when she runs into Austin Langham and ends up having an orgasm in his car. Two birds, one very complicated adulterous situation.
After that mean lady doctor cuts loose on Bill with some (kinda valid) haterade regarding the fact that she can't seem to get half the respect Gini does, despite actually being a doctor, Bill thinks hard about everything going on -- Libby's executive realness, Gini's clinical aptitude, her inspired curiosity and theories about orgasms, and ability to make people take their clothes off just by acting normal and nice -- he decides, without prelude, to promote Gini to Research Assistant, freeing her up to focus on the research full-time. She responds by dropping her top and letting him try and make her come just from breast stimulation, which seems fair.
Week: Libby wants to try and get pregnant again, this time in secret; her partner in crime Ethan tries in earnest to move on. Barton discovers Margaret's infidelity, and she hopefully tosses that one right back in his face. Masters and Johnson try not to make it weird, but guess what, it's already weird.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Bill blackmailed Barton Scully to get Room Five going again, but a hitch in the study gave Austin Langham a case of the sad dicks not even Jane could fix. Ethan's dating the Provost's daughter, and a new doctor on the wing, Lillian DePaul, gave Virginia the cold shoulder. But the big news, of course, was Catherine. Bill did his best to help Libby through her horrible miscarriage, but eventually it was Bill that needed support -- and Gini was there to supply it. It was sweet, horrible, and the best episode to date, by a smidge; even over the pilot, and tonight's episode, both of which are of course phenomenal. Plus Margaret Scully this week, my God.
ANNA FREUD
Sigmund: "So basically, it's natural for the clitoral orgasm to give way to the vaginal, because of how penises are magic. Any lady who requires clitoral stimulation during lovemaking is really just a creepy teenage masturbator, and should be put in a mental hospital."
Anna: "My dad, a soft scientist of some renown, was not kidding around when it came to which orgasms he was okay with."
Doctors: "But wasn't he a doctor, like us? Because that would make him right about everything."
Anna: "True enough. In his essay The Universal Tendency Toward Debasement In Love, he said sexuality was about the impossibility of connecting your drive for affection with your drive for satiation. Thus the reason men are huge creeps to women, and always have been, is because they can never have sex with their moms..."
Doctors: "Wait, what?"
Anna: "...And the reason women are cool with that is because they suck. Thank you."
TYPING POOL
Lucille: "Austin, you need to go to work. Go to your job. Leave us alone."
Austin: "But I have to see Jane immediately."
Kathleen: "She's not here. Virginia took her to a doctor or something."
Austin: "Oh my God, is she sick?"
Kathleen: "No, they went together. Somebody named Lloyd? Freed?"
FREUD
Gini: "Dr. Freud? Virginia Johnson, Washington University."
Dr. DePaul: "Oh, hell no. Now she's impersonating a human being?"
Gini: "I was just wondering if this nonsense about the clitoral orgasm was ever proven?"
Anna: "What do you mean, like by science?"
Gini: "Is there evidence to support a claim differentiating the physiology between the two orgasms, I mean."
Dr. DePaul: "Ugh, women are so fucking stupid. I hate them. Us. I hate us."
Anna: "What are you gonna do, stick a camera dildo in a bunch of hookers?"
The Medical Community: "Ludicrous!"
Gini & Jane: "Not ludicrous. Science. Later, tools."
NEIGHBOR NANCY
Nancy: "Libby! Just holding my adorable baby, what's up with you? I love your hair!"
Libby: "Thanks, I got it cut after my life-ruining miscarriage. Listen, I'm going out of town for a minute with my robot husband, to mourn our life that never will be. Could you get our mail?"
Nancy: "Of course! ...Oh, hang on, I'm lactating. Awkward!"
Libby: "Yeah, um, I'm gonna go. Your bosoms are a show-off."
Nancy: "Sorry about your marriage or whatever!"
MASTERS
Bill: "Where is my thing and my other thing and where's all my stuff?"
Gini: "Right here. Along with your faculty ID, thanks for that..."
Bill: "I hope you didn't piss off Anna Freud using my name."
Gini: "That old bat? Who cares? Listen, do you know about the various orgasms?"
Bill: "In that I have read about them in books, yes. After a certain age of maturity, ladies can only climax from a penis to which they have been legally married, in a church."
Gini: "Uh, but who could possibly believe that?"
Bill: "Like a quarter of the women that come through our office? Frigidity is the gluten allergy of our time, Virginia. Everybody's got it."
Gini: "I always kind of thought it was the guy's role to get the job done, by any means necessary. If you don't have gas in the tank no amount of jamming the key in there is going to do much."
Bill: "If a woman can't get off from whatever game a guy's got, no matter how amateurish or funny to look at, we all know it's because she's a bitch. But between you and me, I stopped reading Freud the first time I learned about the Oedipus Complex. No sir."
Gini: "We can get into that -- and we will -- a little later. Meanwhile, can I ask why you're taking an entire file cabinet to Florida with you?"
Bill: "Beach reads!"
Gini: "No they are not beach reads. You leave that shit here and pay attention to your wife."
Bill: "I haven't been on vacation since 1953."
Gini: "It still works the same way. Libby needs it. And I'm sorry, but so do you."
When he turns around to grab his hat, she's holding it already. Her eyes are knowing, and intimate, and more than a little compassionate. But not sympathetic, which is why he holds on them for a second before nodding -- fine, I'll be a good soldier -- and heading out.
MAKEOUT POINT
Barton: "Hey, Dale. Sorry I haven't been around much to pay you for sex."
Dale: "Yeah, I missed you!"
Barton: "Really?"
Dale: "Our relationship is predicated on neither of us answering that question. Blowjob?"
Barton: "First though can I ask you about something? Did you ever tell anybody about us? Like maybe a robot that wants to conquer sex and save the world?"
Dale: "There are people who research sex? That sounds like a good job."
Barton: "So did you?"
Dale: "Am I the only boy who's ever shown you a good time? You didn't come off like a first-timer, so to speak. Maybe one of them told?"
Barton: "Still not an answer."
Dale: "Why would I chance all this? You're my favorite. My very favorite one."
Barton: "Really?"
MASTERS
Libby: "So I bought you some tube socks. You'll still look awful on the beach, but it's better than argyle. Unless your plan is to look like the Duke of Windsor."
Bill: "No, your purse is much too small for that."
Libby: "I haven't even tried on my suit."
Bill: "Mmhmm."
Libby: "I mean, I heard about a nude beach, maybe we could go there and just be naked in the sun... Like, can you hear me? Glistening, wet skin? Nothing? Hello?"
Bill: "Sorry, I was just reading about sex so I couldn't hear you talking about it. Freud is such a bullshitter, listen."
"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain, and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead."
Libby: "If I thought about what you were actually saying when you say that, I would break down crying. Instead, I will tell you about the horrible lactation of Nancy Lawson, who felt sorry for me and for my broken womb and for your pathetic sperm."
Bill: "She is the worst, Libby. Don't worry about it. It's not like anybody's going to stare or whisper about us in Miami, and by the time we get back somebody's husband will be dead, or gay, or cheating, and everybody will be having some other kind of fun."
Libby: "I just can't stop thinking about Christmas. Before my mother died, it was such a big deal. Stockings by the fire, carrots for the reindeer. Do you still get to hang stockings if you don't have a family?"
Bill: "We do, and we will. We are our family. Why isn't it enough for you that you're enough for me?"
SCULLY
Barton: "Sorry I'm home so late! I got stuck at the office, uh, not getting blowjobs from beautiful young men."
Margaret: "I've been getting hammered and reading Peyton Place, it's super gross and awesome."
Barton: "Dish!"
Margaret: "I got it from Vivian to read before I see the movie. It's so dumb, listen."
"She rubbed her fingertips over her breasts, and this caused an odd tightening somewhere between her legs that puzzled her but was, somehow, very pleasant."
Margaret: "First of all, I have no idea what that part is even about, but I'm willing to investigate further. Second of all, is our daughter going to become a crazy road whore because of this?"
Barton: "Get with the times, Margaret. It's 1957! Poorly written porn is for mommies now! Eventually Vivian will settle down with a nice boy, and he'll never touch her again, and it will be very happy. They will make up a dumb story about a hat, and tell it all the time, and sleep on opposite sides of the house. Now, good night to you, and don't stay up too late."
Margaret: "Oh, you know, I was thinking -- this book's got me thinking -- maybe we..."
Barton: "You're not getting anywhere near my junk until I take a shower. And then after shower time it's bedtime, so..."
Margaret: "Okay, goodnight! I'll just hang out here in this giant bed where you don't sleep. This is normal! This is very fulfilling."
Either she never knew or she forgot, both of which are depressing and hard to understand, but either way the first person we need to tell about clitorises is Margaret Scully.
OB WING
Jane: "Oh hey Austin, I was just totally avoiding you."
Austin: "But why? I'm obsessed with you and always looking for you all over!"
Jane: "I can't fix your problem, man."
Austin: "It ain't broke, darlin'. What's this I hear about you seeing a doctor?"
Jane: "We went to see one speak. The kind you might benefit from."
Austin: "A urologist?"
Jane: "A psychoanalyst."
Austin: "Blech."
Jane: "You should read On The Universal Tendency Towards Debasement In The Sphere Of Love. It is literally about this."
Austin: "Is that like Ode To A Grecian Urn?"
Jane: "No, poems are what explain female sexuality, apparently. This is an essay, about impotence. Your inability to fuck your wife -- and now, your inability to fuck me -- because you like us too much."
Austin: "Why don't you just give me the headlines while we wait for Viagra to be invented?"
Jane: "No, just read it and get your situation together."
Random Man: "[Random pun about the elevator going up, unlike Austin's sad flaccid penis.]"
MASTERS
Virginia: "Actually he's on vacation. Or I guess trying to go on vacation. It's a longshot."
Dr. DePaul: "Damn. I had Dr. Papanikolaou coming in today for lunch, and a lively discussion about cervices."
Virginia: "Pap smears are the future of cervices, I'm familiar. I try to follow the field. I actually I read your proposal for mandatory smear testing, it was on Dr. Masters' desk."
Dr. DePaul: "If it detected cancers specific to men, you'd see it on billboards."
Virginia: "And you said it's already standard at NY Hospital? Even on the Negro ward?"
Dr. DePaul: "They have cervices too, yeah. But not here. "
Virginia: "And you want to start an outreach program, to teach people how to do it?"
Dr. DePaul: "Even a humble country doctor can perform the smear."
Virginia: "I always forget how straight-up awful you are. But I can't stop wanting your approval either."
Virginia: "Well like I said, and it pissed you off last time too, anything you need..."
Dr. DePaul: "I need two board members to sponsor, I need the official sanction of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and I need twelve grand, which in 1957 means a little over $96,500."
Virginia: "The saddest part is how long it took me to realize you were being a bitch just now. Okay, well, if there's anything else you need..."
Dr. DePaul: "I need you to stop offering me things like we are the same kind of person. I need you to understand that I have gotten where I am pretending I'm substantively different from other women, and you fuck it up by being brazenly human."
Virginia: "What's really weird is how unintuitive I am about your needs and the way you see me. You're like a blind spot for some reason."
Dr. DePaul: "It's a narrative reason. Your relationship with Dr. Masters means you straddle the medical and civilian worlds, and I exist in this story to radicalize and interrogate that. You'll see. It only benefits you in the long run, don't worry. It makes you appear like even more of a unicorn than you already do."
FLORIDA
Libby: "Palm trees! It's like the Congo, in absolutely no way at all."
Bill: "I am Bill Masters, I hate it here already, and we booked six nights."
Lady: "Welcome to the Tropicale! What's your special occasion?"
Bill: "-- Well, we're at this black-tie party and I look over at her ass and it's covered in..."
Libby: "Wedding anniversary!"
Bill: "What? Our anniversary's in..."
Libby: "Dude, stop. I'm doin' a bit. Ten year anniversary, so very much in love."
Lady: "Oh, how sweet! Let me upgrade you real quick."
Libby: "That's how we do."
MAHJONG
Lady: "...This professor of Entomology, just transferred from Northwestern, early 60's..."
Lady: "I'm guessing a balding bug doctor hasn't been married before?"
Margaret: "Oh, Harriet!"
Lady: "Don't waste your time on her, she's gone darksided."
Harriet: "Fine. What Leona wants me to tell you is that I have volunteered for a study. On human sexuality, at the University. It is for science. I mean, it's Bill Masters, he delivered half our children at this table, there's nothing weird about it."
Leona: "Sex. She is doing it."
Margaret: "With your husband Robert? After all that ugliness?"
Harriet: "No, with #M51-147. It's anonymous!"
Everybody: "That is the coolest thing we have ever heard in our entire lives."
Jean: "You don't even know his name?"
Harriet: "Who cares what his name is? He showed me more about how my body works in one session than Robert did in 23 years."
It's like poetry: "You know what it's like? My shoes. Growing up, my mother believed that ladies were meant to have small feet. So she would tell me, You're a 6 1/2, you're a 6 1/2. And up until my twenties I bought shoes that were 6 1/2. Then this clerk at Vandervoort's looks at me one day and he goes, Excuse me, I look at feet all day, and you are not a 6 1/2. I walked out of there in a size-8 loafer, and it felt like I was walking on... whipped cream."
TROPICALE
Libby: "What's better than two tiny beds? This gigantic king-sized bed. You could sleep a whole family in here!"
Bill: "If we were planning on having one. Listen, I ordered champagne. That's what humans do, right?"
Libby: "Why are they listening to 'Pop Goes the Weasel' door, at this hour?"
Bill: "And now they're jumping on the bed. I won't have it. You shouldn't have to listen to kids on our vacation. No offense to kids, but I mean come on."
He starts yelling down at the front desk, and she sweetly takes the phone away from him, assuring them everything's fine.
Libby: "You're lovely, really. But we can't spend the rest of our lives hiding from everybody else's children..."
The people door are not children, though. They are fucking. Very loudly.
Libby: "Uh, that's hilarious. I guess Ladies' Home Journal was correct about this being the number one honeymoon spot..."
Bill: "Did they specify Room 404? LOL."
(It gets cartoonish; people who fuck this loud want you to hear them fucking, which to my mind invalidates the whole thing and just proves they don't really know what sex is about.)
Bill: "I can't help thinking this should be a turn-on, or something. But instead it's just kind of funny. It's not even weird, it's just sweet."
Libby: "That's the show we're on. Happy Anniversary, babe."
She's lovely, in white. They hug, in the anniversary suite, and when the couple gets loud she gasps, and they laugh. It's like Oz, for the moment. You could be somebody else.
With the people door going so hard, so loud, it's like they've sucked all the sex oxygen out of the room, and the marriage can be what it's always supposed to have been: Just two of the very greatest, most loving friends. She is lovely in white.
CAF
"Where they love, they have no desire. Where they desire, they cannot love."
Gini: "Sounds like the Masterses. What is that?"
Jane: "Freud, still talking about debasement in the sphere of love. This time, marriage."
Gini: "You know, I'm starting to not give a shit about Freud."
Jane: "Right here on the cover, he has a cigar. Clearly he knows what he's talking about."
Gini: "LOL. Do you want to sleep with your father? Do you wish you had a penis? Is your clitoris a poem?"
Jane: "You're acting almost like female sexuality is as important as male sexuality."
Gini: "I bet he was shitty in bed and he found his wife with her hand down her drawers and that was it. Only stupid immature women do that, from here on out. It's science, because I say so and for no other reason whatsoever."
Jane: "This whole orgasm thing really has you by the balls, huh?"
Gini: "I mean, why would you ever ignore your clitoris? Why would you ever tell another person to bypass that area? It's just a vicious, crummy thing to do."
Jane: "I can climax from somebody touching my breast. What stage of development is that? Am I immature, or an old lady, or what?"
Gini: "For real? That's amazing!"
Jane: "Sometimes, not all the time. But now you've got me wondering if it's a good idea."
Gini: "YOU ARE WONDERING IF HAVING AN ORGASM IS A GOOD IDEA?"
Jane: "I mean, of course not. But would Freud approve?"
Gini: "Freud can suck my dick. We are gonna prove that all orgasms are the same. It's what we're studying anyway, right? The point of the study is sexual response, and here we have a rich fertile area of research that Masters didn't even know about, because he can only have one kind of orgasm."
Jane: "It's kind of like only letting color-blind people be interior decorators. So anyway, I am very interested so far. What do you need me to do, and is the answer by any chance Have tons of orgasms."
TROPICALE
Libby ushers Bill over to the door, hilariously, because the door couple has taken a break finally and they want to see what they look like. How they look like is, they look like a couple of very old horny people. But then that's not accurate either, because one of them is CeCe Rhodes from Gossip Girl -- aka Spike's Mom, Caroline Lagerfelt -- and everybody knows she's sexy as hell anyway. Anyway, what a perfect thing for Bill and Libby to giggle about.
RM FIVE, ASAP
Gini: "Don't touch your breasts, apparently they will confuse our results."
Jane: "Gotcha."
Gini: "So you'll be using Ulysses in here, and I'll be over there monitoring all your stuff."
Jane: "Do you think Dr. Masters will be okay with us doing this while he's gone?"
Gini: "If the data's compelling, he won't even notice himself thinking about it long enough to care."
Jane: "That is a very true thing about Dr. Masters."
Jane addresses Ulysses and they talk about him like he is a person, which is maybe the most clever turn in the whole episode.
Jane: "Okay, stud. Dr. Freud's reputation depends on you."
Gini: "Don't pressure him too much, we've seen how that works out. And remember, avoid your clitoris at all costs."
Jane: "What if I accidentally... I mean, this ain't Pan's Labyrinth, I can't exactly see what I'm doing."
Gini: "Do your best. When you're done, we'll start over manually, and then compare."
Jane: "This is the best and finest hobby a person could ever have. Before science, what even was there?"
(Masturbation ensues.)
Gini: "Guess what? Same exact EEG, same cardio... Same everything."
Jane: "We win! Team Clitoris!"
Gini: "Oh, you know what? There was a slight uptick in intensity..."
Jane: "Me, or Ulysses?"
Gini: "...Solo."
Jane, verbatim: "My clitoris beat my vagina? That's crazy!"
Good going, clitoris! Sorry it's fifty years later and we still treat you like the Friend Zone of body parts.
TROPICALE
Bill: "Oh my God, are they at it again?"
Libby: "Oh my God, are they at it again?"
Bill: "That's three times today. I should be writing this down. Why aren't they dead yet?"
Libby: "Mr. Dooley from church plays a round of golf every morning, and he's almost 80."
Bill: "Uncanny, they're like lions."
Libby: "What a lovely sentiment."
Bill: "The African lioness in estrus copulates every fifteen minutes for a week."
Libby: "Still. I knew girls like that in my sorority. C'mere."
Bill: "...There it is. She's in the plateau state..."
Libby: "And we are in the Sunshine State. To relax. Do you want to fuck or what?"
Bill: "Uh, what?"
Libby: "Are you... Timing them? Dude!"
Bill: "They're seniors, their endocrine systems don't even produce sex hormones anymore. It's like from a medical standpoint..."
Libby: "Yeah, they're weird. Did you know I am here in this bed? Your wife?"
Bill: "I mean they're like something out of Ripley's."
Libby: "Believe it or not, they're walking on air."
Or on whipped cream. The idea being that you only have sex when you're forced to -- the sex drive -- at odds with not wanting to ruin the person you're married to by fucking them. It's a dumb idea, but one that just happens to apply here. What he's asking is, how in the sphere of love can you ever possibly unite those two drives? Aren't love and lust two very distinct ends of a spectrum? Isn't that the agreed-upon saddest thing about marriage? This couple could teach you, all right, if you were listening. But you're not listening, you're studying.
"What do you see when you look at me?" she asked. Careful, Bill.
DR. DEPAUL
Lady: "Hey, I was looking for this study? I wanted to apply."
Dr. DePaul: "Ugh, you're looking for Dr. Masters, he's gone right now."
Lady: "I thought it was a lady doctor, my friend said a Dr. Johnson? And you're the only lady doctor that has ever existed, so..."
Dr. DePaul: "Oh my freakin' God she is not a doctor! Jesus Christ!"
Lady: "So you're not Dr. Johnson?"
Dr. DePaul: "She's down the hall. Small, brunette, ambitious..."
Lady: "Great, peace out!"
Dr. DePaul: "SHE IS NOT A DOCTOR OKAY?"
Lady: "Nobody cares except you!"
CONF
Gini: "I know how to read an EKG, Bill, and there is no difference. Other than the clitoris winning, I mean."
Bill: "This is not exactly a randomized study. Jane's a fine girl but she is not all girls."
Gini: "This is real, Bill. It's a thing. What I don't get is how they are the same even though it's two different body parts."
Bill: "...Put down the phone, and go in my office..."
Gini: "I am already in your office."
Bill: "Huh. Are you in my chair?"
Gini: "No, sir, I am not in your chair. What am I looking for?"
Bill: "This one particular anatomy textbook."
Gini: "This thing? It's twelve years out of date."
Bill: "Refer me to the Ethics committee. Now, turn to the cross-section of the..."
Gini: "Got it."
Bill: "Okay, see how the clitoral crura extend along the pubic arch, almost to the bone?"
Gini: "Wait, so it's... It's backwards! All orgasms are clitoral orgasms! So then..."
Bill: "Go for it, you're in the home stretch."
Gini: "That means the woman doesn't need a man to provide pleasure at all. In fact, maybe it's better without..."
Bill: "-- Whoa! Yeah, that's not where I was thinking you were going. But okay. It's still just one data point, to prove it."
Gini: "It's an entire study, though, right? It's what we were born to do, right?"
Bill: "Yep. We'll start when I get back."
Libby: "Are you doing a little dance?"
Bill: "Don't worry about it. These guidebooks, on the other hand... Useless, unless you wanna see a Seminole Indian wrestle an alligator, which, why would you..."
Libby: "Honey, just go home."
Bill: "Wait, what? Uh, you look pretty."
Libby: "I'm here, but you're still there. Which is fine, because I do need this. You were right about that. I love it here and I feel like I'm untangling. But you're not happy. You are away from your toys and your science and it's all you're about, and I don't like being the one."
Bill: "Maybe you're right and I'm just mourning differently or something, and I'm sorry. We could come back in the fall..."
Libby: "Oh no, I mean you go home. I stay here. In my bathing suit. Having a ball and listening to the weasel pop. That's what I'm suggesting."
Bill: "It's 1957, I'm not leaving my helpless wife in a..."
Libby: "Hmm?"
Bill: "No, I heard it. I heard what I was saying. My bad. I still feel like I ought to have a problem with it, though. Isn't that what humans do?"
Libby: "This isn't a discussion. Get your shit, go home, I'll see you in a week. I do not need you to fight me on this to prove anything, okay? Just do it and don't worry about it."
DR ZUSMAN
Is the analyst upon whose couch Austin has found himself. The power of Jane is remarkable.
Austin: "I read this Freud article, and it's okay, but once you start talking about moms, I'm out. I do not want to fuck my mother."
Zusman: "That's not really the point of the article, but you seem to have focused on that."
Austin: "I don't know your tricks yet, so I will agree."
Zusman: "Fine, let's drill down. Do you love your mother?"
Austin: "My mother has nothing to do with my penis. You can't find a cross-section connecting them no matter how old the textbook is."
Zusman: "Not like that. Let's just say, maybe... What if this study made you feel judged, in some way, because of your performance issues."
Austin: "That's a true thing."
Zusman: "So what is a time or concept or person that makes you feel accepted and not judged?"
Austin: "All right..."
Zusman: "But then the first part means it has to do with sex, so then your wires get crossed and you start wanting a certain kind of love at the same time as a certain kind of pleasure, and your body says NOPE and that's how you are saved from going nuts."
Austin: "No idea what you're talking about."
Zusman: "Yeah, like that. Every problem starts as a solution."
Austin: "No, I mean I have no idea what you're talking about."
Zusman: "Exactly."
Austin: "Dude, you are not making any sense."
Zusman: "Buddy, you want a hard-on or not? We both know you're lying. Pull it together and work with me here."
MARGARET
She's shaking before she even makes it into the front office.
Gini: "Margaret Scully! How lovely to see you."
Margaret: "I was meeting my daughter for lunch and I wanted to say hi."
Gini: "She is doing so well, everybody just loves her."
Margaret: "She says you're especially kind with her."
Gini: "I would be anyway, but I kind of have to be because of dumb Ethan."
Margaret: "It's really important to her. You'd think a girl that gorgeous wouldn't have self-esteem issues, but... Maybe that's the part she got from me."
Gini: "I'm sorry to say that Dr. Masters is out of town. But I'll tell him you said hello."
Margaret: "No, I'm here to say hello to you. Oh, and while I'm here..."
Virginia doesn't know why she asks to close the door, but she's more than happy to oblige. There is something so sad about her eyes, today. This beautiful, glamorous, statuesque woman, thinking she passed down everything but her beauty. This woman who deserves so much love, and still feels like a thief.
MASTERS
Bill comes home to a dark house, sighs and groans as he puts down his things; before he's even taken off his hat, he pours a drink. It's big in there, and lonely. How often, do you think, he misses Barton Scully? I bet a lot. I bet some nights it's all he thinks about. Where we love, we feel no desire.
VIRGINIA
Gini: "Oh my God, Henry. Quit doing Henry crap for like one second."
(Ring-ring.)
Bill: "Virginia, it's Bill..."
Gini: "Hey, girl! Guess who came to the office today? This is CRAZY."
Tessa: "Moooom, Henry's the wooooorst!"
Gini: "Can I call you back, buddy?"
Bill: "Yeah, I'm at home. I came back."
Gini: "What, was there a hurricane or something? Is Libby okay?"
Bill: "She's fine. She's in Florida."
Gini: "Jeez. You must've really fucked that up."
Bill: "Let's plan a session for tomorrow night. Your hypothesis that men are completely unnecessary."
Gini: "Oh boy."
BRUNCH
Libby: "Just a gorgeous single lady in a crazy hat like a palapa, looking for a table..."
Swingers: "Lady, are you unaccompanied? Come sit with us! We couldn't find a table forever either, they sat us under the A/C vent, it was a nightmare."
Barb: "Who knew you could freeze to death in Miami?"
Morris: "She hates it..."
Barb: "And he loves it, he'd sleep in an icebox if he could."
Libby: "Aren't you two chatty."
It's not the sex she wants to study, it's how much they seem to like each other. How they love where they desire, and desire where they love. What a real life couple looks like, that has sex all the time and can still make it to brunch. A couple of lions.
Libby: "How long have you been married?"
Swingers: "Way too long! [Coded swinger talk.]"
Libby: "Isn't that romantic. You're like newlyweds, to this day. Literally like newlyweds. Like there's a trophy you're going to win."
Swingers: "The key is to get rid of your children the second you can. And then become swingers, maybe we'll leave that part out until we're drunk. Do you have kids?"
Libby: "I have a boy and a girl. They're imaginary. Timmy's my rock, and Susan is twelve."
Swingers: "Where is their dad?"
Libby: "Oh, he died. From science."
"It was a long time ago. When it first happened, I kept thinking I would wake up and discover it was all a dream. Then I realized it was up to me to decide what kind of life I would have."
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain, and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead.
MASTERS
Gini: "Full house tonight. One round with Ulysses, Gatorade, and then solo. Oh, I wanted to talk to you about one candidate. Margaret Scully?"
Bill: "Oh jeez. For reasons I can't exactly explain, oh brother."
Gini: "She really wants to contribute..."
Bill: "You mean like money? I'll take her money."
Gini: "Nope, I do in fact mean her clitoris and vagina. She told me Barton won't find out, if that's what."
THREE SHEETS
Swingers: "Keep drinking daiquiris and soon nothing matters. Khrushchev's got his finger on the button anyway."
Libby: "You mean he's sexually immature?"
Barb: "I think that Eisenhower's a weasel anyway."
Libby: "Don't you like weasels? Heh."
Swingers: "In fact we do, how do you know that?"
Libby: "I'm in 402. Uh, my Tommy used to love that song."
Swingers: "First of all, don't connect our sex life with your imaginary kid, don't you know the first thing about debasement in the sphere of love? And also, wasn't his name Timmy three drinks ago?"
Libby: "I am so close to done with this that I could just laugh in your face instead of trying to come up with something, but that would be rude, so uh, I guess I just call him whatever. Tommy when he's good, Timmy when he's horrid. Stop givin' me the third degree, Dr. Freud."
SCULLY INTAKE
A: "Almost twenty. My daughter's age."
Q: "And how often do you engage in intercourse now?"
A: "Uh..."
Q: "Sorry the questions are..."
A: "No, I just almost started crying. That was weird. Um, Barton's a busy man, you know, and then after Vivian was born things really tapered off..."
Q: "On average? Just a number, for quants."
A: "Once a year? Or less?"
Q: "And your orgasmic response?"
A: "Sorry, my what?"
Q: "Your physical response. During intercourse."
"It's, you know. Um. Not really painful, exactly? More like a... Rubbing. Rubbing, a rubbing sensation? Ahem, I mean, a... It can feel ... I'd say protracted?"
All they want to do is hold onto her, even Bill -- and he knows this, it's the same as when he expected everybody to help Libby think she was the broken one, and nobody could know the totally normal, not-shameful truth -- but the set of her knuckles and the set of her jaw says she'd never forgive them.
Q: "This sensation, okay, does it build to anything? Like a feeling of pleasure, or a kind of ... ache? Tensing of the muscles?"
A: "There is a certain tension, yes."
Q: "And you experience release?"
A: "When it's over? For sure. Tremendous relief."
If it weren't Allison Janney, maybe it would go to another place. But it's so gorgeously, so strictly this show, that the funniest scene would also be by far the saddest. Hilarious on the page, but barely watchable on screen. If it weren't for Catherine last week, you could confidently say it's the most beautiful, and sad, and compassionate -- and in this case, darkly and smartly funny -- bit in the whole season to date. But it is Allison Janney, and that means it won't do.
Bill: "Wait... Margaret? Have you ever experienced an orgasm?"
Margaret: "I don't know, maybe?"
Virginia: "You would know."
Margaret, sadly: "I would?"
I'm not one to throw around Emmy talk, and I hate awards and award shows anyway, but this is such delicate, finely tuned work. This beautiful woman we've only shared three scenes with, this giving, smart, caring woman, who reads racy novels and has racy mahjong conversations and thinks she has it all figured out, suddenly -- over the course of just a few questions -- realizing that she is beneath help. And simultaneously realizing that she is desperate.
Margaret: "I'm a fast learner! I taught myself Italian, I'm sure with a little instruction..."
Bill: "Oh, God. I'm so sorry, but we have to..."
Margaret: "Without exception?"
Out on this vertiginous edge of something her body knows about and her mind has never heard of, at the edge of the garden, and suddenly the auto body guys -- her friends, these sad-eyed, sweet people trying to help her -- are calling her a total loss.
Imagine spending your whole life in a garden. It's great, there's food and people that love you, it's technically perfect. And then somebody mentions in passing that there's a world outside the garden, over the hedge. And you're so scared to look, because what if it's not true? And what if it is true? And so you sneak out, to the hedge, and you call out. Into the darkness. Expecting no response. Forcing yourself, rather, to expect no response.
..And just when you're turning away, hopes dashed, feeling embarrassed and silly even though you're all alone, a voice on the other side of the hedge says, "Hello!"
"Hello! We've been here all along, waiting for you."
Bill: "It's a baseline. For the data to be consistent we have to have a hard and fast threshold, because it's about the entire cycle of blah blah blah..."
Margaret: "Sure, okay. Okay, I'm... Listen, I'm sorry to waste your time."
She fumbles, they jerk up and want to help, want to touch her, but she makes it out alive. Just barely, alive.
"Hello! We were delayed, but we're here now. We're coming for you. Everything is going to be okay."
She makes it to the elevator, before she breaks.
TROPICALE
Libby is feeling pretty cool that night, listening to "My Funny Valentine" on the hi-fi and swanning around on the balcony, when there's a knock at the door. Can you guess who it is? You're right, it's Morris. He invites her over for a nightcap, and then dances her around the room, and then it turns out they aren't even swingers -- it's 1957! -- he's just gross and waited until his wife passed out. He says she's into listening -- just like Libby, he chuckles -- but who really knows. Not exactly enticing, anyway.
She threatens him with her husband, admits he's not dead and this whole thing is stupid and they are stupid and Miami is stupid, and -- another point in this show's favor -- doesn't have a huge amount of trouble getting him out the door. It's such a relief to see people act like people once in a while, instead of freshman orientation videos about sexual assault. In a show smart (and mature, and kind) enough to keep dumb ol' Ethan around, learning his lessons and making his apologies, it's just as refreshing to see somebody toss a geezer out, because he's just testing his limits and he's a joke anyway, instead of defaulting to the stress of having to watch one more clichéd, barely averted TV sexual assault, or otherwise threatened with it. Good going, Libby.
Even after he's gone, and she's rattled, she still settles down to think about it, instead of acting like the world is ending. I like to imagine her thinking, "That was fucked up, I need to talk to my best friend Bill!" and then immediately being like, "No, he'll just think that means he was right. Fuck that. Girl, we're processing this one solo." And flying out first thing, of course.
SCULLY
Barton: "And what is this delicious, sensational dish?"
Margaret: "It's called Shepherd's Pie. You take a size-8 filet mignon and cram it in a 6 1/2 crust for twenty years, or until it's a golden brown."
Vivian: "Ethan cooked the other night. Some kind of piece of meat, tasted like a desk blotter."
Margaret: "I hope you were nice about it. Not because of men's feelings, but because if you don't encourage them they will remain helpless. Dudes think ignorance is cool, when it's stuff like how to cook or otherwise survive."
Barton: "I made an omelet once, when you had your tonsillectomy."
Margaret: "And somehow ruined the wallpaper."
Barton: "I thought I was supposed to flip it. Like a short-order cook."
Margaret: "You're cute, and all, but I really liked that wallpaper."
Barton: "What's cute is that I think this conversation is about omelets."
Margaret: "Yeah, it's real fuckin' cute."
Vivian: "So I'm sensing a certain tension. Why don't you guys go out, after dinner?"
Barton: "What for? Everything's here! It's 7:30 already!"
Vivian: "What for. Um, like a change of pace. Go get a sundae down at Schiff's or go to the pictures. Peyton Place is at the Rialto, you couldn't make the 8:00."
Margaret: "I love how we treat movie theaters like actual theaters here in 1957. But I haven't finished the book yet."
Barton: "I hate everything you like, I couldn't possibly take part in something you enjoy. Feelings? Breasts, they got in that book? Feh. No thanks. You go, I'd just fall asleep anyway."
Margaret: "Done, bro."
MASTERS
Dr. DePaul: "Dr. Masters, are you free? I was waiting for Virginia to ever go home."
Masters: "She's picking up sandwiches, actually. Sorry I missed pap smear guy!"
Dr. DePaul: "We exchanged correspondence about cytopathology, when I was at Penn."
Masters: "Cool, like a mentor?"
Dr. DePaul: "No, like a person who wrote back to my letter and we had lunch. I didn't have a mentor. I'm a woman?"
Masters: "Yeah, I can see how that would be. Well, who needs one? You're awesome. My one turned out gay and now we don't talk to each other."
Dr. DePaul: "Sometimes I wished for one. Maybe if there were more women, before me."
Masters: "No, I get what you're saying. You've made the point already."
Dr. DePaul: "You seem like a weirdo, Dr. Masters, let me ask you. Do you not find it odd that Obstetrics is a field dominated by men?"
Masters: "It's 1957. Medicine is a field dominated by men."
Dr. DePaul: "Everybody thinks I'm a secretary. Meanwhile your secretary gets mistaken for a doctor..."
Masters: "When did you pivot there? I wasn't looking out for that at all."
Dr. DePaul: "Well, I'm here to bitch about it forever and ever."
Masters: "Hey, why don't you bother Virginia? That's a win/win, because you wouldn't be talking to me, which I would prefer, and then also she would fucking demolish you. That girl has done nothing but try to make you feel at home and bolster you against exactly the kind of institutionalized, sexist bullshit you're complaining about."
Dr. DePaul: "You clearly don't understand how basic I am being! I am talking about how it offends me that people think she's a doctor, because being a doctor is all I have."
Masters: "That's on you, sister. Maybe people treat her that way because she acts like a professional?"
Dr. DePaul: "Then she should correct them! That would be professional."
Masters: "That would be rude, and entirely beside the point. She's not responsible for your self-esteem issues. A rising tide lifts all boats, Dr. DePaul."
Dr. DePaul: "Or maybe it's just because she's a whore."
Masters: "I think you mean, pretty. And no, you're still wrong. And being super gross."
Dr. DePaul: "Oh, I read you loud and clear. You're after her ass and that's why you're defending her against my insane insecurities."
Masters: "We don't love where we desire, Dr. DePaul. Get on your broom and fuck off back to pap smear land. You don't better things for yourself, or your gender, by treating women -- or men -- like the enemy. That makes you the enemy. A one-person army that nobody's attacking, but's somehow constantly defeated. Siding with one side against the other is the most harmful thing you can do for yourself, because those sides don't exist. It might work in the short term, but eventually you're going to come up against a grownup."
PEYTON PLACE
Margaret cries all the way through the film, but of course it's notable, the part we see:
Michael: "I kissed you, you kissed me. That's affection, not carnality. That's affection, not lust. You ought to know the difference."
Not even Freud, apparently.
Constance: "And what do you call a man who thinks about nothing but..."
Michael: "-- Human."
Not even Bill Masters. Imagine growing up your whole life, in a garden.
AFTERWARD
Austin: "Mrs. Scully? It's after ten!"
Margaret: "Dr. Langham! How nice. And weird, and sad."
Austin: "Is Dr. Scully here too?"
Margaret: "Nope, just me. Not really his cup of tea. And your wife?"
Austin: "Elise falls asleep by nine. I can't sleep before two... Walk you to your car?"
Austin: "Oh, laps at the pool, any old movie that's showing. Eventually I get tired."
Margaret: "I used to swim in college. The one place being tall actually helped."
Austin: "Sometimes, I just walk around the neighborhood."
"You know what's strange? When you're outside looking in, there's always a glow to someone else's house. Their home. But when it's you, inside, you can't imagine anyone looking through your window and seeing it that way."
We don't love where we desire, nor desire where we love. Women's sexuality is an unreadable poem, based in secrets; men's sexuality is a shell game of debasement...
What a load of fucking bullshit. I'm talking about springtime.
Austin: "I got caught up, I don't know what I'm saying..."
Margaret: "Nope, I'm right there with you. I can't imagine what other marriages are like. You're deep."
Austin: "Not especially, I failed my boards twice. Although I guess telling the Prov..."
Margaret: "-- I can keep a secret."
Austin: "Can you, now?"
Austin: "I get nervous, during tests. I was in this study recently, and I didn't perform so well, and ever since then..."
Margaret: "Just don't feel judged."
"When Vivian gets nervous I say, Just close your eyes, take a deep breath. Remember you know more than you think you do. It all comes back to you when you can just relax."
Austin: "Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's working just fine actually."
He untangles. Wires uncross. He loves where he desires. A voice calling from over the hedge, that you never thought you'd hear again.
Austin: "I don't want to say goodnight, so uh, what did you think of the movie?"
Margaret: "I cried the whole time! That's why I look like this!"
Austin: "Look like what?"
When Margaret Scully fucks Austin Langham in the backseat of her car, it takes no time at all. They both qualify, all over again. It's a poem; it's a shell game. It's a unity of drives, a secret whispered in the ear. Imagine feeling fully and completely unjudged; imagine being looked at, for the first time really looked at, and glorying in it. Imagine the day the gates finally open.
"Hello! We were delayed, we're ever so sorry. But we're here for you now. Are you ready?"
ROOM FIVE
The lady that pissed Dr. DePaul off in the first place masturbates like a champ.
Gini: "Good job, Louise. That was some good masturbating."
Louise: "I'm in nursing school, so... This is pretty fascinating. The whole thing."
Gini: "That's nice to hear. It's more fun when you're into the process, I think."
Louise: "I thought you were doctor before, it caused trouble, but I don't know. You act like one. Like you could've gone."
Gini: "Two kids and two marriages and two divorces, instead. I didn't know I was good at this until it was too late."
It hurts Bill, a tiny bit, to hear her say this. To know she's right.
Louise: "Eff that, I'm not getting married till I'm 36. I can take care of myself."
Gini: "I'll say. I just hope we get more like you in here. When a woman can please herself as well as a man can, or better... Brave new world."
LATER
Gini: "So I guess we want what, fifty? Seventy-five? What's a real sample?"
Bill: "...I don't want you as my secretary anymore."
Gini: "What?"
Bill: "I've been thinking about it a lot, and..."
Gini: "Goddammit Bill, this again?"
Bill: "I think you should have a different title, you're not a secretary. You're a research assistant -- a very good one -- and you deserve a secretary yourself. In lieu of a raise or an office, I mean."
Gini: "If we had a secretary I could just focus on the work, and..."
Bill: "It's time."
Gini: "So we're onto something."
"It isn't science to operate from a series of... Unproven assumptions. This weird dogma that we all accept because nobody really cares if it works enough, or fits the ideas of the people that matter enough. The story of a woman's body is a story told by men, why would anybody change it? Question it? But it's not science."
Bill: "And I mean, that's just the various orgasms, that's just like one thing. I saw these old people in Florida that were fucking all the time. Why were they doing that?"
Gini: "What about ladies that get off without any genital stimulation at all? Strap in because guess what, Jane can do it just from touching her breasts."
Bill: "Bullshit!"
Gini: "Science. We could prove it. There was a chick on the road in the George days, she could get off just putting a swab in her ear. One tonight? Brushing her teeth."
Bill: "You are blowing my entire mind right now, Johnson."
Gini: "Did you know women have wet dreams? How come? Why that?"
Bill: "You are the best at this. You keep asking questions forever and ever, and we will make so much sweet, sweet science, and we will save men from being jerks and women from being jerk receptacles, and the whole world will be saved."
Gini: "Saving's what misers do. The whole world will be changed."
The whole room heats up, like a garden on the hottest day of summer; like the Sunshine State, like a nerve that goes back so far it touches everything. Electric. For a second she sees him, behind the glasses and the things and the stuff, and she untangles.
Bill: "I mean, but climax from your breasts being touched? That's questionable."
Gini: "Let's find out. We're scientists."
She is barely flirty, as she goes; she knows how he moves, how the shell game shifts. Electrodes here, and here. Shirt comes off. And then she takes his hand, and places it softly on her breast.
It's warmer than expected. It's nice.
WEEK
Gini worries about the deterioration of the Masters's marriage, even as she and Bill are taking the plunge into science for themselves. Libby goes after Ethan to get her pregnant again, despite Bill's insanity surrounding the entire concept. Ethan continues to parse out the difference between Oz and Kansas, presumably with a few stutter-steps along the way, while Margaret decides she wants to do some Real Talk about her gay marriage.
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.