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Virginia drags her new best buddy Ethan Haas to the car lot, because you always have to take a dude to the car lot. When he offers to cosign her loan, she realizes that being friends with him is a horrible idea, but ends up letting him do it anyway. This actually works out pretty great, as Ethan's discovery that Virginia and Bill are doing science together plus this last vestige of his Friend Zone bullshit rockets him into a whole new level of sexual maturity, buying girl-friendly bedding and even telling Vivian the sad story of his Virginia obsession.
Oh yeah, about that. Well, we knew it would be gory. So the episode starts when them having Bill Masters Zombie Sex, as expected; the first round she's 0 and 1. Second round, she's 2 and 0, which proves he's capable of improving his performance. Then Libby gets drunk on gin and just a little sloppy, grossing Bill out enough that she decides on two things: One, get Ethan to keep trying to impregnate her in secret with Bill's frozen sperm (a clever inversion of the first half of the season), and two, get Virginia to send his ass home on time.
Virginia holds out the best carrot she can -- no more science funtimes until he starts fucking his wife regularly -- and it works like a damned charm. He shows up the morning frisky as hell and ready for session three, which ends in simultaneous orgasm and involves some face-making I didn't need personally to see. There's a power shift afterwards, where Masters is no longer the desperate one and Virginia's actually a little bummed about fixing his marriage for him, but I'm sure once the oxytocin calms down she'll get her shit together.
Oh, and their new shared secretary is Jane, which is awesome because Jane is awesome, and also because it helps Bill get over a lot of his confusion about who and what Virginia is to the office, now that's she's doing so much stuff in so many different rooms of the office. Plus, more Jane for us, which is great.
The other main story -- possibly the main story this week -- is the Scully marriage, which is a joy to watch: Barton's going to NYC for a few days, so Margaret invites Austin Langham over to play house for a couple days, and they end up engaging in some joking/not-joking role play stuff about his mommy issues that eventually sends Austin back to therapy, where he figures out some fairly gratifying things.
But first, Barton gets himself gay-bashed! And stabbed! His sweet hustler Dale rescues him, but he insists on stitching himself up. Masters runs across him in the night and does the deed for him, along with handing him a shitload of attitude and that harsh Bill Masters affection that is so hard to deal with. Then he heads home, where Margaret is watching herself fucking Austin in the mirror, and she meets him on the stairs and then -- in a sort of spasm -- tells him to hide in his room until her lover has left the building. It's sort of bad-ass but also totally awkward.
morning, she screams at Barton about how he should have fought for her, etc., and he promises her he's not seeing any other ladies. She does not do the math. I think maybe that kind of math had not been invented yet. Also, who cares, because it's all performative: She thinks as the wife she's supposed to act like this and regulate the behavior of the husband who's supposed to act like that, and the whole thing is just robots anyway.
You want to tell Barton it would be okay if he laid it out on the table and said, "Let's both date cute boys on the side," but she would probably find some kind of problem to have with it just because she would feel like it was required of her. Instead, he stresses about everything, and then he and Dale decide their relationship has to take place in hotels instead of alleys, so they don't keep getting stabbed, and it's sort of beautiful how much affection there is between the two men outside the box of their financial relationship, paralleling as it does both Masters/Johnson and the old Austin/Jane hypocrisy from earlier episodes. But even if the weirdness of it is too weird, it's still Dale, and he is still great.
Week: Zack and Miri make a porno; Virginia realizes she has to take DePaul's Anatomy class which is like this Catch-22 of needing her degree so that old bitch will respect her but needing the old bitch's respect to get her degree, etc.; Scully decides to feel even weirder about getting gay with Dale -- which is so dumb of him, because I'd imagine anybody could find a way to get gay with Dale, he's that good -- while Haas and Langham try to explain what a man is to each other but spoiler alert, it's 1957 and they have no fucking clue.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ethan's attempts to become a human being -- by normalizing his friendship with Virginia and romance with Vivian Scully -- are proving much more successful than expected. Meanwhile, after a failure to launch and a bit of the Talking Cure, Austin rediscovered his passion in the arms of the formerly anhedonic Margaret Scully, whose husband Barton's arrangement with the charming hustler Dale gave Bill the blackmail material to pursue his goal, which is science. Specifically the science of fucking Virginia, who -- after a promotion bandaged the wounds left on her pride by Dr. DePaul -- decided to go through with it.
SCIENCE
So right away three things are happening: "Love Me Tender" is playing on the soundtrack, we're typing up Masters & Johnson's official subject cards for the vault, and we're also getting to watch them do science to each other for the first time. It's uncomfortable but not like virgins fucking is uncomfortable: More like if your dad got you a hooker for your sixteenth birthday and you were both just doing your best. Neither one of them is the hooker, you understand; they are both just out of their league.
But too, they're both wishing this weren't what it is, which is a transaction. This whole episode is full of people giving other people things to get things in return, but the things they think they're giving -- and the things they think they want to get -- are never really very close to what they are actually giving, or getting. (Ethan in particular goes into a whirlwind -- not to say downward spiral -- of giving, to the point that he pretty much loses sight of what he stands to gain in doing it, which probably makes him the winner of the episode.)
So is Virginia acceding to the study because she feels respected as a scientist? Yes, but also no: He did not buy this fuck from her, even if he kind of did. Is she doing this because she has a mysterious vibe connection with her married boss? Yeah, but still also no: Their relationship has been sex without touching the entire time, which they both like. Is she doing this to prove a point? Yes, but it's the opposite of the point the first two questions imply: She's putting her money where her mouth is, which is to say the thing Bill likes best about her is her ability to remove all outside concerns -- emotion, need, shame, further communication -- from the physical act of sex, the thing he both wants to do and can't stop himself doing.
They both want (and know they won't get) Virginia to be the perfect subject: A living embodiment of measurable physical response, with zero mess. They both think (and know they're wrong) that Bill already is.
But the transactional aspect of all this goes another way, too, throughout the episode: A very helpful thought experiment about gender, having to do with what we mean when we talk about giving. Consider a man doing something for you, giving you something: He likes this because it makes him feel strong, protective, magnanimous, but above all powerful. A man gives because it's a way of expressing that he has something -- be that strength, funds, resources -- that you do not. If you want a man to love you, ask him for something and thank him with true gratitude. You will own that man for life.
But here is the trick: Consider a woman doing something for you, giving you something: She likes this because it makes her feel -- guess what? -- strong, protective, magnanimous, powerful. A woman gives because it's a way of expressing that she has something -- be that strength, funds, resources -- that you do not. If you want a woman to love you, ask her for something.
We play the gender game when we think of these impulses as being two different things, and we do it unwittingly, because it's based on the idea that Man Things -- opening jars, cosigning loans -- are always better than Woman Things -- baking a cake, say, or letting you fuck her. One of them is the father who withholds to keep you on your toes, and the other is a mother who, like the Giving Tree, is a non-renewable resource that gives until it's gone. One of them is a man going out of his way, and the other one is a woman giving you something you already feel entitled to.
(Consider wage disparity: Men's labor is worth more than women's labor, because women were made to give but men are doing us a favor just by showing up. Teachers and nurses deserve less pay than CEOs and NFL quarterbacks because it's what they'd be doing anyway. But also, Nice Guy/Friend Zone stuff, too, falls into this category: Women who withhold sex are bitches because they're hoarding all the sex you deserve for existing.)
Of course, in 2013 you can ask a woman to open a jar for you and she will love it, and you can ask a boy to cook for you, and he will love it. But that's not going all the way with it, still, because we are still in gendered territory when we ask for and when we give these things. Part of the thrill is breaking the unwritten laws surrounding those things, being more than the category: Even thinking outside the box, you're still letting the box define you.
So the point of the thought experiment is this: Imagine a woman giving you something -- whether you're a man or woman, gay or straight -- and then imagine her feeling large, strong, gorilla-chested, virile, powerful, luxuriating in your weakness. And then understand that you are imagining the truth of things, because you are. Even in 1957, that's still going to be true. There's a lot of performance surrounding the transaction, a lot of lace-aprons and doormat poses -- debasement in the sphere of love isn't restricted to the bedroom; that confusion of Mommy vs. Lover permeates every interaction we have -- but the truth is that we are all walking on the same path: Giving is also always taking. Whether I bake you a cake or carry you over a puddle in my arms, I am doing it for the exact same reasons.
Is Virginia fucking him as a way of saying thanks for the lateral promotion? Yes. She's also doing it because their relationship is so oddly gerrymandered at this point that by fucking him she's refusing to fuck him. Even when they're not talking, in this first instance of participation in the study, they are having a conversation that echoes throughout the entirety of the episode, every scene practically, always with the faces and roles and dynamics changing, but still the same conversation, which goes something like:
Q: "How is it okay that we are doing this?"
A: "Because it's a transaction."
Q: "Tell me it's not a transaction, tell it means something."
A: "It's not a transaction, it means something."
Q: "Then how is it okay that we're doing this?"
A: "Because it's a transaction."
We -- people who sleep with men -- are so used to doing these double and triple deals, half over and half under the table, you have to really slow down your thought process to even see it happen. Which is one of the reasons I'm so grateful for beautiful Dale, who has such a light touch with everybody, because his existence queers the gender aspect out of it, like a cross-multiplied equation: If you can imagine Dale and Barton having this conversation, you can imagine Margaret and Austin, or Ethan and Vivian -- or Margaret and Barton, or Jane and Austin -- having the exact same conversation.
Because we are, and because the fucked-up secret at the bottom of it is that when we talk about love, this is the conversation we are having. This is the equation we are solving.
The other side of giving is taking, and boy are we not okay with taking. Dale helps here, too. Because Fifty Shades Of Gray is precisely about our fear of asking for sex, when it comes to women's bodies, and the fantasy of turning sexuality into a transaction. Of power, this time. You never have to ask if you are submissive, in a power relationship, which means you get out of the "dirty girl" box for wanting sex, but more importantly you get out of the hair-raising obligations -- and more importantly confessions -- that come along with asking for it.
And I dare you to find a man, by the same token, that hasn't fantasized about being a prostitute. (It means something so different it's barely the same concept, because men are not subject to the same forces, or dangers, as women. A woman on the street is contending with dangers that a man in any street knows by association, rather than lifetime training in those dangers.) They won't admit it, but it's there, and again it has to do with fear less of rejection than of wanting, or asking, itself. In 1957, and still now, it's safer (emotionally speaking) to be the hustler than to be the hustled, but either way the transactional aspect of it clears you both of a lot of fuzz. Craigslist hookups and glory holes work the same magic: By reducing things to a transaction -- supply curve meets demand -- you are both absolved of the sin called Need.
So as we're watching Virginia and Bill go at it, almost neurasthenic in their desire to stay free of this most shameful sin, we're looking also at Barton driving up to meet Dale in a dark alley, or Margaret daring her husband to tell her she's ugly, or Austin wandering blindly through the forest of his deepest mind: We're looking at the ways in which we turn the ineffable, the divine instinct of desire, into numbers -- dollars, dicks without faces or stories attached, points on a graph -- that keep us clean. She won't fuck him in a hotel, but she'll fuck him in this quiet hospital, because one of them is sex and the other is science.
One of them is tender, and the other one is true: Excitement, plateau, orgasm, resolution, they murmur, like a prayer. And it might as well be.
Bill: "The plateau state of the male subject lasted 8:31, resulting in his orgasm..."
Gini: "But not the female's. Which is fine, because it was the position. In 1957 grinding the corn is something Pilgrims do. But if the point is maximizing clitoral stimulation, Missionary gets a big fat 4 out of 10."
Bill: "Well maybe the male subject just needs a little practice with this female subject. And they probably need to widen the sample."
Gini: "Then I guess we need more subjects."
Bill: "Girl you know that's not what I meant."
Gini: "Yeah, okay. We need to fill out those questionnaires, then. This was a little spur of the moment, scientifically."
Bill: "We'll do it tomorrow. Right now the male subject needs to get out of here before he starts crying."
MARGARET
Margaret: "Nothin', just chilling at this bar while Barton plays cards over in that gross room full of cigar smoke."
Austin: "I'm hiding from my son's earache. Thank God it's 1957 and I can just bounce."
Margaret: "Help yourself to some mixed nuts. I picked out all the cashews already."
Austin: "Margaret, do we need to talk? I'm willing to apologize for boning you..."
Margaret: "-- Yeah actually, let's chat. Let's talk about how Barton's going out of town for three days and uh, can you name any restaurants in NYC he should try."
Austin: "Three whole days? That's a lot of, um, restaurants. Hope he's hungry!"
ETHAN
Vivian: "Are you sneaking out of your own house? Did you just Coyote Ugly me?"
Ethan: "I am not yet to that period of maturation where I don't lie easily and well, so I will simply say I have to go do an endometrial biopsy very early this fine morning."
Vivian: "Can you give me like ten minutes to pull it together?"
Ethan: "No, because I'm lying. Feel free to hang or get out, either way."
Vivian: "If you leave me here, I will snoop. Second you're out the door, every drawer in the house. Every coat pocket."
Ethan: "It would take more time than I have to explain why I love that you just said that, so instead I will be charming as hell."
"Check every coat pocket. You'll find old gum wrappers and spare change. Any matchbooks with girl's phone numbers, toss the old ones and stack the new ones by the phone."
She loves it too. They're the youngest, so they get to be the most honest. Their children will be more honest still, and so on. The future only goes one way. We'll get there eventually.
THE LOT
The car lot where Ethan is actually going is currently the site of a flurry of activity, as the salesmen gather around Virginia like crows: "Convertible! You'll look like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief."
It's odd to see Ethan put his arm around her, even though you know what they're playing at; odder still to see her relax against him, as though they were still in Oz and he'd never lost himself.
Ethan: "Are you kidding? I love this whole situation. I rebuilt a car in high school."
Gini: "I hate to admit that I don't know a crank case from a clutch..."
Ethan: "While I'm impressed you know either of those words."
Gini: "Thanks, I guess. Help me find something dirt cheap so we can get back to work."
BILL
Is in consultation with the Prescotts, who have been trying to have a child for a year.
Mr. Prescott: "It's not like we're not giving it our best. We're pretty much like rabbits."
Masters: "I do like when rabbits fuck. What are we talking?"
Mrs. Prescott: "Like several times a night?"
Masters: "Holy shit."
Mrs. Prescott: "And with variable positions. My sister swears by the Reclining Lotus."
Masters: "I am a genius of sex and I don't know what that is!"
Mrs. Prescott: "My sister the fertility expert came back from India bearing dengue fever, and a copy of the Kama Sutra."
Masters: "You are my favorite couple of all time. I would like to invite you to a special secret club for couples who like to fuck and also like science. However, I'm super creepy, so I'll just get Virginia to explain it to you in a way where you don't call the cops on me."
He screams her name through the closed door, and then finds someone else at the desk outside, recovering quickly (for Bill) and simply asking for paperwork for them. The new girl, Adelaide, has replaced the last one so quickly that he can't remember why either of them exist.
There's a semi-cute thing running through the episode that starts here and ends in an unexpected place having to do with how much he relies on Virginia and whether or not that is a sign of their bond or just Virginia doin' Virginia: How much of a simultaneous orgasm is written in the stars, versus how much is just being very good at reading your partner. The objective correlative for all this is a somewhat old device by which none of the secretaries he promised her last week does a good job, by his standards, because part of his mind is still stuck on Virginia fulfilling all of his needs. He hates the secretaries because they're not Virginia, which is less about her being special and more about him needing to move around some of his interior furniture to catch up to her new place in his office.
But it's also about Mommy stuff (c.f. Austin and Margaret, but also Bill's intensity about his mother's inability to be a man for him when he needed it) and about his marriage (both Gini's and Bill's transforming relationships with Libby), and about women staying in their place, period. The new secretary has to be Gini and Not Gini, just like Libby intuits that she needs to be Gini and Not Gini, and just Virginia is quickly coming to understand that she herself needs to be both of those things. (Meanwhile, Bill's barely capable of being Bill, much less multiplying himself, but then he's not called upon to do so, which is another great reason to be a man if you can at all help it.)
Either way, neither of them are capable of finding the process forms for the Study, which is frustrating for Bill but just sort of inscrutable for old Adelaide, who takes life at the leisurely pace of a person who is actually capable of existing in the world.
Adelaide: "Virginia said I was to 'encourage you to rely on me,' because she knew you would pull exactly this crap the second she left."
Masters: "Fine, right now I am relying on you to track her ass down! I'll throw things."
THE CAR
Gini: "Backseat's roomy. Not to segue or freak your brain out, but it does remind me how weird I found it that most of our subjects lost their virginity in the backs of cars."
Ethan: "Without a stable female workforce, latchkey kids don't yet have the freedom to experiment with their bodies unimpeded. A car's just a bedroom on wheels, midcentury. Having said that, guilty. Judith Treap."
Gini: "I'm sure she made up for her name in other ways."
Ethan: "And you? High-school quarterback. Or math teacher."
Gini: "Those are both good guesses! But no. Sweet Gordon Garrett. In retrospect I realized I was probably his first too. They put us in the yearbook together. Mrs. Gordon Garrett, formerly Miss Mary Virginia Eshelman."
Ethan: "And why didn't Miss Eshelman marry Mr. Garrett?"
Gini: "He was destined to be a farmer, and I was destined for something else entirely."
No matter how many little appreciative giggles and rib-elbowing "lucky dogs" he gives her, though, it's a sweet moment. She took his offer of friendship at face value, which she always wanted -- before he lost his damn mind -- but also I think speaks highly of her approach to life, explaining generally her way with people: Showing him the respect of taking him at his word is also a way of respecting herself.
Their reverie is interrupted by an old couple, who takes an interest in the car, and both come crashing back down to Earth.
Ethan: "So you're ready to sign?"
Gini: "Yeah, I just gotta call Bill. I can't get a loan as a single woman in 1957 regardless of whether I'm good for it..."
Ethan: "I can cosign, I'm right here."
Gini: "I hate to trouble you. By which I mean, our relationship is transactional enough as it is. I don't want you to pervert it before it's had a chance to become a habit. I mean, he already signs my checks. It's so much simpler."
Ethan: "And yet I'm not going to let this go. You're actually better off, as the conservator of our friendship, letting me do this."
Gini: "I don't especially trust you anyway, so fine."
VIRGINIA
Well, Adelaide didn't last too long.
Virginia: "He didn't like your filing? How were you...?"
Adelaide: "Alphabetically. The guy is insane."
Gini: "Bill, WTF. She's great."
Bill: "Disorganized."
Gini: "It's her first day! She inherited an entire office."
Bill: "She couldn't spell anesthesia."
Gini: "Bill, I can't spell anesthesia."
Bill: "Well, she's dead now. Anyway, I need you to sign up this couple the Prescotts."
Gini: "You got it. And I need you, in return, to stop ruining these girls' lives on a whim."
Bill: "Your promotion should not come at the expense of my practice falling to ruins!"
Gini: "Okay, drama queen. And don't even think about taking away my promotion. You lived without me before you met me..."
Bill: "-- Barely!"
Gini: "...Heh. I will work this out. Somebody much better than me."
Bill: "Better than I."
Gini: "You are the fucking worst. Fine. Yes. Somebody like that, who knows the difference. And also gives a shit."
So by finding someone to take care of us, you're still really taking care of me? Okay, I can work with that.
Or alternately, the paper trail of their unsatisfying maiden voyage tracks back to her promotion, meaning that his suppressed ickiness about their first experience also taints every girl that stands in the place she was standing right before they fucked. Like a stain in the carpet that only he can see.
LIBBY
Ethan: "First of all, it would be a gross violation of medical protocol. Being that a husband is in charge of his wife's uterus, as God and the Law intended."
Libby: "I'm a free-range outlaw, I don't give a shit. Stick some frozen sperm in me."
Ethan: "Second of all, dude would kill me. He's still broken from the miscarriage."
Libby: "Yeah, but so what? If it works, what's he gonna do? Complain? Bill doesn't always know what's best for him. Frankly the opposite of what he thinks is usually best."
Ethan: "Now you're talking nonsense. Who's giving the orders around here? It's cats lying down with dogs."
Libby: "My marriage is dying on the fucking vine. And you don't even have the context to know what I mean when I say it. If it weren't for me, that guy would still be in an airless lab watching rabbits fuck and thinking that was what life was like. If I lose him, I'll recover. And he won't know he's drowning until he's dead, alone. Eaten by rabbits."
Ethan: "You talk like he's some kind of... Yeah, okay."
He came up with 'Catherine' out of nowhere. All on his own, without prompting, he named the baby. How do you explain the implication there? How do you explain the promise of that? There is a real world, outside his head, and for one second he noticed it. Not just noticed, cared. And then retreated back, twice as far.
Ethan: "You're talking like this miscarriage was the end of the world."
Libby: "It doesn't have to be. Right now our relationship is that he listens to me prattle about whatever bullshit I'm doing, and Ethan, I don't even care about that crap. I don't care what I'm saying when I'm saying it! But a baby smiles, and sits up, and walks, and teaches you things. You get the chance to start over from the ground up. He would be able to give a child something he didn't get to have, that fucked him utterly up."
Libby: "In an odd way, even he and Virginia have more in common..."
Ethan: "-- Oh ho ho, you just said the magic words. That's the one thing she wouldn't give me. If I hadn't gotten nasty about that we'd probably still be fucking. We will knock you up -- save your speeches! -- we will knock you up forthwith."
Libby: "You see how it's a legitimate concern. What if somebody comes along that is both Gini and Not Gini, and I get remaindered out? A baby means we grow together. Not to save the marriage and not to give me purpose. Just to exist on the off days when we forget."
Ethan: "You have no rival. And I already said okay. But you gotta start having sex with him all the time. It's already unlikely given his sperm, it can't be straight impossible."
Libby: "If sex with my husband is what I have to do to get pregnant, then so be it."
ETHAN
Back home, Ethan's brother -- a family man, whom I hear we'll get to know further down the road -- is over for a Cardinals game, and Vivian is making dinner and snacks and everything. Playing house.
Vivian: "Snacks! Is the fourth quarter almost over?"
Ethan: "Well, it's baseball. But essentially, yes. And we will be losing."
Brother: "Do your kids like baseball?"
Vivian: "I am barely an adult, sir."
Brother: "Didn't you say she had kids?"
Vivian: "I am flooded with possibilities at this time. None of them good."
Ethan: "You must have Vivian confused with some other girl dating some other person we know, right? RIGHT?"
Brother: "Oh, uh. Yeah. I guess it was from drinking beer?"
Ethan: "Yeah. And you are now cut off."
SCULLYS
Margaret opens the door to Austin, who comes sweetly enough bearing cashews. All I can say about Dr. Langham at this point is that I sincerely hope his wife is unlikeable, like maybe a serial killer would be good, but I sincerely doubt that's true. For a show centered almost entirely on people pretending sex isn't sex and doesn't connect to everything else, it's sort of refreshing how enthusiastically blasé he is about his adultery, but that doesn't make him less of a bastard, which complicates the situation of liking him so much.
Meanwhile Barton is idling in an alleyway when a fresh-faced fellow knocks on the window, asking to wait in a car like Barton is doing. Barton is not interested, since it seems clear the guy is hustling also, but then suddenly it flips on him and Barton is getting rolled by the guy and his buddies, all of whom have given themselves permission to be robbers based on homophobia: Not robbing a gay dude because he's gay, but robbing a dude and feeling okay about it -- both morally and logistically -- because he's gay. Another transaction that leaves them clean, not to mention free of the hassles of justice.
Dale shows up warning them the cops are coming -- which everyone involved knows is almost certainly a lie -- but not before the guys get Barton's money and also stab him some. Dale gets him into the car tenderly and quickly, and then Barton starts yelling about how he can't go to the ER, because if Barton weren't doing something really unorthodox he wouldn't be in the position of getting stabbed in the first place. Eventually Dale agrees to take him to the darkened hospital, so he can do his own surgery on himself, which is just about the most awful way to end a night I can think of.
AUSTIN
The first thing Austin wants to do in Margaret's house, once they're done, is sit in the Provost's chair. Doesn't even think twice about what that says or means: Just that they're playing house, and even if this is adultery he still wants to play. He tries on Barton's reading glasses -- "I've got 20/20 vision," he grins, as if it refers to their penises but really because it's about their ages, and hers -- and she offers him a meatloaf sandwich.
Which changes the game considerably: He was enjoying the fantasy of prostitution, of being the tadpole, the strong young buck; with kids at home and a recently malfunctioning penis, the best thing he can be is the youngest body she's ever seen. But now she flips a napkin onto his lap, cheekily, and watches him eat.
Austin: "Say, what would the Provost do if he walked in right now? Does he own a gun?"
Margaret: "LOL. Lord, no. I do wonder, though. I do like to imagine that."
Austin: "The last time somebody poured me a glass of milk I was ten."
"Look how much you've grown," she says, changing the game again. "Drink up now, you're going to need your strength." From suitor to gigolo to rival to child. He gets to be them all. And Margaret? She's just doin' Margaret. He's changing shape so fast she doesn't even need to think. Just play along. They've never been so happy.
VIRGINIA
F: "Fifteen. In the back of a Plymouth."
M: "Twenty, in a cabin on Rainbow Lake."
M: "Not before marriage."
F: "Yes, with both marriages. Never really occurred to me to wait."
F: "Not currently married, so N/A."
M: "Not lately, no."
Gini: "Right, because of the... Oh, fuck me. I'm sorry. Shouldn't have asked."
M: "It's science. Don't worry about it. In this room I'm barely married anyway, and even if that weren't true you'd still be my best friend by a long shot."
F: "No partner at present, so N/A."
Bill: "No partner at all?"
F: "question."
Q: "Does emotional attachment play a significant role in your ability to enjoy sex?"
M: "Significant? No, I... Yeah. A qualified yes."
F: "Not really. Most women seem unable to separate them, but me... I mean, it's what got me the job. Women want love when they sleep with a man. I don't care either way."
The second run is more successful. They should have done the questionnaires the first time: I'll go through your coat pockets, every single drawer. I'll snoop.
Gini: "Bill. You're humming and it's freaking me out."
Bill: "Was I? Anyway, look at this science! You orgasmed, remind me...?"
Gini: "What does the readout say, buddy?"
Bill: "Anecdotal confirmation not only aids data but also future performance."
Gini: "Oh my God you are such a dork. Twice, I came twice."
Bill: "In Positions... Two and Four?"
Gini: "Three and Four."
Bill: "Male superior/female knees-to-chest, and... Female superior, rear-facing."
Gini: "Nope, Three wasn't reverse-cowgirl, it was female superior, both front-facing."
Bill: "Wrong."
Gini: "You wrong. We started with knee-to-chest, yes, but trust me that I remember quite well the significantly greater clitoral stimulation in Four."
Bill: "The Reclining Lotus."
Gini: "The what now?"
Bill: "Uh, it's from the Kama Sutra? I'm a genius of science, so I know things."
Gini: "Cool story. You know what's actually interesting, though? We both came in the same two places, but I orgasmed first both times. Two minutes before you on Two, and four minutes before you on Four."
Bill: "I don't know if that's scientifically... Uh, that may have been a function of etiquette as much as biology."
Gini: "Ladies first. You're such a gentleman. At least in positions Two and Four."
Bill: "And now I am a starving gentleman. Can we get dinner?"
Gini: "I need to look at your face when you ask me that, because it sounds like possibly a very bad idea. The kind of bad idea that retroactively turns this whole thing into..."
(Ring-ring. Thank God.)
Libby: "I am crumbling potato chips onto a casserole because it's 1957. Where you at?"
Masters: "Oh, shit. Date Night. I'll be home shortly."
Johnson: "Yikes! Rain check? Totally because I have to rush home, I just remembered."
Masters: "Sure. Hey, let me zip up your blouse..."
Johnson: "Fuck no. Then we're just cheating on your wife."
But Bill doesn't get more than a few doors down before discovering Barton Scully, stitching up a lac in the middle of the night like a crazy person. However long you're thinking it'll take him to clue in, double it.
LIBBY
Still waiting, now that Bill's back in over his head, gets bored with her magazine. She falls upon a page of a sexy girl in a martini glass: "Nobody shakes up your night like Lord Harry gin" the ad says. And who needs a shakeup more than Libby Masters? Nobody on this show, at least. She checks in with herself, decides shenanigans are definitely on the agenda, and remembers we're still fixed for gin.
It was a lot of work just to make the call; Ethan didn't know what he was asking when he told her to start having sex with Bill again, much less all the time. But she's a brave girl, and he's on his way home now. What's the harm in getting a little loose? Maybe he'll like her that way. Look at that girl in the ad. With those legs and breasts, with that brunette hair, she could be a dead ringer for Virginia Johnson. The kind of girl who's not scared of anything. Who shakes up the night.
MASTERS
Bill: "Why are you doing surgery on yourself in the middle of the night all alone?"
Barton: "Because I was robbed and it's no big deal and go away."
Bill: "Lie down, you old homo. Let me do that."
Barton: "You see it was because my train was delayed so I went walking around and I guess I ended up in what I thought was a good neighborhood and I was making a list of all the places in New York City where you can have good clean fun and then these hoodlums, Bill, these honest-to-God central-casting hoodlums, they rush up..."
Bill: "-- Oh, you went looking for blowjobs! Sorry, took me a sec."
Barton: "Okay, fine."
Bill: "Your life is going to be destroyed by this stuff, mister. You cannot be carrying on like this. Your family, your wife and daughter, your job, your reputation, your license... All to meet some boy in an alley? Come on."
Barton: "Assuming it comes out, which why would it?"
Bill: "It always does, Chief. Listen to me. You nearly got murdered. Tonight. For sitting in a car. Just sitting. You need to be safer."
But if it's safer it won't be safer, because it'll be real. It's a matter of etiquette, not biology.
MARGARET
Austin: "This time, you get on top."
Margaret: "Already?"
Austin: "Being younger than you makes me younger than me. Get up there."
She obliges; she watches herself fuck him, in the vanity mirror. That lonely old room at the top of the stairs isn't so big, or so empty, with him in it. Neither is she. He's younger than her, so she's younger than her. When the lights swim across her face, and the walls, for a second she thinks it's them. What they're making, the four of them: The man underneath her and the girl in the mirror, how beautiful they are. Then she goes cold.
Margaret: "Austin, someone's coming."
Austin: "You bet your ass somebody's coming!"
Margaret: "No I mean like we have to stop fucking because my husband just drove up."
Austin: "This part was a lot more fun in our heads."
She walks out onto the stairs and watches the foyer. He looks small, he's walking smaller. She tells him not to worry, she was awake; he spins a tale about the train, and the cancelled trip. She doesn't move. And when he asks her what's wrong, she surprises them both.
"I need you to go to your bedroom, Barton, and stay there. Please."
The very simple secret to having porn on your computer worry-free is this: Label it "Pornography." Anybody who clicks that, it's on them. Nobody ever would anyway -- the people you think are itching to find out your secrets don't actually give a shit; they have secrets of their own -- but sometimes that's harder to believe. Until then, this trick. In fact, if you want to keep anything out of arm's reach, just stick it in a folder marked "Pornography." I guarantee you nobody will ever see it. The 21st-century version of telling Vivian to stack your jump-offs' numbers by the phone. And here, the same principle: Barton, go to your room. We both know why. This is the solution. Goodnight.
LIBBY
On the TV they're doing a dance lesson. She's drunk and distracted or maybe she'd listen to the man: "Forward and back, now up and down. One and two, three and four." All the positions.
Bill stumbles in apologizing like a man who's been cheating; he can't very well tell her he was sewing up his gay boss's lacerations. In any case it doesn't matter. She's toasted.
Libby: "There he is. The very man who bought me my first martini! Remember? The Majestic ballroom, you danced to the Lester Lanin Band..."
Bill: "I was 27, I would have climbed the Matterhorn to impress you."
Libby: "You didn't have to. Listen, I've been experimenting. Doing science. It took a few tries, but I got the proportion just right. A hint of vermouth, like at Vito's..."
He looks at her, his night already shaken; for a second she can see herself, through his eyes, and she's not all that glamorous. She ignores it.
Bill: "Is that all you've had to eat? Some crackers and..."
Libby: "We're well past that now. Let's get down to business."
Bill: "You are not getting anywhere near my business, for reasons."
Libby: "Long day? Come unwind. With me, your wife. Who is ready to roll."
Bill: "Why don't I draw a bath?"
Libby: "For two?"
Bill: "I've had a long, trying day and the tub clearly won't accommodate us both."
Libby: "You are not 27. And you sure as shit are not impressing me."
BARTON
The morning is a little too much to bear. He doesn't want to discuss it -- doesn't even seem to begrudge it -- but Freud tells us that a woman's desire is located in a secret, and this is the secret she wants him to find. To snoop, to go through her coat pockets. To fight.
Barton: "In more interesting news, the Cardinals won yesterday."
Margaret: "Oh, we are fighting about this. Make no mistake."
Barton: "I trust you to tell me what I need to know."
Margaret: "You know what you need to know. Your wife was getting plowed by another man while you were on a business trip. Why is this not a problem?"
Barton: "I mean, I guess it's a problem? I'm kind of happy for you. I'm definitely jealous as hell, which..."
Margaret, verbatim: "-- ACT LIKE I MATTER."
"Men don't know what they want, sweetheart. That's why they have wives: To tell them."
Barton: "I mean, throw a whole fit? I don't want to... I don't want to yell, Margaret."
Margaret: "Because it would be hypocritical, is that it? Glass houses?"
Barton: "I sure as hell don't know what you mean. And you don't either."
Margaret: "The fight I am trying to have with you is not the fight you are avoiding! Look, that's gotta be it. You haven't touched me in six years."
Barton: "There are no other woman. There has never been another woman. Technically."
Margaret: "Then it's just me? I'm just awful? I'm repulsive?"
Barton: "We don't desire where we love, Margaret. You're the center of my life, I can't imagine anything without you. Everything I have, or made, is synonymous with you, with us. Please don't imagine otherwise. Don't see boogeymen where there are none. You have no rival."
Margaret: "I mean, this would have made sense to me before. It always made sense, we've been married fucking forever and I never even questioned it. So the real story is, what changed? What has changed is me. Me, the person asking you why we have been living this way this whole time. Who finally has the vocabulary."
Barton: "We don't have the vocabulary, though. There are not words to explain the truth, so I'm left without words to explain it to you. I wish I could catch you before you fall back, onto the cliché, but wouldn't it be better if we were both just happy?"
Margaret: "Listen. Somebody is choosing me over his wife. Somebody great. So now I know how that feels. I am every part of this story, I've read for every role. And now that we're thawing out and I can ask questions, I have a lot of questions. Because you're right, we don't have the words for the truth, so I fall back on this. The problem lies with me, because I'm a woman, and not you, because gay isn't a thing. Therefore I'm hideous. Which taints our relationship, but more importantly calls my beauty, with him, into question. Wherever the fault lies, then, is literally unimaginable. It makes me feel crazy. The world is not matching up with the signals I am getting from the world. Tell me you have a mistress."
Barton: "I can't do that. You're the most beautiful woman in the world."
Margaret: "Then what the fuck is left?"
"You have to make them love you. That's the real story."
JANE
Virginia: "Drop that stinkface and say hello to your new secretary, Jane."
Jane: "Dr. Masters! So excited to be working with you again. And this time, clothed!"
Masters: "Virginia, by the time you get in my office I will have figured out something to yell at you about with this."
Jane: "That's cool, but first, you have six patients this morning, the first is at 9:30, Mrs. Holloway, and you have lunch with a Dean Braverman, which I wasn't sure if that was his name or title, so I made a reservation at the Faculty Club just in case, and also if there's a smell in your office, I got Maintenance to take care of the coffee stain by your desk, so sorry about that but it should quickly dissipate."
Masters: "Uh..."
Virginia: "LOL. Oh, and one more thing."
Jane: "Right, right. Anesthesia. A-N-E-S-T-H-E-S-I-A. Anesthesia."
Virginia: "We good?"
Masters: "We... are good. Fine."
Virginia: "You bet your ass we are. Get to work, you old so-and-so."
MRS. LANGHAM
Austin's momentarily weirded out when Barton gets on the elevator with him, but Barton's understandably preoccupied from this morning's entertainment -- Did I mention she threw a dish? Homegirl threw a dish -- but since the only person actually getting screwed by any of this is Austin's wife, whom we do not know, it's acceptable that it's played for laughs.
Maybe instead of being a serial killer, in the season finale poor put-upon Mrs. Langham will just bust up into this nasty orgy hospital and start taking motherfuckers out.
VIRGINIA
Libby: "I'll keep this brief. You know how we're best friends?"
Gini: "Yeah, you're like my favorite person."
Libby: "And friends do favors, right?"
Gini: "You know I would do anything for you. Especially these days."
Libby: "Think you can get Bill to throw me one?"
Gini: "You have no idea how much better I'd feel about life. Consider it done."
RM 5
Note that she broached the subject after the session. He's still getting dressed when we rejoin them; she's all buttoned up and inches from the door.
Bill: "Virginia Johnson, stop ordering me to fuck my wife! You are a nosey parker!"
Gini: "She came to me, Bill. We are bros, Bill."
Bill: "And you couldn't say, I don't feel comfortable discussing this?"
Gini: "Use all your faculties and try to imagine me ever saying that. About anything."
"You know, Jonas Salk volunteered himself and his family to be the first test subjects for the polio vaccine. Werner Forssmann inserted a urethral tube into his elbow, pushed it to his heart, then x-rayed himself, to prove that cardiac catheterization is possible. There is a long and very healthy tradition of scientists making themselves the subject of their own studies..."
Gini: "See I thought you were going somewhere else with that. Are we really just straight up talking about our justifications for doing this? That seems a little naked."
Bill: "I am a man of science! I won't be judged!"
Gini: "Nobody is judging you. Stop getting defensive and start fucking your wife. I can't do the study if it's throwing off your boudoir game. That makes it cheating."
Bill: "I will not discuss my sex life with you!"
Gini: "That is literally every conversation we have ever fucking had! Grow UP!"
Gini: "Okay, I don't know about you, but I am real clear on the line here."
Bill: "We're pretending I am too. Aren't we? I mean, it is for science."
Gini: "However weird it gets, it cannot affect Libby. I love her, I won't do it."
Bill: "It won't!"
Gini: "Honey, you're sweet but one thing you are not is a reliable narrator as far as what's going on in your marriage. I need measurable data."
Bill: "I will fuck my wife. Fine."
Gini: "All right then. End of discussion."
Ladies first. It's a matter of etiquette, not biology.
ETHAN
Gini leaves first, and runs into Ethan coming off a late-night delivery. When Masters exits, Ethan takes a beat before his eyes go wide. Gini steps between him and the door to Room Five -- the rumpled sheets, the facts and figures -- and sparkles brightly.
Gini: "Ethan! I've been meaning to tell you, the kids just love the car. Remember? Remember how you're a big strong man and I couldn't go there without you to protect me? And then you cosigned the loan because I was all alone and you are my friend? Remember? God, you're powerful."
Ethan: "I have to go throw up, excuse me."
"So now he's all butthurt. Great. At least he didn't punch us in the face. I'd call that progress, wouldn't you? Yeah, you're right Gini. That went oh-kay. Vivian Scully, wherever you are, brace yourself. This is either gonna go great for you, or awful for us all. Now, time for bed."
BILL
Libby comes home from the market to an empty, but well-lit home; Bill's nowhere to be seen. Then he appears like a monster at the back door, arms full of firewood: "I'm locked out!" he says, a double-entendre not even he knows he's making.
"I went to get some firewood from the stack behind the garage, the door slammed shut, I got locked out, it's freezing! Romance is for jerks!"
Libby chuckles, putting her coat around him and laughing at the image as he warms up.
Bill: "I had this weird idea we could have dinner in front of the fire?"
Libby: "Haven't done that in a long time."
Bill: "This either! Smooch!"
Libby: "Well, well, well. Gini Johnson, this one's for you. Literally."
MARGARET
Austin: "Before the hotel, let's go out for dinner so I can obsess more on cuckolding your husband, which we both think is big game because we don't know what gay is. It really gets me off because even straight sex is still mostly about men."
Margaret, literally: "I've never had any secrets from him. But now I have you. I want to keep you to myself, and at the same time tell everyone. I am Freudian theory incarnate."
Austin: "Okay but you won't do that. Right?"
Margaret: "I can feel my life changing all around me. Like when Vivian was born, or my father walked me down the aisle. The kind of rare change that feels good as it happens, instead of like you're dying. Our chance meeting has become one of those moments."
Austin: "Good ... for you?"
Margaret: "Literally everything is different now. You have saved my life, Dr. Langham." All my dreams fulfilled.
IMMEDIATELY
Austin: "This is the part where we talk me out of fucking Margaret Scully."
Alan Ruck, Therapist: "I doubt it. Tell me what's going on, you gorgeous freak."
Austin: "I don't have a Thing for older women, I have a thing for women. Like maybe our last session about Margaret there was a point to it, maybe she comes up against the mother archetype. But Jane was an adventuress! People watched us fuck! And Tracy before that was a sex kitten, and Diane was an unapproachable ice queen..."
Ruck: "Do you think maybe that your willingness to reduce women to easy 'types' is actually a failing of yours, rather than theirs? We see what we're looking for."
Austin: "I don't follow."
Ruck: "Think ya do! I'm saying, have you ever met a woman who was a real person?"
Austin: "Nonsense phrases."
Ruck: "Oh my God, you're so full of shit."
"All I know is, I was driving with Margaret, I was feeling great, I was gonna eat a plate of linguini, we were gonna go to the hotel, hump our brains out. Perfect evening. I really like linguini. And then she goes... You know the High Striker at the carnival? You swing the mallet and hit the bell? What if you did that, took a whack at it, and instead of the bell ringing it goes, Oh my God, oh my God thank you, that feels so amazing, I've never been this happy in my entire life."
Ruck: "Is that not literally what I just said? An inanimate object -- designed for your competition, by the way, with other men -- suddenly comes alive and starts talking?"
Austin: "Isn't our time almost up?"
Ruck: "Makes no difference to me. At this rate you'll still be on that couch when they invent VCRs."
People who are bad at therapy but keep going to therapy are, in 2013, the worst kind of people. They are there for reasons that are gross, and they are lying to themselves about their work in a way that is almost as abhorrent to me as actual suicide. But in 1957, the idea of this dude throwing himself against the wall like this, again and again, is actually pretty beautiful. He doesn't know what it is or how to find it, but he knows it's there, just on faith (generally, but also partly from his faith in Jane and her wisdom, which is a whole other thing that's also pretty cool), and no matter how much it pisses Alan Ruck off, he's gonna keep looking for it. (Ethan Haas same thing, in a different way.) There's just something so genuine about it, I love it. That well-intended, Roger Sterling post-LSD kind of earnest narcissism. And you know, maybe after enough therapy he'll stop cheating on his wife and then he'll be pretty solid all around.
LIBBY
Libby: "It is kind of cool, but mostly a bummer, that we are doing our secret sperm experiments in the Peds ward, where nobody knows me."
Ethan: "Between smuggling you up here, and your husband's frozen sperm down here, I feel like a depressing, slightly pervy secret agent."
Libby: "I know you're angry with me, Ethan. But you're saving my life. And Bill's. Literally everything is different now."
Ethan: "Help me pick out sheets like a girl would like, and we'll call it even. I've felt like nesting ever since the last tiny heartstring got cut last night by your evil husband, and then I thought, well, couldn't Dorothy bring a little color back with her, to Kansas? I want to commit to something that will actually love me back, instead of making me feel like a dolt for trying to buy something that wasn't for sale."
ETHAN
Ethan: "Vivian, I have found it! My new bedding. The shade is called honeyed linen. Very pretty color, very sticky situation."
Vivian: "Is this one of those 'language of flowers' things? What does new bedding mean? Or is it like an anniversary? Shit, I didn't buy you any bedding..."
Ethan: "A pretty girl spending the odd night, I should spruce the place up."
Vivian: "I really couldn't tell if you even liked that. I was kind of testing my boundaries."
Ethan: "I couldn't tell either. But I realized that one thing I hated about Oz was, she'd never stay the night. So now I want to keep you, and catch you."
Vivian: "I feel like you're turning out your coat pockets on your own. Continue."
Ethan: "She had two kids and that's why my brother David was talking about that."
Vivian: "Okay, now it's just like you're telling me facts about your ex."
Ethan: "You wanna snoop, snoop. This is all you'll find. My heart was broken."
Vivian: "Check. Is it really over? Are we gonna be discussing her often, would you say?"
Ethan: "Stage one of it being over was, I punched her in the face. Stage two, we decided to be friends. Stage three, she is a whore. So yes, we are done. Now it is you, me, and honeyed linen. We are the future. You are my future."
Vivian: "...Annnnd this would be the first time you changed your sheets since like med school, wouldn't it. Boys are so fucking gross."
Ethan: "Uh, my last set is covered in blood like a slasher movie. Girls are gross."
All Together Now: "If we're all gross, then none of us is gross. Calm down."
BILL
Gini: "Oh my God is Bill Masters actually coming into work late?"
Bill: "Yeah, I was up all night putting it to the missus."
Gini: "So I guess that means we're..."
Bill: "You bet your sweet Aunt Fanny it does."
Proving once again that withholding sex will get literally anything accomplished. "No sex until you go have sex!" Done.
BARTON
Dale's on the hotel bed in his Rebel gear, cuffed jeans and t-shirt, rocked back on his elbows. Barton sips his drink, trying to form a thought. He watches Dale watch him, in the vanity mirror. That lonely room, at the top of the stairs, where every passing car paints light across the wall. He doesn't see her on him; he barely tries to look.
Barton: "This actually is complicated for me, it's not just doubled life, like that... I mean that I sincerely love my wife."
Dale: "Cool."
Barton: "So this isn't about her, exactly. I just can't risk it again, like that. Out there in the world. I'm not trying to throw off the transaction, I don't want to scare you away or ruin it, but the stakes are... It's got to be safe and routine. We need this arrangement. I need it."
Dale: "Come here."
Barton: "The stitches are..."
Dale: "I will be careful. Come here."
The true measure of excellence isn't biology and it's not etiquette: It's anticipating the person's needs. Seeing them, like the High Striker, when they're so used to be unseen. To be taken at face value; to be used for their intended purpose and then forgotten. To truly see them, to dwell in their skin long enough to know what they want, can feel a lot like love. It's the conversation we are having, when we talk about that.
Some of these guys want love, the whole experience, you can't break character; you both act like the money is a hassle, a consequence, like if you'd met under other circumstances the money wouldn't factor in. Some of them want the opposite: They want your hate, like the money is all that's keeping you from bolting or getting sick. Some of them want your dignity, or to give you theirs; they want pain, or to show strength, or to submit to it; those are old scars. Some of them are performing an experiment, even; doing science. Some of them want to be beautiful, or young, for at least a little while. All of them take, and all of them give; all of them taking as they give.
Barton isn't like most of them. He doesn't need love; he has enough of that. He just wants to be seen. He doesn't want you to snoop but he wants you to want to snoop. The Scullys have that in common. Dale squints at the stitches, worried, deft. Tender; true.
Barton: "I realize you could have left me there."
Dale: "There is no way I would do that."
Barton: "You have no obligation to... Care for me."
It's a question in the form of a statement but neither of them want it answered: "You could have gotten hurt," he says. What he means is, he's confused why Dale stayed. Why he would do that, for Barton Scully, with those men there and their knives. The answer surprises them both. Dale doesn't know he's taken Barton's hand, at first. Like a High Striker at a carnival, suddenly speaking.
"I got jumped last year," Dale says. "I wished to hell someone had shown up to help me." What he means is, we are the same. "I know," Dale says. "It's scary." That lonely room gets a lot smaller, and a lot warmer, when he says this. It was scary. It continues to be scary. What he means is, it will always be scary.
Barton kisses his hand, then. Past the point of embarrassment, in his gratitude. Dale could weep with the strange interior of this man. The thought he puts into things. Neither of them look at the vanity mirror, at the four of them or the shapes they make. They know what it would say:
You are safe. And you are real. And it will always be scary.
RM 5
Gini: "I could not get Jane out of here for anything. Can I pick 'em or what? She thought there were too many hand notations in your Wheel-dex so she retyped the entire thing and she..."
Bill: "For tonight how about female superior, both sitting, partially reclined. The angle might be optimal for clitoral..."
Gini: "The Rocking Horse. Yeah, I can read. Listen, she's good though, right?"
Bill: "She's adequate."
Gini: "Two days is two days more than any of her predecessors. And she's met all your needs..."
"I mean, it's not like we both orgasm at the same time, every time, but yeah. She doesn't have any problems with that... Maybe I shouldn't be talking about this woman in particular. She's not the norm. If you're getting at what it's like with me in bed with a girl most of the time, then this isn't it. This one's different. She knows herself, she knows what feels good. She'll tell you."
Bill: "Bullshit. Last week I got a thank-you note from Chancellor Fitzhugh's wife. Apparently I sent zinnias for her 60th birthday. I don't think I could pick Stella Fitzhugh out of a police lineup. Or a zinnia, for that matter. But you can. And you did."
Gini: "Her name's Estelle, for the record, and it's important to keep the Chancellor happy."
Bill: "Jane will make a fine secretary. But to really anticipate someone's needs... That's a rare thing."
How much of a simultaneous orgasm is written in the stars? How much is just being very good at reading your partner?
Bill: "...Eight."
Gini: "Nine... Wait."
Bill: "What?"
Gini: "Catch up."
He does. They do.
AFTER
Gini: "We should eat, if we're gonna do the math tonight. I can pick up from the deli? Or we could go out? I'm less weird about that now that I fixed your..."
Bill: "Plans. Late dinner with Libby."
Gini: "...Oh. Well, good. Someplace nice, I hope."
Bill: "Our girl deserves the best."
Gini: "That she does."
She smiles; when he's gone she catches a glimpse of herself in the glass, like a mirror. What would it say?
"...Fuck."
It's scary. It always will be.
WEEK
Ulysses gets an upgrade, DePaul continues asking totally valid -- but still nasty -- questions, Libby makes a new friend, and Margaret forces the issue.
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.