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After spotting Vivian dancing around his kitchen like some kind of deranged Disney princess who's bagged herself a doctor, Ethan decides to propose to her while the gettin' is good. Meanwhile, Austin Langham and Margaret Scully break up sort of amicably but it is still sad as hell, and we finally meet Mrs. Langham, who seems pretty cool for somebody who would marry that dude. Austin takes Ethan ring shopping, meets a new side piece, and decides to rejoin the study in whatever way they can use him. Ethan sort of bungles his big dramatic proposal, but since Vivian is running the entire show anyway, she doesn't even notice how sad he is about how irrelevant and pathetic these Seth Cohen grand gestures always tend to be.
Worried about overstaying her welcome in the middle of the Masters's marriage, Virginia decides to return focus to her college career. Problem is, Anatomy 101 is taught by Dr. Lillian DePaul, who hates Gini because she's a woman and whatever. But after some Johnson sparkle, a few bonding moments, and a great deal of hella shitty, on-the-nose dialogue (this episode is for cringing) DePaul decides she won't necessarily be helping Masters keep Gini in his pocket after all. Oh, and the reason she's obsessed with pap smears is because she has terminal cervical cancer and will be dead in six months, so it's not so much about gender equality, mostly just that she wishes somebody woulda given her a pap smear at some point.
After Austin dumps her, Margaret randomly meets Dale in a hotel bar and there is tension because he's there to meet and have sex with her husband. She freaks out a little bit in the hotel bathroom, gives everybody a hundred speeches about how she is a sexual being, and Barton takes her to a drive-in so she will settle down about being a sexual being for one minute. She asks him for a divorce, and so after he grills Bill about behavioral modification techniques, he tries to get Dale onboard for an aversive therapy that is so dark and offensive -- emetics, etc. -- that it makes Dale start crying and ditch their arrangement altogether.
Libby gets the big eye for the gardener, who quickly becomes like her only friend, and they practice dancing and interracial sexual tension together until the point where she faints, because as it turns out Ethan has once again gotten her pregnant. It's too soon to tell, due to the mawkish tone of this week's Sirk-aping episode, but it's just possible that all of this is not as lazy or silly as it seems. We'll see what develops. I can see Libby blowing everything up a fresh way, for sure, and whatever keeps her onscreen works for me, no matter how dumb it turns out to be.
While there were some funny and a few truly graceful moments -- Austin and Ethan's parallels actually worked a lot better than we might have expected, especially when laid alongside the other relationships in play this week -- and Dale is always welcome as a radicalizing agent/outside color-commentator, this one was too crammed of perfunctory/spotty character developments and melodramatic Moments to really qualify with the greats. The women in particular do what they can with the material, but it's tonally off from the rest of the series, and to its detriment:
Part of what makes this show's incredibly tricky proposition work is that it's unapologetic, so to fall into this Nineties trap of explaining itself and its metaphors so laboriously -- which comes off cringing at best, patronizing at worst, but either way lacking in confidence -- only serves to undermine the show's overall aims. You can't ask for another kind of buy-in this late in the game without the floor dropping out of your authenticity, blah blah, call it a blip. It wasn't terrible. Just different.
Week: Haas rudely turns out Jewish, ruining his entire wedding. Libby's idea to get Masters onboard with her secret future baby is to mend things with his mother, but then somehow she ends up catching him in the act of science with Virginia? So yeah, that'll be horrible.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
A string of disappointments has led Ethan to settling down with Vivian Scully, who is more than happy to be settled down with by a hot doctor who knows sex tricks. The Barton Scullys are both dating hot guys, but there's a deadline looming for both of them. Dr. Lillian DePaul wants to bring pap smears to the masses, while Virginia has started engaging in science with her boss, and finding it altogether more emotionally complex than advertised.
MORNING
Virginia: "I won't quote him, but Dr. Masters says you're a fine secretary."
Jane: "Really? Because he seems awfully unsatisfied."
Virginia: "That's his natural setting. Just pay attention to the words behind the words."
Jane: "So like when he says It's getting late..."
Virginia: "What he means is You're staying late. Essentially you just need to act like a seismometer, registering his unspoken vibrations from miles away. Like any other man. Keep the mail on the left, coffee on the right, and no stray paper clips anywhere, ever. And no mayonnaise."
Jane: "On his desk?"
Virginia: "In his life."
Jane: "Well, a weird robot is better than a normal one. My cousin Mae, her boss Mr. Burwell wanted everything, including sex in the office late at night."
Virginia: "Well I never."
Jane: "She put all her eggs in that basket, but the second his wife got wind, she was O-U-T. No severance, no recommendation. Instantly rubbed her out of existence."
Virginia: "That seems extreme."
Jane: "It's the oldest story in the book. He got guilty, she paid the price."
Virginia: "Good point. I gotta go move some eggs around now."
LIBBY
Is sewing baskets and baskets of pink things for the church when the doorbell rings: It's Walter the handyman, who has come to do the gutters.
Libby: "Sorry, I didn't realize you would be an attractive black guy on the phone."
Walter: "What?"
Libby: "I mean, I thought you'd be older. Do you want some lemonade?"
Walter: "No, just the key to your shed."
Libby: "I am married. Uh, to a guy. He works really hard so that is why the gutters."
Walter: "Has he been working that hard since D-Day?"
Libby: "Are they that bad? You're probably right. Probably since Hoover."
Walter: "It's fun to joke around in a non-threatening way."
Libby: "Especially if it involves talking gentle smack about my maddening husband."
DEPAUL
DePaul: "Dr. Johnson."
Virginia: "Wow, you're fast. Okay, I didn't think you'd be a bitch before I even walked all the way in. Locked and loaded. What are you doing?"
DePaul: "Being very busy! I am noting the stories and names and facts about all these dead bodies, because a body is a person and was once a human being. I don't want my students just poking at them. Especially the lady ones. They should have a story."
Virginia: "That makes an absurd amount of sense to me. Which makes it even worse how awful you are whenever I am around. Listen, I'm working on my undergrad..."
DePaul: "Why would you want a degree? Your other assets seem to be working out for you."
Virginia: "Uh, mostly to avoid bullshit like that every time I walk in a room?""
Virginia: "Listen, one of the basic requirements is Anatomy 101 -- which I'm sure you would say was forced on you to teach because you're a woman -- and I thought, hey, you hate the shit out of me. What say we place me out?"
DePaul: "No."
Virginia: "I know you don't wanna hear this, but I've logged hella hours..."
DePaul: "Nope."
Virginia: "Partial credit?"
DePaul: "Negative credit. See you in class, dilettante. Can't wait to be vindicated and disappointed at the same time."
Virginia: "You are the human equivalent of getting a pap smear."
MARGARET
Is waiting on the platform with her bag when Austin arrives and cancels the tickets for their getaway, without seeing her at first.
Austin: "Margaret, hi. Listen..."
Margaret: "Me first. I don't think we should go away together."
Austin: "Then why did you bring a bag? Which you just kicked under the bench."
Margaret: "I think we should break up."
Austin: "Well, that was easy. I mean, how sad! I am just very upset now."
Margaret: "Sorry but those are the breaks."
Austin: "I guess I'll survive."
Margaret: "I guess I will too, just barely."
They have a sweet goodbye, and that's that. The writing was on the wall all along, of course. The saddest part is that he'll never know. She registered his unspoken vibrations from miles away and solved the problem for them both. But now she's got the night to herself. Barton's at a board meeting; she was supposed to be visiting Aunt Caroline.
Margaret heads back to the hotel where she ran into Austin Langham, the second time; it's not a question of lightning striking twice so much as it will now always feel a little bit like home. Less empty, anyhow.
MASTERS
Virginia reads from their presentation -- "elevations of systolic pressure between 30-80mm, with a minimal-intensity orgasm" -- and Bill frets: Will it sound so boring when he actually reports their findings?
Virginia: "I mean, it sounds boring because it is boring. Isn't that the point of publishing in journals?"
Bill: "Yeah, but I want to do it in a room instead of in a paper. Friday presentations are..."
Virginia: "Then can't we talk about something cooler than statistics and minutiae? This isn't gonna set Friday meetings on fire..."
Bill, verbatim: "We're scientists, not arsonists."
Virginia: "Metaphor, sorry. Okay, what about vaginal contractions? Every woman, including me, experiences them. But nobody knows they exist."
Every body has a story, just like every cadaver was a human being once. But when the people telling the stories don't really know the bodies they're telling them about, then the stories are lies. Half-truths at best.
Bill: "I mean, we've seen them on Ulysses, sure. But how do you measure that?"
Virginia: "You know what we need is a home movie camera. I use a little Brownie for school plays and stuff."
Bill: "You want to film the Wonder Years credits from inside a vagina?"
Virginia: "I think we can fit a Brownie in a vagina through science."
Bill: "...And my refractory period just resolved. Sixteen and a half minutes."
Throughout the episode, when they're in science mode, he's constantly measuring his boner times with this stopwatch. It's barely even remarked upon; it seems like he barely notices. But the trick with Bill is the unspoken vibrations. How much really is the alien robot and how much is just a very disingenuous performance he doesn't even know he's doing, because he's been doing it since he was small. Sleepwalking.
Virginia: "Good news for your boner, but I have kids at home. And there's Libby..."
Bill: "Good point. I lost track of the time and was only thinking about science."
Virginia: "Okay, well. Goodnight."
AFTER THE STATION
Langham heads home with a bag stuffed full of toys -- machine guns, Lady Alice doll, even something for the baby -- and gives his wife a Hoover Constellation: "It actually floats on air, like a hovercraft. You can vacuum like a space princess!"
Of course, Elise Langham isn't an idiot; she whispers conspiratorially to the fussing baby, "Some poor woman is in tears." She watches, like a seismometer. Of all the different versions of this woman I never thought maybe she would just be cool, know the score and be willing to settle for it. I've never been a lady in the 1950s but I would imagine that the few drawbacks to marrying this manchild Austin Langham -- really, it just seems like the tomcatting is the only one -- are vastly outweighed by the positives. He's a catch.
Margaret orders another drink at the bar, and catches the eye of a young man down the bar. It is, of course, Dale. At the Scullys' favorite club. With Barton off at a board meeting.
Margaret: "She's late, huh?"
Dale: "Everybody always is."
Margaret: "Including my chances. It is late, late, late in the day."
Dale: "Oh, so you're wasted and being weird? That's fun."
Margaret: "You picked the only nice place in town for a proper drink, so I figured -- I mean, you're clearly not a regular..."
Dale: "Does my jacket look like it's from Bull Shoals, Arkansas? I moved here with a friend, a year ago."
Margaret: "A friend, huh? I like that. Friends and lovers. And are you still living in sin with this friend? Pressure to marry, perhaps?"
Dale, sadly: "We don't ... see each other anymore. It has turned to be a long year. Anyway, have fun with your drinking and total lack of gaydar."
She's sad to see him go; he's pretty, and soft. Smart. When Barton appears in the lobby, gawping at them, they both freeze.
Margaret: "Whoa, are you waiting for...? That's crazy! Barton, this is my friend..."
Dale: "Dale."
Barton: "Dale here is a student in my grad advisory he is studying pathology and we are going to have drinks and talk about pathology because my board meeting was canceled."
Margaret: "I was just here getting a drink because Aunt Caroline is sick."
Dale: "I am just here because the um, Provost called me last minute about my year's courses but you know what, I'm... You guys have a nice evening."
Margaret: "No, I insist you join us! Because I like you, and because it will keep things from getting weird. I don't want to talk about us lying to each other."
Dale: "It would not keep things from getting weird, and also too late. I have a new girlfriend like you wanted me to, and she would appreciate a surprise date."
Margaret: "Before you go, may I say something?"
Barton: "I don't think any of us really want to keep him, Margaret."
Margaret: "No. I want Dale to hear this. I'm very fond of Dale, despite our very brief friendship."
"Stay single. I only say this to you because when you're young, and in love, everyone thinks they'll be the exception. Sure, maybe Mom and Dad slept in separate beds, and then separate rooms; maybe the older couples you know bicker, or fight, or don't talk at all. If they ever did. But at your age, you can't imagine it will ever be you. It will be. And what's worse is how much you'll feel like a failure. Because when the person who knows you best loses interest, that really takes something out of you. Like surgery, almost. And you start to wonder if you'll ever be whole again. Anyway, off to the loo."
Dale: "Okay was that a total power move? What the hell, man?"
Barton: "You what the hell."
Dale: "How could I possibly know who she was? She just... started."
Margaret is not doing great, when Barton finally comes to find her.
Margaret: "That boy, Barton? Is not a grad student."
Barton: "Fine, he gets me hookers. That's why we're here. I do this all the time. My bad. On the other hand, why are you here in this hotel? Who are you here to fuck?"
Margaret: "Nobody but myself, honey. I have to sob now for a while in this bathroom and then drive myself home. You do whatever the hell you want."
LESTER LINDEN
While DePaul tortures Virginia for coming in late to class, and then overlooks her despite knowing every single answer to every question -- while the male students all assume she has nothing of interest to tell them even about the very basics of Anatomy -- William visits Lester Linden (Kevin Christy, whom I'm always rooting for) and his amazing collection of film cameras. I'm not sure what Lester's deal is, he's a film buff and wannabe filmmaker who has shot for Bill in the past.
Lester: "You scared me, I thought you were Nosferatu!"
Masters: "Almost. Your cameras, show them to me."
Lester: "This is the one they shot Nanook of the North on, and this one Dark Passage, which how ridiculous was that piece of crap, who would believe Agnes Moorhead as a..."
Masters: "Spoilers! What about this one that looks like you could put it in a vagina?"
Lester: "That's the LesterScope, of my own design. Five hours ago I jammed her down the throat of a Chinaman with an esophageal tumor."
Masters: "You know how you filmed a c-section for me last month? This is kind of like that, but also not like that at all. Meet Ulysses."
Lester: "I couldn't begin to speculate on what that is for. And it lights up? So cool!"
Masters: "I am truly a wonder. Now my question is, can we put the LesterScope inside of Ulysses?"
Lester: "And then jam it where exactly?"
HAAS
Ethan wakes to Vivian whirling about his kitchen, no hair out of place, in a dress and apron, singing that horrible "Love & Marriage" song that didn't even apply in 1957, much less thereafter. At first he feels like he is in a horror movie, but then he decides that maybe you really can't have one without the other, and even though they've been dating for not very long at all, maybe he should just say fuck it. Just fuck it, to his entire life, and go all in. It doesn't get better than Virginia, but that means it could get a hell of a lot worse.
SCULLY
Same deal.
Barton thinks for a while and then heads down the hall to his wife's bedroom, with the lovely blue toile wallpaper, and invites her to the movies: Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday at the drive-in. She stands there naked, about to take a shower, and tries to understand what is happening. He smiles like the sun coming out. Just looking at her.
LIBBY
Practices the tango as Walter finishes up the gutters, passing by the open windows; he brings her a baseball, thinking it must belong to her son, and remarks on the house's architecture. She's intrigued.
Walter: "I spend all day fixing up folks' houses. You pick things up..."
Libby: "There's a leaky faucet, if you don't mind plumbing... Sorry about the TV, I don't usually watch during the day. I just happen to be an Arthur Murray fan."
Walter: "So was my late wife. She'd get all excited and then insist we go dancing every Saturday night..."
Libby: "I'm so sorry for your loss."
Walter: "It's easier if you think less."
Libby: "Truer words."
Walter: "Well, I meant the dancing part. You're still counting beats, not thinking with your feet..."
And then a black handyman teaches an unfulfilled white lady how to dance with her feet and not her head, which falls well within the overarching Cartesian metaphor of the episode but has some goddamn unfortunate echoes in it, so we'll just move on. Every fucking year, Showtime. Every year some white lady learns to dance.
THE CAF
Vivian: "I brought you a steak sandwich! And now I'm goin' ghost!"
Ethan: "It's amazing. I don't even know where she goes. Listen, where do I buy a ring?"
Austin: "You knocked her up already? Idiot."
Ethan: "No, we've been seeing each other a long time, in this 1957 that never ends, and..."
Austin: "I want you to hear this: Stay single. Everyone thinks they'll be the exception, but trust me. When the person you know best stops being interesting, that really takes something out of you. Like surgery, almost."
Ethan: "My old man was twenty when he married my mother, and I'm pushing thirty. I have done every sex thing there is, thanks to You Know Who. [A list of benefits both social and economic.] Of all 34 Presidents of the US, only one was a bachelor and nobody even remem..."
Austin: "-- James Buchanan. Don't do it."
"Friends come and go. Sometimes literally if they are friends named Virginia. Kids grow up and move away. Even your patients can get a second opinion. But your wife, she sticks by you no matter what. I've met Elise, she's great. Even though you suck. Frankly you should buy her something just for being your wife."
Austin: "I bought her a vacuum. She didn't care that it hovered."
Ethan: "You ought to buy her something like you would buy for a woman."
Austin: "Fine. There's a decent jeweler over on Washington. We can go there and buy things for our women. Or you can, and I will fuck one of the girls in the shop."
RM 5
Jane: "For sure they film vaginas from the outside, in porns. But from the inside? That is some level shit."
Virginia: "Don't you want to be on the cutting edge of science?"
Jane: "It's creepy, though. Like Ulysses remembering the inside of my vagina."
Virginia: "Is it creepy to film a heart during a bypass? Besides, nobody can identify you from the inside of your vagina. It's an anonymous organ. A body with no story attached."
Jane: "Like a hand model? For dish soap or..."
Virginia: "Yes, but much more important because of science."
Jane: "Can I have a screen name and can it be Beave St. Marie?"
Virginia: "Got there pretty fast, huh? But sure. You're soaking in it!"
Lester: "Listen while I go on and on about my camera and how I invented it and how all the best movie directors are also inventors of cameras and what their names and dates of birth are..."
Virginia: "Starting to see why you and Bill get along so well. Does it still vibrate?"
Masters: "Sadly no."
Lester: "Why would it..."
Virginia: "Because it's for vaginas, Lester. It vibrates for vaginas. Now, I'd like you to meet Patient F-26-002. F26, this is Lester Linden. His mind is currently being blown."
Jane: "Yeah, you need to take some deep breaths, Lester Linden. Vaginas don't bite."
Lester: "...Annnd action."
Masters: "I thought he was going to freak the fuck out."
Virginia: "We'll see. All he had to do was sit there, she did all the work."
Masters: "True enough. Ready for science?"
Virginia: "I can't, I have a secret egg-moving activity I don't want you to bitch at me about. But soon! Hang onto your pocketwatch."
ANATOMY 101
DePaul: "Like for example this dead body has a name, which is Dr. Lloyd Danes. 79 years old, wife Susan, four children, nine grandchildren. An ophthalmologist and fly fisherman, he played the accordion every Saturday night at Dooley's."
One of the students laughs about this, and DePaul takes offense -- "Can you play the accordion, you smug cunt?" -- and another of the boys, before making an incision, passes the buck to Virginia ("Ladies first?") and then passes the hell out, because shit just got too real.
Virginia steps over his prone body to get closer to Dr. Danes and start cutting, and DePaul stares, as a body becomes a story right before her eyes. She'd never admit to being wrong about Virginia, but maybe she's not entirely right either. Virginia doesn't look up, doesn't look for her approval, or for anybody's; just slips the knife right in.
PHFFFT!
The movie is about a couple that gets divorced after eight years and retreat to corners, resulting in a Down With Love situation where Jack Lemmon hangs out with his dissolute Navy buddy all the time and Judy Holliday chills with her mom. Jack hooks up with Kim Novak and Judy dates around, but they hate everything about dating life, and by the time they run back into each other they're so exhausted they just end up together, doing the mambo.
In other words, the perfect movie to take your estranged wife to after you've both been caught cheating and confirmed you have no romantic interest in each other.
Barton: "At the very least I would take you over Judy Holliday, that Commie genius."
Margaret: "I hate this. I hate being on a date with you like you've got something to prove."
Barton: "If I do, I have proved it. What did people do before drive-ins?"
Margaret: "We didn't need them. We were chaste."
Barton: "It was the times."
Margaret: "It was not. Listen, at first I wanted to kill you by telling you about my boyfriend, or set your clothes on fire like Angela Bassett in Waiting To Exhale, or just drive your car into the pool..."
Barton: "Please don't do those things!"
Margaret: "And he was great, by the way, in terms of actually being into it and wanting to fuck me. Even though he didn't love me! Meanwhile you are the opposite..."
Barton: "I will never have imaginary sex with girl hookers again!"
Margaret: "...You don't desire where you love, Barton. Today I was standing there naked -- and I'm keepin' it tight, by the way -- and you were so sweet and so full of love..."
Barton: "So far this is true."
Margaret: "But you didn't look at my naked body one single time. And the dots connected up real quick once I thought about it. I don't even care anymore what it says about me..."
Barton: "Which is nothing!"
Margaret: "...Which I'm starting to think is nothing. So I don't hate myself for it anymore, because like I said, this guy was hot as hell. Tall drink of water, taller than me even."
"We didn't sleep together before we were married because you weren't interested in sleeping with me. And I excused it away by saying passion is for teenagers and nymphomaniacs, passion is not what makes a good marriage. This is a perfect, beautiful man who loves me, who doesn't care that I'm tall. Who doesn't want me to act stupider than I am, which is the fucking rarest thing and you don't even know it. This is a man who understands me."
Barton: "And look at us thirty years later!"
Margaret: "The best of friends. Which is nice, compared to other marriages, but still isn't enough. I want a divorce."
Barton: "You will find another husband and be happy. Or at least you have the option. But if I lose you, I can't do this again. A divorce would kill me. Literally."
Margaret: "I can't even consider that because I don't know what the facts are because we don't have the vocabulary for what your deal is. So it just sounds like you're telling me no, which I am not interested in hearing."
When we talk about intersectionality, what we're generally talking about is a fun new way for white women to tell black women what it's like to be black, under the guise of feminism. The word is subsumed in privilege to the point that it can no longer talk about itself, or therefore anything.
But if you drop the accreted misinformation around the concepts, the uninformed explaining to the uninitiated, and look at this conversation: You have this perfectly nice man who lives at the intersection of Male Street and Gay Avenue, married to a woman who lives at the corner of Straight and Female. Being a man gives Barton certain advantages, just like Margaret being heterosexual provides other ones. Obviously in this case and context, a divorce will be less hard on him economically, socially, etc. And obviously in this case and context, the lack of fulfillment in her marriage is something she's only just gotten the okay to consider. But he's not an asshole, and neither of them are victims. That's taking a body and subtracting the story.
What they want you to do is make them fight, in your head, so you can see which one is more of a victim, and then feel like a better person for being above all that, so you will do it over and over. Which is how they get you, every time. The trick is that it's not a coincidence that the person who wins always seems to be the one telling the story. The straight woman says, "I love my gays!" and this is not, to her, an expression of ripe and pungent privilege; treating a man like an accessory is punching upwards, because he's still a man, he still won at life. The gay man says "That fierce bitch!" or something about vaginal odor, and he thinks these are nice things to say, because thanks to the straight privilege she doesn't even know she's wielding, she already won at life: He's punching upwards.
Depending on their very subjective context (and blindness to the skin they have in the game), they are both punching up. And they are both being assholes.
THE LIBRARY
And Jack Lemmon goes, "Wasn't very long after I met Nina that she got her promotion. Her first chance to write a radio show..."
Virginia: "What are you doing in the library?"
DePaul: "Go away. Go away, go away."
Virginia: "That was great tonight, with Dr. Danes..."
DePaul: "Who?"
Virginia: "Accordionist slash ophthalmologist."
DePaul: "I can't believe you proved my point by remembering his name. I hate that you did that. I gotta go work on my presentation for tomorrow."
Virginia: "The pap-smear proposal? Dr. Masters is coming."
DePaul: "That's one. Have you ever seen a roomful of male doctors listen to a lecture on female cancers?"
Virginia: "I'm guessing they're not riveted. Men are such idiots. Even the smart ones. Especially those, frankly."
DePaul: "I can't walk away but I also can't stand this."
Virginia: "You should ask a friend to go, and clap loudly. A ringer."
DePaul: "I like that but I can't say that, so I will say, I don't want their adulation. I want their support. I am obsessed with pap smears for reasons that are already becoming clear, based on the melodramatic tone of this ridiculous, mawkish episode."
On her way out, DePaul needles her about whatever she's studying -- "You should be much further along than that. Underestimate my exam at your own peril" -- and Virginia almost smiles, reading like a seismometer. Her unspoken vibrations.
"I wouldn't be here at this hour if I underestimated your exam," Virginia grins to an empty room, and the door closes in a distinctly friendly way. But it closes, nonetheless.
JEWELER
Austin bitches about every choice Ethan makes for the ring and meanwhile can't even remember the color of his wife's eyes; eventually he makes a big production about the time he proposed to Elise -- climbing onto a table for part of it, basking in the collected shoppers, in their adulation, with Ethan and the shopgirl as his ringers -- and though it is kind of a sweet story, it's not the way he tells it.
At first viewing it's Seth Cohen bullshit, the most awful sort of performative gesture, the (500) Days personal drama projection that is the exact reason women can't live up to your insane hopes and dreams. But, it's Austin and there is more to it: It's as romantic to him now as it was to him then, which is the best he could do. He can do slightly better now, having started therapy, but that's scary too. Coming off the adultery cycle once again, he's returned to the place where romance is alive and within him, where home is a fantasy to which he can return.
When he comes back tonight, after closing time -- after reentering himself in the study, pronouncing himself open for business -- he'll take Colleen the shopgirl out into the gallery and lay her down on this same table, that he's sanctifying now with the story of his proposal to Elise. She'll be dazzled by him, as he puts Elise's necklace on her neck instead, and she'll say, "When you slipped that ring on my finger today, my stomach got that... roller-coaster feeling." And he'll know exactly what she means, because he's never lying. And just before he fucks her, he'll say this:
"You know why? Because that moment, that is the moment. That is the moment when everything is good."
DEPAUL PRESENTATION
Ethan and Austin dick around in the seminar hall as Lillian DePaul explains how easily and simply and cheaply it would be, to make pap smears the rule.
Austin: "It seems expensive now, but don't forget: A ring lasts forever."
Lillian: "It isn't even expensive. It saves women's lives..."
Austin: "And Vivian will be thrilled. Women love the beginnings of things."
Lillian: "slide, please."
Among all the others, even the man running the projector has fallen asleep. She coughs him awake, and puts a story to the body.
"This sample was taken from a 42-year-old patient with no family history of malignancy. Note the poorly differentiated cells... Stage IV cervical cancer. With early screening, this woman could have been cured. Instead, she has early metastases to the liver."
This is the line she practiced the most, the line that keeps her up:
Lillian: "Anyone care to venture a prognosis?"
Man: "Terminal, obviously."
Lillian: "Yes. Obviously. Which is why hospitals like this one need to lead the charge."
Ethan and Austin giggle in the rows; they can't hear what she's saying, just that she's talking. Telling a story about a body that doesn't mean anything.
AFTER
DePaul: "I mean, obviously that went bullshitty. And the administration's already fighting me on funding..."
Masters: "Tell me about it! You feel like the Minotaur in the Maze."
DePaul: "I have six months."
Masters: "It can take years!"
DePaul: "No. I have six months."
Metaphors. He misses it entirely.
DePaul: "And yet yours seems funded, and quickly..."
Masters: "That shit is out of pocket, Lillian."
DePaul: "Including Mrs. Johnson's salary?"
Masters: "The research part isn't subsidized since she's not credentialed..."
DePaul: "I fucking hate to say it, but I don't think she's far off. She's one of my best students."
Masters: "Oh, right. Yes I know all about that. Good to hear. Good student?"
DePaul: "Exam's tomorrow, so we'll see. Anyway, I am running out of time and I will be asking for your help. Strongly."
MASTERS
Virginia: "Okay, who's ready for some science?"
Masters: "Hold on, I've been thinking about something. You've mentioned several times about continuing your education?"
Virginia: "Yeah. But you said the timing was off."
Masters: "It's important to you, so it's important to me. Evening classes, or..."
Virginia: "Oh my GOD you are inscrutable. So you talked to DePaul?"
Masters: "Uh... No. No, this is me being great."
Virginia: "Fine. I have been in her Anatomy class. Not auditing, taking it for credit. I've been naughty."
Masters: "I mean, you could have told me... How's it going?"
Virginia: "Exam's tomorrow. We'll see. Now, are we going to science each other, or..."
Masters: "No, you go home and study. Me and the pocketwatch are fine right where we are."
HOME
Virginia: "Um, the heart?"
Tessa: "No! It's in his head!"
Virginia: "Right. Temporal fossa."
Henry: "Good job. But why are you even doing this?"
Virginia: "To get a degree."
Henry: "But you already have a job."
Virginia: "A degree is like a magic piece of paper that makes people believe you know what you're talking about. Even if you're a lady."
Tessa: "Like they can see you better?"
Right on the nose, you overwritten, unrealistic little snot. Gross me out. How very fucking embarrassing that you just said that. Go be on Breaking Bad or some other show that sees fit to constantly explain itself like that. When you pull that '90s crap on a show like this, it just makes the whole thing look like what dumb people think it is: Porn with a lit-mag gloss.
PARKING LOT
Barton: "Bill, can I talk to you about your sex study?"
Masters: "Anybody can talk to me about my sex study. It is the greatest of all science."
Barton: "I look forward to your presentation. May I ask another question, which is, have you come into any information about people changing their habits? We still think being gay is just a weird hobby in 1957."
Masters: "Oh, girl. Uh, that is a very dark road..."
Barton: "Aversion therapy and electroshock, for starters..."
Masters: "Jesus, Barton. We're not Mormons. Okay wait, there's a quack in New York that I've been reading about where you induce nausea while doing it with guys, and that rewires the brain..."
Barton: "That sounds totally awful but that only makes it better because it means I'm trying harder and then she'll know how much I love her."
Masters: "I wish I could help you in some other ways besides horrible ways, but I'm going to keep beating this horse until like 1977, so you're fucked."
Barton: "Apparently while puking. Anyway, thanks for kind of being nice to me but not really. I know that's as good as it gets with you."
DEPAUL
DePaul: "I assume you're here to talk about my plan to save women everywhere?"
Masters: "No, it's about..."
DePaul: "Mrs. Johnson, obviously. Here we go."
Masters: "She may come to you to sign up for another class, in the future. Would you let me know if that happens?"
DePaul: "You can't ask her yourself?"
Masters: "You can't manage what you don't measure. She uh, she's important to my project."
DePaul: "Are you saying her course work is getting in the way?"
Masters: "I would never say that. Out loud. It's a matter of eggs, and baskets. The study needs to be a priority."
DePaul, verbatim: "Because if she did manage to stand on her own two feet, that would mean she could walk away."
Masters: "Damn. You got me."
DePaul: "Oh, I get you loud and clear. You help me, I'll help you."
THE CAF
Ethan: "Save my spot? I have to make a date real quick."
Vivian: "Ethan, hey. How do you feel about German?"
Ethan: "The language?"
Vivian: "The cuisine. Good Housekeeping wants me to make a schnitzel for you tonight. I don't know you're Jewish yet so it just seems like a fun thing to do in 1957."
Ethan: "Intersections again. Listen, tonight I'm takin' you to dinner. No questions."
Vivian: "How do I dress and where are we going, though?"
Ethan: "That's two questions. I guess a dress? I don't really care what kind."
Vivian: "The restaurant might. Are we talkin' gloves?"
Ethan: "Um, it's Delmonico's?"
Vivian: "They call that the Hitchin' Post!"
Ethan: "People get proposed to there?"
Vivian: "Girl, everybody does. Should I get a manicure in case I need to show off my hands? Like a hand model? You're soaking in it!"
Ethan: "Uh... A manicure is never a bad idea. Please stop ruining this. This is the part where everything is good."
Vivian: "Brilliant cut or emerald?"
Ethan: "Kind of football shaped?"
Vivian: "Marquise cut? Gross! I mean thanks!"
Ethan: "I've got it right here, I can show you..."
And there in the middle of the cafeteria, they become affianced. Which is fine for Vivian, it's an institute you can't disparage, but Ethan feels the goodness trickling out already. She throws her arms around him, and he's happy again in that sickly way from the other morning, but what's done is done. She vanishes, instantly, and the moment goes with her. When the lunch line guy calls him back for his tray, he slumps on over without even noticing the lunch crowd's adulation: He feels like a ringer.
AUSTIN
Virginia: "I was wondering if a new bone disease had been discovered, we hadn't seen you in so long!"
Austin: "Nope, that problem is... Oh, you meant because I'm Ortho. Anyway, I'm back."
Virginia: "Specifically if we give you Jane?"
Austin: "Nope. This time I'm honestly pretending it's for science. I want to be with anyone. Everyone. Load me up. Science!"
DALE
He's wearing all-white this time, Voight style.
Barton: "So I just let myself into the dispensary, and got some of this."
Dale: "And this drug, this apomorphine, you use it to make yourself sick?"
Barton: "Yeah! I take it and then you jack off. Or just sit there. Just looking at you makes me... It would probably work."
Dale: "This seems like black magic stuff. This is permanent damage to your soul."
Barton: "I'm paying you! Who cares for what?"
Dale: "Not the point."
Barton: "Kinda think it is. You wouldn't keep coming for free, right?"
Dale: "There is no good answer to that question. Don't break it."
Dale: "I'm not a ringer. I do care for you, and I enjoy your company..."
Barton: "Stop hustling me! As if there is a universe where this could ever be something other than a business transaction. I'll pay you double. Triple. Anything, just don't make me beg."
"I'm just trying to picture it: I sit across from you, and you ... vomit. Hell, if I wanted that reaction I could just go home and visit my parents."
Dale: "I am no stranger to wishing I was somebody else. Maybe once a day that happens. And then I think, Fuck them. It isn't just that I was once a human being. There's a story attached to the body."
Barton: "Don't be a child."
Dale: "Only one of us is cowering in the dark. Only one of us wants killing the brightest part of himself. If anybody is going to be sickened by me, it's me. Everybody else, including you, can go to hell. It demeans us both, that's the transaction. That's what you're buying."
He doesn't make it past the bed before he gets scared again. For this thoughtful man and that night, after he was stabbed, when he kissed his hand. When he meant it.
"You should change your mind. When you do, you know where to find me."
Changing his mind is all he's trying to do.
LIBBY
Dances the tango with Walter, who gets poetic: "I heard somewhere your feet can cover five miles in a night of dancing. I figured my wife and I must have danced the tango from here to Zanzibar..."
He dips her and she passes out; she wakes up in an exam room.
Walter: "Shouldn't I call your husband?"
Libby: "I'm fine. I don't want to worry him till we know what's going on."
The "we" hangs in the air. Dance partner, friend. Handyman.
Libby: "You were so good to bring me, Walter. But you don't have to stay. I'm imposing, like there's a universe where you'd stay if I weren't paying you."
Walter: "I don't have anywhere to be."
The doctor comes in and calls Walter her "boy"; she stutters and tries to explain what he is instead. But the intersection they're at is where he lives; he knows she won't dig her way out, and gracefully exits instead. Easier than watching them try to figure out how to say the unsayable.
Dr. Ingram: "Think we found our culprit. Your BP is 100/65."
Libby: "That's crazy low!"
Dr. Ingram: "A little hypotension is nothing to fret about, but this is because of hormones. They widen your vessels, increase the blood flow to the baby..."
Libby: "-- Hold up."
RM 5
Virginia: "I think my exam went okay but I don't know. Thanks for asking. You should see these idiots in the class. I rarely notice what an outsider I am."
Masters: "Here, at least, you are normal."
Virginia: "Thanks, I know what you mean. I don't know if I'll stick to it, though."
Masters: "Whatever you decide."
They cue up Lester's video: His hands shaking so much at first she thinks they reinstalled Ulysses's vibrator.
Virginia: "In his defense, I don't think he's ever seen the outside of a vagina, let alone..."
Just looking at it. When Masters clicks his pocketwatch, she can't help but snort. 13 refractory minutes this time.
Virginia: "Wait, you find this footage arousing? Dude..."
Masters: "No, not the... It's that we're the only two people in the world who've seen it."
If she had a pocketwatch, she'd click it too. They gaze up and into the video, watching F-26's contractions: The only people who've ever seen it.
The only two people in the world.
WEEK
To film external reactions, they'll need to find a way to convince Lester and Jane it's not pornography. Despite being isometric and identical to porn in every way except the context. Meanwhile, Ethan turns out Jewish so Vivian has to revise her venue choices. And when Libby pushes Bill to reconcile with his mom, Estabrooks somehow stumbles into the middle of some science. All in all it sounds like a rough week! Lots of awkwardness.
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.