In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
It's been a few weeks since Masters tried to pay Virginia off, sending her back into Ethan's orbit. Their relationship is strained -- both in the day office and Room Five -- but possibly survivable, until the events of a day-long civil defense drill throughout the hospital pushes everybody over the edge into Crazytown.
When Ethan's fellowship isn't extended, he blames his sudden lack of employment on the breakup with Vivian. While Scully isn't exactly happy with Ethan, he assures him it's actually the performance review from doctors on the floor that pushed him out. Specifically, Ethan realizes, Bill Masters. At first he thinks it's because he's taken up with Virginia, but of course Masters is more interested in punching him over Libby's mysterious pregnancy. So he does!
And he is not done throwing down. A former one-time participant (Chrissy Seaver) shows up three months pregnant, after her single session with Austin Langham. While Masters is committed to maintaining their anonymity, and blind to the differing liabilities for men and women when it comes to sexual consequences, Virginia tries giving Austin the option of pursuing the matter further, which only angers Bill more since he is in the mode of thinking of pregnancy as a horrible thing that happens to men.
In the end, Virginia gives the girl a check for two grand out of the study fund, explains to Bill that his attempt to pay her off proves his guilt, which in turn proves they were having an affair the whole time... And leaves Masters's employ altogether.
Austin, making his way through the delightedly "wounded" participants in the drill, has something like a panic attack and ends up back with Margaret Scully, floating in a swimming pool and talking about space debris. Margaret's had quite a day too, between discussing her husband's proclivities with the first hooker she can find, and then metabolizing the obvious truth of her husband's homosexuality, so she's glad for the company.
Lillian DePaul's pap smear program is approved, but funded at 5% of what she needs. Virginia tries to teach her how to act like a person, but that just ends up in a horror situation where the Chancellor thinks she's trying to hit on him. She's mortally offended -- and still pressed for time, given her illness -- but impressed enough that when an unemployed Mrs. Johnson shows up at the end of the day, she can't even argue Virginia's ever-so-Virginia decision that she'll be working for Dr. DePaul from now on.
One of the sillier outings, with its overbearing symbolism and modernist dialogues, but the chilly relationships and ugly moments give the whole thing a much subtler feel than perhaps the script would offer, simply on the page. A sequence of two conversations between Lester and Jane (who ROCKS as the floor's Hall Marshall throughout the drill) is particularly moving, if a bit on the nose.
All in all, it's weird to see fetuses constantly compared to atom bombs, but the circumstances of these two fairly unwanted pregnancies almost earn it. And of course, the only thing more powerful than Virginia's intense willpower is her quiet dignity, and we get a heaping helping of that this week. With the time jump and everyone's relationships and situations in flux, the hour's note of resigned doom certainly inspires hope for the rest of this last act of the season.
Week: Libby tries to help Bill with a presentation, but he gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to blow some minds. Lillian takes Virginia to a medical convention and finally opens up about her cancer, while deadbeat dad George gets jealous about Ethan's relationship with the kids. Sounds like a barnstormer, actually. I can't wait to see what Libby's brain does with all this information -- or how inspired George will get when he finds somebody else inhabiting the life he neglects. And how long do you give Masters before he's begging Gini to come back? I give it until the end of this paragraph.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ethan and Virginia hooked back up after breaking off their respective romantic arrangements with Vivian and Bill, Libby spilled the beans about her pregnancy and how she got that way, Margaret has asked for a divorce after finding out half of the truth about her husband, and Lillian DePaul is ever-so-slowly succumbing to Virginia's charm -- while Masters paid off Johnson like a whore even after she explained carefully to him that that's what he was doing. Welcome to the doghouse, Scientists!
RM 5
It is very awkward for Virginia, coming in to work the Study after Bill's disastrous move last week. It is awkward for Bill, but that is a consequence of being Bill. Most of all, it is awkward for the male and female subjects tonight, who have no idea what they have walked into. The female one is played by Anne Dudek, the greatest actress in the entire world.
Virginia: "Why are you two in here together? We usually do it separately. I guess we're not doing that today because Dr. Masters is a fuckface who thinks we are whores."
Masters: "We are doing it different because F-26-184 over here is multiorgasmic and I want her to have a million orgasms."
Virginia: "We have lots of people coming in here later so she'll have to get 'er done real quick."
Masters: "Guess so. Unlike you, coming in so late to our real job this morning."
Virginia: "You make me sick. Your face makes me want you to be destroyed."
Masters: "I'm taking us all down with me when I do."
Subjects: "This sex study is making us uncomfortable in a very different way from how we thought a sex study would make us uncomfortable."
F26: "I don't know that I even can have a million orgasms today. It is because of your bad energy."
DUCK & COVER
The old "Duck & Cover" cartoon is playing when Virginia gets home, to an empty den. Where are the babies? In bed. Who put them there? Ethan, who is now that kind of boyfriend. I guess it has been another few weeks.
Ethan: "Since I took over your life while you were at work, can I sleep here?"
Virginia: "We'll see. If I fall asleep you can. Our first subject tonight lost consciousness after her orgasm(s) and I felt responsible for her death. Murder by watching somebody bone is a victimless and very strange crime."
Ethan: "It was a vasovagal response!"
Virginia: "Like because of the vagus nerve? What happens to the vagus nerve does not stay in the vagus nerve. It goes everywhere, driving you sexually into a coma."
Ethan: "You are a genius of all science! I wish I was too, but instead I am fired."
Not fired exactly, just not re-upped to staff coming out of his fellowship. Is this because of Vivian? The jilting of her? Survey says yes, but only because every plot twist has to be run by her dad the Provost. They don't know that Bill Masters is fucking everybody over all the time, because he is a human train wreck right now.
Ethan: "You look almost as beat as me! I say 'almost' because you are a woman."
Virginia: "Did you know that Bill Masters is a human train wreck and I have two kids?"
Ethan: "If ever you wanted to tell me what was the deal with you, I want you to know that I am available and that I have twenty bucks in the office pool about it."
Virginia: "His emotion module of his robot body shorted out and he is in love with me."
Ethan: "Just kidding, I didn't want to know about that at all. Good night!"
CIVIL DEFENSE
Random cast-members in the hospital watch a grownup version of the "Duck & Cover" cartoon, which is also full of fun lies and ways to play pretend. Austin is bored because Austin is always bored; Jane is into it because Jane is always into it, whatever it is. The facts are that we're running the largest civil defense simulation in American history, including the participation of half a million government employees, and also this hospital.
According to the simulation, Soviet warplanes entered US airspace at 9 AM, targeting 200 cities, and this will be going on all day. You're thinking "bottle episode" but what's so interesting about the way it's used is that, if anything, it's the opposite. The people keep going about their wretched lives while everybody around them gives 110 percent to pretending the world is ending, so it's a dreamlike scenario in which, instead of being forced to huddle together, they're mostly each stranded in their own hells, walking through a disaster and feeling two kinds of weird.
In her introduction to "Daisy, In The Sun" -- one of my favorite short stories of all time -- Connie Willis tells a story about Edward R. Murrow during the London Blitz: How he was startled to see a fire engine racing past in the street, even though it was the middle of the day and he hadn't heard any air-raid sirens: Where could it possibly be going?
"It came to him, after much thought, that it was going to an ordinary house fire, and that that seemed somehow impossible, as if all ordinary disasters should be suspended for the duration of this great Disaster that was facing London and commanding everybody's attention. But of course houses caught fire and burned down for reasons that had nothing to do with the Blitz, and even in the face of Armageddon, there are still private armageddons to be faced."
It's always worth thinking about, in times when your private armageddons overshadow those of the people around you: There is no relativity to pain, there is no way -- or reason, really -- to compare bruises, when all of our energy should be spent on raising each other up. Or if you come across a Facebook post about Kanye West and you're feeling like a particularly shitty person today, you might bring up, say, Syria, ostensibly by way of reminding everybody what's really important, but really just as a way of making the person feel bad for talking about Kanye West, because you want them to be as miserable as you are, today. And so on.
The liaison giving the presentation about the simulation, this is my favorite thing that he says: "Now, this is more than a test of readiness. It's a test of your resolve. Our will is stronger than the forces that would do us harm and erase our way of life. And your vigilance today may spell the difference between life and death."
I have spent the last holiday week reminding myself that we are stronger than the forces that would do us harm. Even if those forces are a busted laptop backlight and simultaneous hard drive failure. Or somebody's asshole grandmother that refuses to die, just for another hypothetical example.
MAH-JONGG
Lady: "[Stupid Nixon joke about what if Eisenhower died and Nixon were President but the joke is on her because Nixon did -- I don't know if you know this, but -- apparently he did eventually become President.]"
Lady: "One of our neighbors dug a bomb shelter under the rose trellis and stocked it with six months of canned food and Shakespeare and also a pump toilet."
Lady: "Peggy Lippincott should have dug a moat instead because her husband enjoys the company of whores and now they are getting a divorce."
Lady: "It's 1957 and women are screwed by divorces, among other ways too numerous to list during this mah-jongg game. The man stays, the wife pays."
Margaret: "Always?"
Ladies: "Always."
Margaret: "Maybe I shouldn't get a divorce, then. Or just go live in Peggy Lippincott's bomb shelter and read some Shakespeare with my tall ass."
MASTERS
Chrissy Seaver -- aka the little lesbian from What Women Want, starring notable nutsack bigot Mel Gibson; or as the kids know her these days, "that random girl from The Avengers" -- shows up at Bill's office, which terrifies him because he doesn’t want people interfering with his study of people. He tries to make her leave, but she speaks right up.
Flora: "I can tell you're going to keep bitching until I cut to the point, because I know you well enough to know that you don't respond to social or facial cues, so here is the headline. I am three months pregnant."
Masters: "That's very interesting! Just kidding, it isn't. Tell your husband congrats when you leave immediately."
Flora: "I don't have a husband. Or a boyfriend."
Masters: "If this is a Jesus thing or an abortion thing, I can't help you. Those are my two least favorite things, in order."
Flora: "Wrong again."
Masters: "Then what the fuck do you want? And why are you acting like we've met before?"
Flora: "We did. Three months ago. Are you kidding me with this? I don't know how else to spell it out, bro."
Masters: "I seem to have gotten you pregnant through science."
LATER
Virginia: "I need you to sign checks for some equipment and also Lester Linden."
Masters: "Fuck you, bitch! I gave you authority over the checkbook. And my heart!"
Virginia: "You need to chill, lady."
Masters: "That girl was pregnant! I got her pregnant on accident!"
Virginia: "Yikes. Well, let's figure out who the dude was, and..."
Masters, verbatim: "Anonymity is the bedrock of our work. I am ethically bound to safeguard the privacy of all participants. Hers included, if the roles were reversed."
Virginia, verbatim: "You mean if the man had gotten pregnant."
Which is the heart of the matter, really. When you're on top, or otherwise insulated by naiveté, you have the privilege of seeing everything and everyone as interchangeable: The concept of "reverse racism," the scourge of female rape, gender as performance. In every case, we happen to define as equal those situations in which we coincidentally come out winners. Privilege never presents as what it is, because nobody thinks of themselves as the villain of the story: You're always getting there by another -- safer, kinder -- route, which just happens to justify your existence as the protagonist, while erasing the reality of people unlike yourself.
Like this: Bill thought that was not a crazy thing to say, but of course it was absolutely a crazy thing to say, because really it's code for: Everything that happens, happens to men. Even when a woman gets pregnant, it is happening to a man.
Masters: "It's 1957 and diaphragms only work 94 percent of the time."
Virginia: "So if we've paired over 200 couples, then twelve of the women..."
Masters: "Or men, yes."
Virginia: "-- Will be showing up pregnant. You did not think this through."
Masters: "On the contrary, it's why we're specifically indemnified in the paperwork. Nobody forced her to have sex in front of us. If anybody did, it was science."
THE CAF
Ethan: "Can I sit with you? All alone in this bombed-out cafeteria today?"
Scully: "You may not. I am displeased with you on at least one level."
Ethan: "Yeah, but first of all let me explain..."
Scully: "No thanks!"
Ethan: "And second, it's very uncool of you to fire me over it. If this weren't 1957 there would be a law."
Scully: "I'm a hundred years old, you little twit. You think I got to be Provost by holding grudges?"
Ethan: "The honest truth is that nobody knows what a Provost is. Given the choice I think I'd have better luck defining 'ombudsman.'"
Scully: "It was based on those performance reviews nobody would fucking shut up about."
Ethan: "So this is a Bill thing. Obviously a Bill thing, duh. Sorry."
Scully: "I could only vouch for your lack of character in general."
Ethan: "I wanted to love Vivian! She did her best to make me! But you can't pick what you love."
Scully: "Is that blackmail!?"
Ethan: "Huh?"
Scully: "...Nothing. Go to hell, have a nice day."
LANGHAM
Obviously Austin is the father of Flora's baby. Just obviously. We even get to see Virginia flip over Flora's card, with its one matchup, and then Austin's with a thousand ladies who are most certainly not his mother.
Austin: "[Flip joke about the imaginary Soviets; flirting.]"
Secretary: "Civil defense is nothing to joke about. And you should be thinking about your wife at a time like this."
Austin: "At a time like what? Is everybody on crazy pills today? This shit isn't real!"
Virginia: "Shit's about to get real, though."
Austin: "How did she get pregnant! It was not my fault! I am very stompy!"
Virginia: "Chill out. You boned her 10 Mar, for just over six minutes. Long enough to get the job done, if by 'job' we're meaning 'get her pregnant and also embarrass yourself.'"
Austin: "I was just quote an 'organ donor'! What about her diaphragm?"
Virginia: "It happens more often than you think."
Austin: "I can't pay this girl. My wife watches the checking account like a bloodhound."
Virginia: "Charming, really. And I can't say what she wants, or if she wants anything. I just thought you deserved to know that you have contributed to a life out there somewhere. Why is everybody acting like that's the fucking end of the world?"
Austin: "You say that like it's something that's happening to her. Jesus Christ, show a little sensitivity!"
DRILL
Jane is the fourth-floor Hall Marshall for Civil Defense, which means she is twice as adorable this week as usual. She reads random propaganda facts and then when questioned about it, acknowledges that none of it makes any sense, and it's just great. I know it's the times but part of me, even as a child, was sort of blown away by the fact that people my parents' age ever believed you could protect yourself from a fucking nuclear bomb by getting under your desk. That seems like something the Pilgrims would believe, maybe.
Who is not charmed by Jane's civil dedication is one Dr. William Masters, who is mad at her for going on with the end of the world as if it were just that, and his phone ringing off the hook like it is. Masters never, I think, truly grasps what the simulation is about. Not because he's above it or skeptical, but like on some basic level he doesn't understand playing pretend. Like when he was a little kid, the other kids were doing whatever -- playing that game with the stick and the hoop, tying oranges to their belts -- but little Billy Masters just carried on, stacking rocks in order of the size of their genitalia.
"When Khrushchev pushes the button you can have the morning off! Until then you're still my secretary!"
The sirens go off right then, and one of the typing pool ladies yells at Virginia to get under a desk and pretend to be down there until it's time to pretend some other thing. Of course, she ends up under the same desk as Dr. Lillian DePaul, which is where we get the saying "There are no feminists in foxholes." Little-known fact.
Virginia: "I think we're supposed to be face-down. Such is the plight of womanhood."
Lillian: "I wish a fucking nuclear bomb would blow up this shitty hospital."
Virginia: "I can't believe you're being grumpy about something other than my tits."
Lillian: "Get this, Mrs. Johnson. I got approved for my pap smear initiative..."
Virginia: "Way to go, sistagirl!"
Lillian: "And six hundred fucking dollars. Out of the twelve thousand I need."
Virginia: "For once I am sympathetic to your absolutely miserable personality and outlook. That does, indeed, suck."
Lillian: "They spent more on the fairytale three-ring binders for this imaginary exercise in futility than they would deign to spend on our cervices. I can barely get a shitty secretary with this amount."
Virginia: "Rome wasn't built in a day. You know what you could try, though..."
Lillian: "Ugh. I hate this. I hate that you're always right. So lay it on me, fine."
Virginia: "Instead of being a roaring bitch all the time, have you thought about... not doing that?"
Lillian: "I will punch you in the box, Mrs. Johnson. I will punch you in the cervix."
Virginia: "No, you won't. What you will do is think about what I'm saying, and gradually come to think of it as your own idea, because that's how my entire life works."
Lillian: "Pearls of wisdom from the steno pool."
Virginia: "Fine, I apologize if I'm overstepping. And I know we've had our differences. But I've sat in your class, I've read your proposal. If this place was a meritocracy, the board would be throwing money at you. The fact that it's an uphill climb just proves that the work is important. If anybody has the backbone to see it through, it's you."
Lillian's Heart: (Grows three sizes.)
Virginia: "Boom. See how easy it is? I just worked your ass and you didn't even notice."
Lillian: "Okay, good one. You got me, Mrs. Johnson. You got me good."
AUSTIN
Goes looking everywhere for Masters, because he needs a man to back him up instead of a woman being honest, and Jane tries to get him under a desk so he won't imaginary-explode, but Austin's in a real-life air raid at the moment and doesn't even have time to gaze longingly into her eyes or butt like usual.
Bill, meanwhile, is fucking irritated by the fact that the entire surgical staff for his uterine myoma is on their hands and knees when he joins them at the table, because playing pretend is mysterious to him, and then even more irritated when a weepy, terrified Austin comes running and climbs up his body like the inbred golden retriever he basically is. It is awesome:
Austin: "I need to know that I'm protected!"
Masters: "Oh my fucking God there is no bomb."
Austin: "I mean from that baby I put in a lady. I am basically a feminist, Dr. Masters -- I read either Jane Eyre or Jane Austen, whichever one had all the bitches talking in it the whole time -- and my wife's father was a cop and owns guns. Three unrelated facts that add up to, I cannot be knocking chicks up."
Masters: "First of all, STFU. Secondly, ironclad anonymity. Thirdly, you're being such a douchebag about this, even by Langham standards, that I'm almost prepared to show sympathy for Virginia. And last of all, get out of my motherfucking OR."
Masters: "Where's Dr. Epstein?"
Nurse: "He's a casualty. A pretend one."
Masters: "So who's on call?"
Nurse: "Dr. Haas is on his way in."
Masters: "The fuck you say."
Nurses: "Dr. Masters, it's been an unusual day. We're at war with Russia, Mrs. Gallagher has been under for 25 minutes, we all need to make accommodations. Also, Ethan did two of these exact surgeries yesterday. It's fine."
CIVIL DEFENSE
Jane doesn't like the typing pool gathering around cutie-pie Lester Linden, treating him like a real-live filmmaker, asking him questions, not putting him down like we always do in Room Five so he won't have power over us. I'm just glad somebody finally noticed what a catch he is. Jane, she doesn't like it one bit.
Gladys: "So whattaya want us to do?"
Lester: "Get back under the desks, like how you were."
Gladys: "So you can film up our skirts!"
Lester: "Ironically, given what you just said, Jane can vouch for my directorial bona fides..."
Jane: "-- Shut up, shut up, shut up. Stop talking. You guys, don't listen to him. He's an idiot and I have never performed any kind of research with this goober. Get a real job and XYZ, nerd."
The ladies all laugh, Lester Linden reddens and X's his Z, and Jane feels like an asshole. But at least she stopped him from blurting about all the filming he's done, under her skirt, for science -- and the girls from treating him like a man, instead of the boy she needs him to be.
THE CHADWICK HOTEL
In terms of the on-the-nosiness of this particular episode, this is the song that's playing when Margaret spots her target:
Man wants his woman
Woman wants her man
What they really need
Nobody understands...
She thinks it's about life but really it's about the end of the world. Maybe it's both.
Margaret: "Are you drinking a Singapore Sling? So the cliché is true!"
Hooker: "What on Earth do you want with me?"
Margaret: "Are you, um, 'working' tonight? I am hip to the lingo."
Hooker: "And I am about to twenty-three skidoo, Mamie Eisenhower."
Margaret: "Wait, I just want to ask you questions. Like for science."
It takes the woman all of three seconds to figure out what Margaret's problem is, but then the question becomes how to tell her. The song's actually playing in her ear, while she struggles: Men go with women, women go with men. Therefore, something is wrong with Margaret. And maybe this lady can fix it.
Margaret: "See, it all started when I saw him with a very beautiful young man."
Ruby: "Uh huh. Go on?"
Margaret: "I guess he's the kind of man who arranges..."
Ruby: "You think this young guy was a pimp?"
Margaret: "I guess that's what you call it? He was clean-cut and charming and sweet."
Ruby: "So he was a special kind of pimp that doesn't exist?"
Margaret: "Only the best for my husband, who enjoys opera and the like. And doing it backwards because he can't look at my face while we do it."
Ruby: "Girl, your man is gay. Or whatever we call it in 1957. Queer."
Margaret: "Yeah, I agree. It's very queer!"
Ruby: "No, honey. There is no amount of female tricks you can pull out for him. He likes dudes."
Margaret: "Wait, what? ...Oh, I get it. ...Nope, explain."
Her face, that wonderful face, keeps talking as she slowly grasps what Ruby's telling her, and then she stops talking altogether. She laughs, because it's absurd and also because it's so ironic, both at once. And then she doesn't laugh at all. She feels the world click into place around her. It feels like a cage. It feels like the apocalypse.
Which is exactly what it is. The word "apocalypse," apo + kálypsis, means nothing more than the end of a secret. The revealing of something hidden, like for example the world that already ended and you thought was still orbiting. The secret of endings is what a relief they are; you can laugh in the face of any armageddon when you feel the weight off your shoulders of what was just a minute ago how you thought things had to be. The apocalypse is just a door, like any other; the only part that hurts is the part that pushes you through. The house around the door, burning itself to cinders.
FIBROID SURGERY
Nurses: "Great job, Dr. Haas! You don't seem ruined at all!"
Ethan: "Thanks! Did you know I have the highest surgical success rate of any Fellow in Maternity, going back ten years? The only one that's even in that range is Dr. Masters here, when he was a Fellow."
Masters: "Well, numbers aren't everything."
Ethan: "First of all, if you believed that you'd come apart like space garbage in the gravity well. Second of all, suck my dick. I thought you were God when I landed here. I bought a damned bowtie."
Masters: "Bowties are cool."
Ethan: "I respected you. I get that we aren't friends and were never going to be, because your brain doesn't work that way, but I at least thought there'd be some kind of respect..."
Masters: "If that were ever going to happen, which it wasn't, that possibility ended when you..."
Ethan: "Took up with Virginia Johnson? You fucking creep."
Masters: "I can handle that. It's the fact that you knocked up my wife. You two teamed up and treated me like I was an idiot..."
Ethan: "No way! We just figured you'd adjust to the reality when it happened. You should be shaking my hand, not ruining my career..."
Masters: "I cannot have a child because I will destroy the child. A thing you could never know or understand, but makes all of this a much bigger deal than simply fulfilling my wife's own needs and childhood traumas."
All around the hospital are these mushroom-cloud posters, advertising the end of the world; all the things you can do to protect yourself, in the seconds before you're annihilated.
Ethan: "I like your wife. She deserves to be a mother. And even though it cost me my job, I'd do it again."
Masters: "You say that like this is something that's happening to her."
All around the hospital are these mushroom clouds, and every single one of them looks exactly like a fetus: A tiny little armageddon, its sweet eyes shut tight.
ELEVATOR
DePaul: "Chancellor Fitzhugh!"
Chancellor: "You look like this person that works in my hospital, a little bit. Of course, you're dressed as a woman and wearing lipstick, and your hair is free from its bun, so you're unrecognizable. It's like Clark Kent with his glasses."
DePaul: "Nice necktie! What color would you call that?"
Chancellor: "Red. It's red."
DePaul: "Not to worry! Tell me about your golf game! Are you part of a club or..."
Chancellor: "Norwood Hills, for twenty years. Not that I can find the time. And yet they keep billing me! Soon enough the Jews'll show up and then it's all over, though."
DePaul: "I enjoy talking to you like we are both people. Tell me more about golf and neckties and WASP stuff like that. What's your wife's handicap?"
Chancellor: "Estelle had polio as a girl..."
DePaul: "Holy shit."
Chancellor: "...But with her cane, she gets around just as well as you or I."
DePaul: "That was the second worst moment of my life just now when you responded in that way. But speaking of women's health -- and my first-worst moment -- can we talk about cancer detection? You seem like a man with unique vision."
Chancellor: "Nice flattery. What kind of cancer?"
DePaul: "Cervical."
Chancellor: "Men don't have those. Stop boring me."
DePaul: "I am dying soon so I need to get this done. Maybe we could have a drink?"
Chancellor: "I can't believe you're trying to fuck me even though my wife had polio as a young girl like I just said!"
You can actually see the moment where she decides whether or not to be pissed at Virginia for talking her into this -- acting like a human being instead of a robot bent on saving the entire cervix population by any means necessary -- but then she's like, "Ask a ho, get treated like a ho." Even though the real takeaway is that nobody can get away with being Virginia Johnson except Virginia Johnson, which Gini should know by now, and thus adjust her advice accordingly.
MASTERS
Masters: "I am so happy to have an actual reason to be mad at you!"
Virginia: "FFS. What now."
Masters: "You told Austin about that baby he is pregnant with from science!"
Virginia: "Yeah? So? Do you have any idea what being a single mom is like?"
Masters: "Is it exactly like being a single dad? Because those don't exist. Therefore..."
Virginia: "Don't pull that shit with me twice in the same episode."
Masters: "I'm just saying, how do we know this chick ain't a whore? We don't know..."
Virginia: "We know plenty. We know the diameter of her areolae, we know her heart rate during climax, how quickly she moves into the plateau phase, systolic pressure..."
Masters: "I can twist that around to be my point if you give me a second... Got it. Our subjects stand naked before us and before science, copulating with strangers for science. What we offer in return is a simple promise..."
Virginia: "I didn't break Austin's anonymity, I gave him a choice!"
"No! You trapped him, Virginia. He no longer has a choice, because he can never unknow what you told him. You did this all on your own, against my wishes. Honest to God, Virginia, who do you think you are?"
It was the apocalypse. She rained it down on him, ripped his eyes open and stuck him in the nuclear storm. A mushroom cloud hangs over their heads, but neither of them know what they're looking at. Virginia and Ethan -- you can see how it adds up in his pointy little head -- Virginia and Ethan, fucking, without him. Virginia and Ethan, getting people pregnant all over the place, ruining his life and his science and breaking his heart; pulling these men out from under their safe desks, into the radioactive post-nuclear landscape.
And then what? Then you die. Your bones desecrated, your mind blown apart with all that knowledge, the world destroyed behind you and all around you. You turn around and see how flimsy the desk always was; how silly you must've looked, huddling there with your hands over your head. With her hands over your eyes, until she pulled them again.
Never mind that the desk does nothing, that ducking and covering does nothing, never mind that you were never safe -- that we are never safe -- because in the end, women are alone with their bodies, all the time that you're not looking at them. Doing what they will, with their vaginas and their cervices and their breasts; with the wonders and the secrets they won't ever tell you. No matter how badly you want to know; no matter how terrified you are to find out.
THE NIGHT DRILL
Jane announces fourteen hundred pretend casualties on their way, as Virginia wanders, and Austin wanders, in the cloud of what's left. She finds Ethan getting stitched up, and is almost surprised by the news that Bill's bloodied his face. Of course he did. Of course he's striking out, like this; the little bitch couldn't find his heart with a damned stethoscope, but for days now it's all he's been able to talk about. With every slammed door, and stamped foot: The end of the world.
Ethan: "Guess I deserve it for giving the guy the best gift of his life."
Virginia: "Connect the dots for me, if you would. I need all the info if I'm going to turn him back into Bruce Banner."
Ethan: "Libby. Libby, her blank-shooting jackass of a husband, and how she really got pregnant."
Virginia: "...Ah. Bingo."
They wanted to change the world, or to save it. They forgot you have to end it first. They sat in their secret rooms by night, planning the apocalypse; and when it came, they weren't brave enough to look. Until the metal crumpled and seared, scorched, up and away, and the ceiling lifted into the sky, and the walls fell down, and the whole house was burnt to a cinder. Don't pretend you didn't know.
Don't pretend this isn't happening to him.
THE POOL
Austin wanders through the pageantry of death, the fourteen hundred casualties screaming their asses off. Maternity is a massacre, with shock and radiation and broken bones and bloodied faces. And everywhere he looks, the mushroom cloud. The screams are like music, a strange horrible music; he floats like he's underwater.
Margaret comes up for air, her beautiful long body doing lap after lap, while the world burns. She spent the afternoon curled on his bed, in his bedroom, smelling his shirt. Feeling like a thief.
Austin: "Well, California's been wiped off the map. They're announcing death tolls on the radio like they're baseball scores. I remember you like to swim at night and I had to get out of the hospital, and... All anybody wants to talk about is the end of the world. Or the end of a world. This or that world."
Margaret: "How would we know? It feels like it. Today, it could be."
Austin: "I was a jerk to you, in a way I'm jerk to everybody, and it just finally came around to bite me, and I have no familiarity with consequences so I'm swimming blind here, but if you tell me to buzz off..."
Margaret: "Nah. Did you bring your suit?"
They smile, as he shucks his suit. He doesn't break eye contact. He's not hard, it's not like that; they are friends with a secret. They don't desire where they love, but they do love. Maybe a little bit. Enough to be a friend, at the end of the world. Enough to hide away. To huddle in each other's shadow, and pretend the desk can keep you safe.
FLORA
Flora: "I didn't even like that guy, whatever his name was. I wouldn't marry him for sure. That's not what this was..."
Virginia: "No time for jibber-jabber, but I just stole two grand from my boss for you."
Flora: "Hold up, what?"
Virginia: "Yeah, I figure the man who's responsible for knocking you up should take an active part. It won't get you very far but it'll... It's a desk to hide under, for a minute. So you can at least feel safe."
JANE
Walks right into Lester's shot, forcing his eye up from the lens, for once. She's fully clothed, with a body that won't quit; her face is attached to her body, above the collarbone. The rest he can't remember.
Jane: "Did I ruin the shot?"
Lester: "I can cut around you. Bazin's Ontology Of The Photographic Image, have you read it?"
Jane: "Oh, I'm waiting for the movie."
Lester: "A movie about a book about movies. It's, um, I'm not a fan of montage because that stops things from being real, when you edit like... It's pseudo-realism, versus..."
Jane: "You know, this film you're shooting won't survive a nuclear attack. Nothing will. Cockroaches."
Lester: "Godzilla."
Jane: "They didn't tell us anything real, in this whole deal today. I read On The Beach -- the movie's still two years away -- and it said an H-bomb blast is ten miles wide. They wouldn't even find our teeth. We'd just be numbers, in a death toll somewhere far away..."
Numbers aren't everything, she means. I remember that book from when I was little, or maybe my mother just told me it, like a bedtime story. They couldn't figure out why they kept getting sick, weird colors around the wrist: The metal in their watches had gone radioactive.
I just remember thinking, "Why would you need a wristwatch?" You already know what time it is: The time after time ends. Numbers aren't everything, they're nothing.
Jane: "When you're facing global annihilation, you can only be accountable for yourself. So yeah, if it were the last night on Earth, I'd feel really bad about what I said earlier."
Lester: "I'd probably kiss you, if it were the last night on Earth."
So he does. Because it is, and it isn't.
Because it always is: Time is always ending, just like gravity never quite wins.
MASTERS
Virginia: "I got some shit to say, Dr. Masters."
Masters: "Nope. My wife's expecting me..."
Virginia: "Is she? Expecting, I mean. I hope you'll congratulate her. It's great news, after all she's been through."
Masters: "Virginia, I don't..."
Virginia: "I said I had some shit to say. Firstly that I have never felt as shitty as I did when you forced me to see myself as a prostitute. I have spent weeks trying to figure out why you did that..."
Masters: "Can't it just be that I'm a dick?"
Virginia: "Nope. And it's not even because Libby's pregnant, but you feel guilty. Because you were cheating on her. We were cheating on her. Which is terrible, because out of the two of us we both know who loves her more."
Masters: "It's been a trying day, Virginia. We're at war with Soviet Russia..."
Virginia: "Fuck that. This is the real world ending, here. If one of us is being emotional, and at least one of us is, we both need to be honest about it. Congratulations on having an affair, in the most unwieldy and offensive possible way. And congrats on successfully keeping that a secret from both of us."
Masters: "We done?"
Virginia: "Not quite yet. I met with Flora Banks just now."
Masters: "Who?"
Virginia: "Jesus, man. F26-132."
Masters: "Gotcha. Go on."
Virginia: "I stole two grand from the discretionary fund for her. And also I quit."
When Bill leaves the hospital tonight, the dead and wounded will have been carted away. All he'll hear is the sounding of the All Clear, inviting him out into the lonely world. It will look exactly the same way it did yesterday; it will fundamentally be a different place. For a moment, he saw something brighter. Then it ended.
That's something he can't un-know. He can't pretend it's not happening to him.
THE POOL
They float, on their backs, looking up past the ceiling and into the sky. Mushroom clouds and bomb shelters.
Austin: "Got some lousy news today."
Margaret: "Me too, actually. I guess it wasn't news, but..."
Austin: "Yeah, but this happened to me."
Austin: "I need a bomb to drop on the bomb that just dropped. I used to feel like a satellite, like those things we're building, you shoot 'em into the sky and I... I guess I fall in love every day because it makes me feel like that. Like I'm free. It compromises my home and that makes home a safe place to be."
Margaret: "Vivian took a science class and I read her book. I do that a lot. You know, there are thousands of objects in orbit. Not man-made, necessarily, just... Things. Rocks and satellites and rocket parts. What's left over when they race off into space, the things they didn't need as they were leaving. Jettisoned jetsam."
"Gravity pulls these things toward Earth, but the Earth keeps curving away, underneath them. If they stopped, or the Earth stopped, they'd drop and burn. But they move this way, and the Earth moves that way... Gravity pulls down, but slides away under them, always just ahead of the drop. They're not floating, they're falling. Eternally, infinitely."
Time doesn't progress, she's saying; it just never stops ending.
DEPAUL
Virginia: "So how did it go being normal for the day?"
Lillian: "I look like a rodeo clown, the Chancellor thinks I want to fuck him in front of his polio stricken wife, I am dying of cancer and the world is ending all around us."
Virginia: "You're going to need a very competent secretary, then."
Lillian: "For what?"
Virginia: "The Chancellor serves the Trustees. So we'll get them, instead."
Lillian: "And the end of the world?"
Virginia: "That's the only place we've ever lived, Dr. DePaul. We're just two of the lucky few who can see it."
And the rest can stay under their desks, until they're feeling just a little braver.
WEEK
Well, the trailer makes it seem like the best episode since "Catherine," but we'll see. Libby steps in as the "new Virginia" to get things ready for a presentation, but puts together the facts faster than Masters & Johnson ever did about a certain couple of volunteers. Bill decides to step it up a notch to garner more attention from the medical community -- possibly a nod to the team's later missteps and data-falsification with gay subjects? -- and hallucinates Gini everywhere, while she spends the episode with DePaul at a convention, finally uncovering her new mentor's secret. And back home, deadbeat George locates sudden desires for the home and family he's always neglected, once he gets an eyeful of the hot doctor now filling his role.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Homeland, Hostages, 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.