Everybody Loves Virginia

If you read my last post on Masters Of Sex, regarding the episode where we found out that Virginia and Ethan were officially an item (not just hookup associates, as they had been earlier in the season), you know that I felt kind of weird about the way the show has manipulated me into being basically okay with Virginia (re)starting a relationship with a man who had previously hit her. So if you've seen the latest episode, you can probably guess that it did not help sort out my response to these characters at all. DAMMIT.

In the season's penultimate episode, Virginia and Bill are on a break, but he keeps fantasizing that she's still there, wryly commenting on his decisions, professional and otherwise. In a sense, Virginia hasn't actually left Bill: she's still passing on intel and tips to Jane, trying to help her steer Bill in the right direction with regard to the first public presentation he's about to give on the sex study, and keep it from being so boring that it actively drives his university colleagues away. Bill misses Virginia because he's in love with her — duh — but that's not all he needs her for; though it took him a while to understand and appreciate the many ways Virginia contributed to the study, he can certainly tell what he's lost now that she's gone.

Also throwing a spotlight on the huge gap Virginia's departure has left in his life is the fact that Libby has volunteered to help out in the office while Jane's attention is consumed with assisting Bill on his presentation. No surprise, Libby is great on the phone, and anticipates his need for things he might not realize, like...food. But having his supposed life partner in the office with him just emphasizes all the ways Libby is Virginia's inferior, as far as Bill is concerned: her knowledge of the study is, of course, superficial, and if his sex life with her had ever been especially satisfying, his "sessions" with Virginia wouldn't have been the revelation that, as we could clearly see, they were. It certainly seems like Bill married the first beautiful, elegant, appropriate woman who liked him, but never expected or maybe even wanted her to be a real partner to him, and now that he's a woman who can basically satisfy all his needs, everything about his old life feels even more like a prison. And soon there will also be a baby! Great.

While Bill is off on Bill Island, Billing around, Virginia is kicking ass in her new position with Lillian. The two travel to a convention in Knoxville, and though a bus breakdown keeps them from getting Lillian to her scheduled speaking slot, Virginia cleverly figures out that they can probably have just as much influence by presenting their case directly to the doctors' wives. That Virginia is on the trip at all is due to Ethan's volunteering to look after the kids for her while she pursues professional opportunity. While she's gone, Ethan deftly manages the interference of the kids' deadbeat dad, George, confidently letting George know he has clear intentions for his relationship with Virginia. When Virginia returns, he easily tells her that he sees her in his future and wants to support her, whether she wants to stay home with the kids or go back to school and finish her degree. If it turns out that what she wants is to work with Bill again (which...er, spoiler alert, is actually what happened IRL), he will presumably have a harder time supporting that, but at this stage, it's hard to imagine the circumstances that would find Virginia risking what she has with Ethan in order to do that, particularly when her work with Lillian is just as challenging, and potentially as rewarding.

In reality, this is less a love triangle than a functional relationship jealously watched by a voyeur. Does Virginia love Bill? Maybe, but she's also a practical, sensible woman. Ethan — past transgressions, which she has evidently forgiven, aside — is a decent man, who doesn't just love and respect her, but who has stepped up for her in a way that the kids' actual father is incapable of doing. Bill's in love with Virginia, but what does that really get her? He's still (a) too much of a coward to admit it to himself and take the necessary steps to make a life with her, and (b) not interested in her kids at all anyway. Because I know how the real story went, I know the show's producers will have to write their way out of this one, but for now, I'm just glad Virginia's found some kind of happiness with a (mostly) respectable adult man who isn't scared of her.