Masters Of Sex Alternates Fighting And Fu-- 'Making Love'

"She Rescues Him Right Back" Is Still Like Thirty Years Away

The Scene: While Henry is upstairs rearranging his hair in a style some girl at school is more likely to admire, Virginia and Tessa enjoy their morning together before the kids go spend the night with their dad.

The Symbol: The concept of princesses, which Tessa feels are integral to her favourite fairy tales, despite Virginia's attempts to interrogate Tessa's assumptions about fairy tale royalty (like if a prince is still a prince if he's not a handsome prince).

The Meaning: Romantic ideas may be hard-wired into girls and thus are very hard to dismantle, but VIRGINIA IS NOT A NORMAL GIRL/WOMAN AND IF YOU FORGET THAT, SHE WILL REMIND YOU.

Ladies And Gentlemen: Father Of The Year!

Situation: Bill has just delivered a baby with ambiguous genitalia.

What Makes It Awkward? No one involved is thrilled about it, but everyone's trying to deal with it except his father, a Mr. Bombeck. THIS bitch -- ignoring Bill's explanation that, genetically, the baby is definitely a boy -- keeps referring to his son as "it," and declares in no uncertain terms that he is not bringing the boy home with his genitals in their current state. When Bill explains how dangerous it would be to operate on a brand-new infant when there's no pressing medical need, Mr. Bombeck asks whether, after surgery, his son will ever be able to fuck, basically -- totally normal question to ask in the hours after your child is born, not weird or creepy at all -- whereupon Bill makes some well-meaning attempts to educate Mr. Bombeck about sexuality: "Erections are not the totality of manhood." "You know who thinks that?" spits Mr. Bombeck. "Men with a little bit of girl in them." He wants to "cut it off."

How is order restored? "Let me tell you how this is going to go, Mr. Bombeck," says Bill. "You and your family are going to leave here in a few days, and you're going to take some time to become informed -- let your mouth catch up with your mind. And you will come to accept that your son -- your son -- has a condition that can, and will, be corrected. And when you come back here for the surgery that's going to ensure that his outsides match who he is inside, you're going to thank me for protecting your child from your own poor judgment." And since this impassioned speech -- delivered in icy calm -- is moving to all of us, I'm SURE that it has also convinced Mr. Bombeck and that he will certainly agree with Bill that the right course is to consult experts in the field and make a plan to operate on his son many months from now, I mean what else would even make sense?!

Archie Moore vs. Yvon Durelle vs. Virginia

It's time for another fun getaway to Alton, but when Virginia rolls up to the fuck pad, she discovers that Bill is not alone: there's a hotel handyman fixing the TV so that Bill can watch a boxing prizefight between Archie Moore and Yvon Durrelle. To put this fight in the historical context I just looked up: apparently it was a highlight of Durelle's career and one of the first boxing prizefights to be broadcast nationally in the U.S. (though it took place in Montreal); also it lets us situate this episode in time: December 10, 1958, to be exact. ANYWAY: Bill barely acknowledges Virginia as she enters, which is rude not just to her but to her beautiful coat.

When Bill ignores her question of whether they're going to "work, or...?," she's like, fine, I'm going to take a bath, make me a drink, and when she steps into the bathroom to draw a bath, Bill essentially jumps on her and mauls her. I can't tell if it's just Lizzy Caplan's sex face but this is not the first time this season when Virginia's reaction to Bill's sexual advances seems more pissed off than anything else.

Anyway, she's not being ignored anymore!

Winner: Virginia.

"So Far This Boxing Match Is Not Dad, I MEAN 'BAD,' 'NOT BAD,' HAHA!"

Alert Type: Daddy Issues Alert.

Issue: In between like seven dozen fuck sessions for Bill and Virginia (plus one self-handjob for Virginia), this prizefight is about to become A Metaphor about how a young Bill formed his view of the world, starting when Bill was fourteen and his father dropped him off at boarding school -- telling him, by the way, you're not coming home for holidays; you're on your own forever, eat shit (I'm paraphrasing) -- and the very first thing Bill did was go to the gym and ask to be taught how to box.

Complicating Factors: Bill wanted to learn how to fight in part because his father used to beat him -- which is also why the bully Mr. Bombeck is sparking some of Bill's own emotional trouble spots; he's concerned for the future Mr. Bombeck's son will have with him based on how badly cowed Mrs. Bombeck clearly is.

Resolution: Over the course of several phases of conversation (text and subtext), we find out that sometimes when a boxer doesn't fight back, it's an act of defiance against his opponent -- showing that said opponent isn't worth the effort, and that taking a punch is a display of strength because it shows you are tough enough to absorb it. This also happened to be Bill's strategy with his father: he wouldn't try to fight back, and though his father would tell Bill that he'd stop hitting him as soon as Bill begged for mercy, Bill never did.

Spoiler: This coping mechanism has not left Bill as well-adjusted and healthy as Bill apparently thinks it did?

How Virginia Lost Her Groove Back...Then

Jumping off from the backstory Bill has created to explain to everyone at the hotel why "Dr. and Mrs. Holden" keep meeting at this hotel ("Dr. Holden" has a medical practice in Kansas City, while "Mrs. Holden" has a mother dying in Louisville), "Mrs. Holden," a.k.a. Lydia, tells a story about her romantic life before her marriage that I think might actually be about Virginia??? As a teenager, she went swimming at a public pool and lost a fake amethyst earring that, since she'd fronted like it was real, she had to make a federal case out of recovering, and when she dove down to get it, this dude jumped in at the same time and propelled it down the drain. Later, she encountered him again at a dance at a nearby military base, and he presented her with it; he'd gotten a maintenance man to take apart the pipe or some damn thing, and he remarks that he knows it's amethyst because that's his fiancée's birthstone. But then they started talking and he stopped mentioning that other bitch and before you knew it they were fucking and making plans until one day he thanked her and said goodbye. Bill assumes that "Lydia's" boyfriend shipped out and maybe got killed, but Virginia says no, actually, he just went to get married; he'd been engaged that whole time whether he'd talked about his fiancée or not. "And, so -- sex: fine. Enjoy it if and when you can, it's a biological function. But play it safe! Keep your heart out of it, locked away, someplace safe, like a bank vault." That's the lesson "Lydia" learned, but like, also

There's Just One Snag In Your Plan

The Scene: The prizefight, if you can goddamn believe it, is still going on, and Bill is still pontificating about boxing theory in an extremely boring way.

The Symbol: Virginia's belief that she's fast enough to dodge a punch Bill might throw at her -- which turns out to be unfounded, though when she demands to trade places with Bill and take a poke at HIM instead, her bracelet catches in his hair and has to be hacked out with a steak knife.

The Meaning: Virginia can't help confounding Bill's ordered expectations of the world with her very different, specifically feminine approach to problem-solving.

Masters vs. Bombeck

Bill makes what he thinks is a routine call back to the hospital to see what's up with the baby...and then races back to St. Louis to beg Mr. Bombeck to stop his son's castration. Mr. Bombeck, remorseless, reminds him, "I told you: I wasn't leaving here with an it." Bill is even more horrified that the Bombecks (or, rather, Mr. Bombeck; Mrs. Bombeck probably had very little say in the matter) got a general surgeon to do the procedure, but apparently Mr. Bombeck found the gentleman eminently qualified at their first meeting: "A hole is easier than a pole." Yep, that checks out for sure. Even though Bill NEVER ONCE begged his OWN FATHER to stop beating him when Bill was a kid, he's begging now, on behalf of Mr. Bombeck's son, for Mr. Bombeck to think about it for a week, or even a day: "You have a son. I'm begging you. Let him be what he is: a boy!" "It's done," Mr. Bombeck shrugs. "The doctor's finishing." For good measure, he adds, "Better a tomboy than a sissy." Cool.

Winner: Bombeck. Loser: his son, "Sarah."

While Masters is back in St. Louis failing to protect a vulnerable child, Virginia gets ready to leave the hotel and sees that this fucking fight is somehow still going on!

Drawn by all the manly shouting, she drifts into the bar, where she catches the eye of an actual Camden kid!

He oozes over to her and asks if she's a boxing fan! Not really, she replies: "I want to see how it ends"! But the episode ends before WE find out how it ends because even though Tessa likes fairy tales because she knows how they're going to end, her mother is more complicated and is starring in a more complicated story, do you get it? DO YOU? BUT SERIOUSLY, DO YOU?! (Calm down, show. We get it. Hurry up and get Margaret back from Venice already.)