Masters Of Sex Makes Some Risky Bets In Las Vegas And St. Louis

"Vegas, Baby" Is A Phrase That Will Enter The Lexicon In About Thirty Years!

Virginia has called in sick to work with "the flu," expertly manipulating Bill into giving her a four-day weekend by insisting that she's definitely well enough to work. In fact, she is in Las Vegas, having joined Dan "Flavours & Fragrances" Logan on a work trip: he's set up meetings with a bunch of casino managers to sell them on the idea of pumping pleasing aromas onto their gaming floors...and he's only moderately concerned by the facility with which Virginia has totally lied to Bill in order to enjoy the trip guilt-free.

Las Vegas FAQ

Q: What is there for Virginia to do in Las Vegas while F&F's out at meetings for six hours?
A: What isn't there to do? He's booked her an in-room massage, a personal shopping appointment to get a dress for a dinner they have that night, and a visit to the hotel beauty salon! What else could a lady dream of doing?

Q: But Virginia didn't bring any work to do: how's she supposed to justify all this sloth?
A: How about she just takes a goddamn break from being Virginia Johnson for four days? The last time we saw her working she was exposing herself to a gorilla; maybe she needs a vacation more than she realizes.

Q: Is Virginia actually going to enjoy all the appointments F&F has thoughtfully made for her?
A: Of course not. Don't you know by now that Virginia's not like other women?!

Q: What do Las Vegas casinos smell like now, without F&F's intervention?
A: You don't want to know.

Maybe While Betty's Up, She Can Write The Definition Of "Partner" On A 3 x 5 Card And Pin It To Bill's Forehead?

After getting off the phone with Virginia, Bill checks in with Betty to go through the records from the original sex study, compile a list of the women who participated at least three times with different partners ("I call them the overachievers"), contact the ones she could find, and gauge their interest in volunteering in a surrogacy program (since, unlike the sex study, subjects can't be paid to have sex with clients they're matched with or it would legally be prostitution): now that she's got a list of "maybe"s, he wants her to set up meetings with them today. Ohhhhh, of course. That's why Bill was being so magnanimous giving Virginia so much time to recover from her "flu": Virginia's not on board with the idea of their starting a whole sexual surrogacy program, so he's just going to go ahead and do it while she's gone. Betty cautions Bill not to do this behind Virginia's back, but Bill puts the best/lyingest face on what he's doing: "We need to put the pieces in place, so when Virginia is back, she can weigh the merits of the idea in practical terms." Betty, like the rest of us, is disgusted that Bill keeps selling out the person who's supposed to be his closest colleague and most intimate professional partner...but she can't lay into him about it at this particular moment because Bill's new fertility patients have just walked in!

Baby Batter Up!

Alert Type: Medical Fraud Alert.

Issue: As you will recall from the last episode, Betty's girlfriend Helen really wants a baby, but as a lesbian in the 1960s, her options for acquiring one were basically non-existent. So she and Betty have enlisted the aid of Austin Langham in their quest: he's come to the office as a fertility patient with his "wife" of "three years," "Celeste."

Complicating Factors: Bill is not a big fan of Austin, and as he tries to put the rosiest possible glow on his post-Cal-o-Metric doings, we cut back to Austin telling Helen and Betty the real story back at the strip club the night they approached him: he was implicated in a lawsuit against the next shady diet cure he endorsed; he bought the strip club, which lost its liquor license two weeks later; and, we will soon find out, he's agreed to do this for Helen and Betty in exchange for their paying the $1000 retainer he needs to hire a lawyer to keep his ex-wife Elise from getting sole custody of their children and denying him access to them entirely.

Resolution: Bill agrees to take "Celeste" on as a patient...only to find out her hymen is intact. The whole scheme unravels from there.

Spoiler: Bill may regret trying to take his anger out on Betty for this one. Also, there are ways of getting a lesbian pregnant that don't have to involve Bill at all.

Bittersweet Symphony

Virginia Isn't ExACTly Anyone's "Little Woman," F&F

Virginia's excitement at telling F&F all about her observations about the similarities between people's physiological responses to winning gambling jackpots and people's physiological responses during sex has been dampened by his telling her that all she needs to do during this dinner with his last casino-manager sales target, a Mr. Avery, is "sit back, relax, and be your charming self"; it's made her wonder if she really is no different than the lady slot jockey she was sitting next to earlier, who yammered on about how much she loves to shop when her husband brings her on business trips and how she doesn't even totally know what he does for a living. So when dinner with Avery actually starts, Virginia's totally shut down...until Avery dismisses F&F's idea on the basis that F&F hasn't quantified its worth or effectiveness: "It's a bit theoretical." Then Virginia comes alive, telling Avery, "I couldn't disagree more. I spent the afternoon in your casino. The truth is, I almost left the second I walked in. The smell! Not just the flat beer and cigarette smoke, but the smell underneath all of that." F&F chimes in to say that the human nose can also detect the smells of failure, desperation, and shame, and soon Virginia and F&F are finishing each other's sentences as they sell Avery, Virginia telling him how gambling and sex are parallel experiences. "Your secretary makes some interesting points," says Avery; Virginia starts to say she's actually F&F's "associate," but F&F firmly calls her his "partner." Avery tells them he has to go talk to his associates, but leaves them with a stack of chips, and F&F with a proud look pointed right at good old Virginia Johnson, business-dinner savioress.

Won't You Be My Sexually Uninhibited Neighbour?

Oh, Word, Bill? TOUCH IS IMPORTANT TO HUMANS?

Bill may not realize that his wife has been fucking Paul Edley -- which she has, by the way; we'll get to it -- but he certainly knows he hasn't been fucking her, so maybe he should find someone else to pontificate to about how important sex is other than your wife in her TWIN BED.

Fine, Virginia's Great, STOP BEATING US OVER THE HEAD WITH IT

Virginia and F&F return from their room after having a grand old time with Avery's free stack of chips (although, it must be said, holy balls does Lizzy Caplan suck at fake laughing) to find it's in the process of being robbed by a hotel employee; he threatens them with a tiny knife, and F&F waits for the burglar to get distracted by how long it's taking Virginia to take her necklace off to pounce on him and choke him out. He tells Virginia to call the cops, but when he digs out the kid's wallet and identifies him as Martin O'Reilly, Private First Class in the U.S. Army (discharged), Virginia refuses to turn him in.

And then, when Martin O'Reilly comes to looking very sheepish indeed, Virginia makes him eat a donut and drink some milk and plies him with questions about where he was in Vietnam, because, she informs him, she has a son there. Martin darkly warns her, "I guarantee you he won't be the same as he was when he left." F&F snorts that he was in the Pacific in WWII and he came back fine, but Martin says Vietnam isn't anything like F&F's war: "Before I left, I had never even dranken a beer before. Never smoked a cigarette. Went over there? For two dollars, you buy a bag of whores, and you can disappear for a few minutes. And that sounded like a fucking bargain to me." He came home six months ago; two weeks ago his parents kicked him out, whereupon he stole his mother's jewellery, pawning her grandmother's engagement ring for twenty dollars and making his way to Las Vegas, where he got a job in the kitchen at this hotel and apparently didn't look back. Theirs is the first room he tried to rob. ("I don't think you have much of a future in it." - F&F) Virginia gently asks whether Martin's mother knows where he is, and he tells her that his mother wouldn't care. Virginia begs to differ, saying his mother would want to know he's okay.

Their sharing concluded, F&F expresses a wish to drop Martin at the police station, but Virginia wonders if maybe there isn't a program Martin could go into. Martin pouts that he couldn't afford such a thing. "I can," says F&F. "Before we do anything, you're gonna call your mother." Virginia:

Virginia can cure lower-primate impotence. She can set a sinking business dinner aright with her intellect and charm. She can rescue a stranger with PTSD after he TRIED TO ROB HER AT KNIFEPOINT. If I sign something indicating that I accept she's a superwoman, can she stop getting this Mary Sue edit? BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE GREAT.

Stop Making Surrogacy Look So Good, Lindens!

Situation: Bill having interviewed the volunteer sex surrogates, he's leading a training seminar about male sexual dysfunctions they're probably going to have to deal with.

What makes it awkward? Lester, trying to get back at Jane for having volunteered to be a sex surrogate for Keith, is also among the surrogate volunteers (and the only one that's male), so when Jane decides it's appropriate to pull rank over super-keener Nora (who's impressed Bill by reading outside what he assigned), Lester, slightly irritably, asks when they're going to talk about female sexual dysfunctions. Bill sighs that he and Lester will have to have a separate course. "Remedial course," snorts Jane. "You were singing a different tune last night," drawls Lester.

How is order restored? Bill sends everyone on a break...but Nora stays back and tells Bill that she sucked at high school biography and never finished college, though she hopes to one day; she also tells him the story of a particular occasion when she skinned her knees falling off her bike in front of the Masters house as a kid and Bill, at Libby's direction, took Nora home without saying a single word to her: "I don't know what it is, Dr. Masters, but you've changed. You're nothing like I remember you." HMMMM.

Bill vs. Betty

After Austin and Helen are forced to come clean about Helen's real identity and relationship to Betty, Bill hauls Betty into a conference room to yell at her about having gone behind his back and deceived him. But Betty, bless her, isn't having it: "You mean I did exactly what you're doing to Virginia, starting up a whole surrogacy program without even telling her!" Bill counters that Betty falsified medical records, and Betty asks what else she was supposed to do, knowing that if she and Helen had approached him honestly about Helen's fertility, he wouldn't have treated her. Bill: "This is the single worst breach of professionalism--" "'Professionalism,'" snaps Betty. "I do not think that you are the best spokesman on the subject." "We keep our personal affairs out of this office!" Bill bellows, so I guess I at least have to give him credit for not pulling a Virginia and pretending he doesn't know what Betty means. "Oh, we BOTH know that is not true," she yells back. She tells him he can yell at her all he wants, but that he shouldn't insult her intelligence. She concludes by saying he has every right to fire her for this offense, but that he should remember she's been working there for seven years: "And I have become an expert at looking the other way. Maybe it's your turn to do the same for me." She then turns on her heel and proves her professionalism by resuming the phone call Bill interrupted to take her to the woodshed.

Winner: Draw -- Betty definitely has the moral advantage, but that's not going to help Helen get knocked up.

Substitute, Teacher

Paul, frustrated by how little Libby wants to connect with him other than sexwise, decides to try to get to know her as she gets dressed after their latest sex-pointment, asking what she tells Bill when he asks what she does all day. She practically snorts that Bill doesn't ask. Paul says it can't be easy for her to pretend their affair isn't happening, but that must be why she always closes the curtains and turns off the lights and leaves as soon as it's over: she must feel guilty about what she's doing to Bill, and that she must keep her eyes closed so she can pretend Paul is he. Which is when Libby gets sick of listening to Paul's conjecture and tells him some shit: she's not thinking about stupid Bill, she's thinking about Robert. He had spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi registering voters, during which time he got arrested three times and his nose broken by cops -- but he made it back to St. Louis. And then, two weeks later, he was crossing the street when he got hit by a car, the driver of which had fallen asleep. Libby had, of course, thought about what it would be like when she and Robert said goodbye -- it had to happen eventually -- but that neither of them would have left the other without saying anything: "That was unthinkable." She starts crying for real as she goes on: "Which is why I still can't believe that he's gone. Because Robert and I were-- We were, um, we were good friends." PAUL DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THIS AT ALL.

Libby concludes, "I-- I can't give you any more of myself, because I have already given it all." Fuuuuuuuuck, man. Just when you thought Libby's story couldn't get any more tragic.

Virginia having done her duty for depressed servicemen, she's packing up to leave Vegas when Mr. Avery shows up. She quickly tries to cover for why she's in her "partner" F&F's room when he's in the shower, but Avery DGAF. Virginia says she hopes he's there because he changed his mind, F&F having told her that morning that Avery had passed, but guess what: Virginia's not the only one who's good at lying! According to Avery, F&F passed on him because the deal -- worth $60,000 -- was contingent on F&F moving to Las Vegas! "What's so important about his ties to St. Louis, anyway?" WHAT INDEED?!

Austin, Helen, and Betty are drowning their sorrows in contraband whiskey at Austin's strip club! Helen mopes that she'd been looking forward to missing the taste of whiskey for nine months, while Austin counter-mopes that he's about to lose his kids for the rest of their lives! Betty and Helen exchange a look, and then Betty tells him he won't: they're still going to give him the money! Austin wouldn't feel right about it if they're not going to get anything out of it! Betty: "I didn't say that."

Jonathan stops by Barton's office to thank him for a great first week! It feels like some story was cut here (god forbid we lose a second of Virginia frenching F&F) because Barton -- four days later, apparently -- is moved to ask Jonathan, "How did I-- How did you, how did you know? I try to be so careful." "You didn't give yourself away, if that's what you mean," Jonathan assures him. "As a classical music lover," Barton jokes. "Right," chuckles Jonathan. "You know, it's my job to see things that other people don't? The tiniest little blip on the monitor, the smallest fraction of a skip in the heartbeat." Barton nods. Aw! I hope Jonathan sees that Barton is very lonely and needs a friend he can be honest with...and maybe more but really just a friend, his ex-wife can't carry this whole burden by herself!

And then we're in bed with Helen, looking very nervous as Austin -- still with his t-shirt on, like a gentleman -- inseminates her in the traditional manner! The camera pulls back to show that Betty's in bed with them too (in her pyjamas, perverts), supportively holding Helen's hand and gazing at her lovingly! Good luck to Austin's sperm; it's going to have to find some pretty well-seasoned eggs!

Trouble With A Capital "N"

Bill's getting ready to leave the office when he notices a light on elsewhere in the suite, and follows it to find Nora sitting in the armchair in the bedroom lab, reading and taking notes. Surprised but not upset, he tells her he didn't realize she was still there, and that he was just getting ready to lock up and leave. She tells him she just needs another hour, and offers to make sure everything's locked when she leaves. Bill, for some reason, suddenly gets super-sensitive and intuitive, and asks her if she's been sleeping there. She tells him this whole sob story about having been evicted from her apartment, all her stuff left out on the sidewalk, and that she was just going to stay in the lab for a few nights until she found somewhere else to crash, and then very formally collects herself and says, "I'm sorry. I hope you know how much I've loved being here." As Nora picks up her sad little suitcase and prepares to go, Bill's like, "Where are you going?" "Aren't I kicked out of the program?" she asks. "Of course not," says Bill. "You're my top student."

And THEN, Bill takes out his wallet and holds out a couple of folded bills for Nora to take. Nora immediately says she couldn't, but Bill insists, so she does, thanking him, and here's where I feel like we all have to agree that this girl -- with the "stuffy Episcopalian" parents -- doesn't actually have a great attitude about sex at all, but is a plant sent in by the religious wackos who think Bill is going to hell, so that she could entrap Bill in exactly this way and make him liable on prostitution charges at some future point. I mean, right? I am not a crackpot.

Telling Lies All Over America

Bill stops by Virginia's with chicken noodle soup for his sick colleague, who lies that she's feeling much better. Virginia says she hopes she didn't miss much at work, and Bill lies that she didn't. When she makes no move to invite him in, he takes the hint and leaves...and from inside the house, F&F asks who it was, to which Virginia lies that it was Betty. Gee, F&F only lied to Virginia about Avery's offer so he wouldn't have to move to another city and break things off with her: this habitual, unapologetic philanderer is actually the most honourable point in this love triangle! Smells like victory!