Masters Of Sex Got Really Good

Maybe you haven't been watching Masters Of Sex because you've been burned by other seemingly-inspired-by-Mad Men period TV series like The Playboy Club and Pan Am and figure this would just be more of the same, plus naked boobs. Maybe you're not confident about Michael Sheen -- who plays OB/GYN turned sex researcher William Masters -- and his ability to pull off an American accent. Maybe you just don't get Showtime. All I know is that no one on the entire internet seems to be writing about it at all, and that's a shame, because it's had a nice slow burn for the first third or so of its début season, and then, this week, turned…kind of really awesome.

I wasn't sure, at first, that it was going to work out. As Masters's eventual research partner, Virginia Johnson, Lizzy Caplan was as great as always -- earthy, curious, and not falling into the trap some actors do of being overly mannered just because they're pretending to be someone from sixty years ago; someone in Virginia's place and situation wouldn't talk like Katharine Hepburn, and Caplan, fortunately, doesn't. But the rest was not so promising. Sheen's American accent is, if I'm being honest, not so hot. The relationship with Bill and his baby fever-afflicted wife Libby (Caitlin FitzGerald) was hard to root for from the very start, in large part because she seemed like a simp and called him "Daddy." And all the business about old-timey people learning about exotic sex acts like cunnilingus made me worry that said acts were just set-ups for easy jokes to make present-day audiences feel smug about knowing so much more than the dumb, sheltered characters -- you know, like the Edsel gag in Peggy Sue Got Married, but sexier.

But the latest episodes have deepened all the characters in such fascinating, unexpected ways! Libby's long-hoped-for pregnancy, and a resulting visit from Bill's mother, Estabrooks (Ann Dowd), gave us insight into why Bill has seemed so reluctant about fatherhood (beyond the whole low sperm count thing): his late father physically and emotionally abused him. Moreover, Bill's enduring feelings of resentment toward his mother for seeming to ignore the abuse -- and for the fact that she's obviously made a choice to have a more joyful life since her husband's death -- gives context for the way he seems so ready to turn on Virginia at the slightest infraction, and his jealousy over her free-spirited open-mindedness: he's always expecting a woman to let him down, and probably married Libby in part for her obvious devotion to him.

Bill's accidental detour into researching gay sex also brought us to the revelation that Bill's mentor, GW provost Barton Scully (Beau Bridges) is a closeted gay man who has regularly sought the services of one of the two prostitutes who get it on with each other in front of Bill for the sake of science. The immediate effect for Bill of learning this information is to use it against Scully to induce him to let Bill carry on his sex study under university auspices. But more recently, it's coloured the way we view Scully at, for instance, his anniversary party last week, when we first meet his wife, Margaret (Allison Janney), and which gives her side of their courtship story a tragic irony.

So in the latest episode, when Margaret hears from a friend about the sex study and decides she wants to enroll, it's hard to watch her have to trade the details of her own horrible sex life for the chance to be paired up with a partner who might actually be interested in her parts…

…only to be told that her poor choice of spouse has not only made her life incredibly lonely and sad, but that his inability to have ever brought her to orgasm has disqualified her from entering a study that might have partnered her with someone who could. It's another glimpse at how important the study will come to be, for the people who will eventually benefit from it yet never knew exactly how much they actually needed it. (The fact that Margaret is played by the great Allison Janney darkens Barton's deception even further. What kind of monster doesn't want to get Allison Janney off? Even I want to!)

The more recent episodes have also given us a new perspective on Virginia, who's not just the sex-positive libertine who'll sleep with a co-worker hours after meeting him (as she did in the first episode), but her children's one reliable parent, as we meet her ex-husband George (Mather Zickel), a shiftless, unemployed jerkoff who's not nearly up to her (new) standards. Maybe the reason she had no compunction about sleeping with Ethan (Nicholas D'Agosto) so early in their acquaintance is that she needed to give herself a break in one goddamn area of her life.

But the biggest surprise in these recent episodes has been Libby. Her fervent desire to become a mother had caused her to take a lot of shit off Bill, but part of her coming to terms with the notion that pregnancy may be impossible for her seems to be her awakening to the many ways Bill is a crappy husband to her. First, she kicks him off their vacation.

Then, after he's gone, she tries out a new kind of life, pretending to be a widow and getting day-drunk with the geriatric sex freaks in the room next door. Sleeping with Morris (Barry Bostwick) doesn't turn out to be part of her new paradigm, but the fact that Libby even dared to take this time for herself suggests how much more interesting her story may get over the rest of the season.

It's so good. Start watching so we can talk about it.