Masters Of Sex Prepares For Disaster

With only two more episodes left in the season, it feels like the events of Masters Of Sex's first season are building, with increasing urgency, to an explosive climax of some kind, riiiiiiight? But seriously, the antepenultimate episode ratchets up the tension not just by taking place in a single day, but by taking place on the day when the hospital (along with the rest of the country) is running a massive drill to test everyone's readiness to respond after a nuclear strike. Amid the fake casualties are some real ones...and we have questions.

We're getting back together with guys who hit us now, are we, Virginia?

The show's producers set themselves a task with a high degree of difficulty when it comes to Virginia and Ethan: give them a winning meet-cute; make him way too clingy too quick to the first woman he's apparently ever met who likes sex and pushes him to try new stuff; and end their friends-with-benefits arrangement when he slaps her in the face — all in the series premiere. From there, they had to write Ethan back to respectability, which is a challenge: hitting women is a bigger taboo for a pop culture character than murdering people is, I think. But, slowly, Ethan worked his way back into Virginia's good graces. It took nine episodes for him to figure out how to back off Virginia (getting engaged to another woman helped), and to be a real friend to her — and given what we know about the fucked-up relationship between Virginia and Bill, someone as direct and uncomplicated as Ethan starts to seem more appealing. And yes, I guess the slap was also direct and uncomplicated in a not-so-appealing way but...okay, not to be all "it was a different time" about that, but it actually was. If Virginia has apparently decided that the incident was an anomalous and that Ethan deserves a second chance from her...boy, there is just no way to end that sentence that doesn't also, by extension, endorse Rihanna's relationship with Chris Brown, so I'll just say this: the biggest question this story development raises is why I am okay with it. I don't know how to answer that yet, so let's table it until after the finale. But speaking of Ethan....

What is the real deal with Libby's pregnancy?

All of this business with Virginia and Ethan starting up again may end up being moot if he leaves the hospital and, possibly, the show: his fellowship at GW hasn't turned into a job, because Bill, his department head, recommended against it, because he went behind Bill's back and got Libby pregnant through artificial insemination. (It also didn't help that Ethan broke off his engagement to the provost's daughter, but even Scully had to admit that Ethan's transgression there was not a reflection on his professional abilities.) When Ethan confronts Bill about his bad performance review, Bill goes berserker and starts a (fairly one-sided) fist fight. We already know the obvious reasons for Bill's rage: his abusive childhood has left him not really wanting kids, and he's justifiably angry that Ethan facilitated Libby's unilateral decision to entrap him into fatherhood; he's also still fighting his love for Virginia, and it will hypothetically be harder for him to extricate himself from his marriage if he and Libby are bound together as parents. It's also more than possible that all those times he was capping Libby, Bill was actually filling her with saline or non-dairy creamer or something. But ALSO, does he know that his own sperm count is so poor that it's statistically impossible for his ingredient to have gotten her pregnant even once, never mind twice? Are we supposed to assume that when Ethan inseminates Libby, Ethan inseminates Libby? You know? You know.

What are the Scullys going to do now?

First of all can I say that the progress of the Margaret/Barton storyline has been perfect, and perfectly heartbreaking, at every single stage? I'm already mad about whichever Mad Men broad is going to end up with Allison Janney's Emmy next year (unless it's Christina Hendricks). Anyway, the latest episode finds Margaret, out at a card party, hearing about another woman in her social circle who's just gotten divorced because her husband cheated on her: not only is she basically worthless as a single woman in her fifties, but her children resent her for whatever they assume she must have done to have driven their father away. So though we might have stood with Margaret in her decision to end her marriage to Barton, we can also sympathize with her for considering whether she might not have been rash to ask for a divorce, and to contemplate what she could do now to salvage the parts of her life that haven't been utter disappointments, which for Margaret means approaching a prostitute in a hotel bar and asking her what Barton may be getting from the hookers he's told her he sees that Margaret could give him instead. As the initially hesitant prostitute tries to get Margaret to tell her what he likes sexually (Margaret has no idea) and reminds Margaret of what he was like when they saw topless women in Tahiti (he never even looked at them), she very quickly determines the truth about Barton's sexuality; Margaret's split-second reaction to this declaration — a barking laugh of shock, followed by dawning realization that it's true — should be taught in drama school. In the moments after her whole life changes, basically, Margaret reunites with Austin at the university pool (having just learned that he got a fellow study participant pregnant, he's dealing with his own shit), but it's not clear that either of them thinks the other is a viable option anymore, and she ends the episode curled up on Barton's bed. Now that she knows the truth about Barton, will she withdraw her divorce request for his own sake, because she still does care about him and will want to help give cover to his true proclivities? Or will seeing Austin again reignite her need — from someone, somewhere, if not him — for true fulfillment?

How is the fragile Virginia/Lillian friendship going to fall apart?

When I wrote about Virginia and Lillian a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like this relationship would end with the two women either bonded for life or with one dead at the other's hand, and I'm so happy that it seems like it'll be the former. The scene that results when Lillian tries to follow Virginia's advice to ingratiate herself to some administrator or other is a masterpiece of awkward comedy worthy of The Office at its best (I mean, "What's her handicap?" in the context of a golf conversation eliciting a response about the guy's wife's childhood polio, you guys). And for Virginia's time with Bill to end (this time) over the morality of his response to his study subject's accidental pregnancy, and to walk straight from him and his imperious attitudes about women's health to Lillian and her grassroots pap smear campaign feels right — but since we know from history that Virginia and Bill will reunite eventually, will it have to be at the expense of her good relationship with Lillian? And would that be better or worse than if Virginia just stops working for Lillian when Lillian imminently succumbs to her cervical cancer? (I guess worse. Please, show, let Lillian's last few months on earth be happy, or at least productive!)

The whole drill thing, though: did you get it?

NO BUT SERIOUSLY DID YOU?!