TV Recap: Masters of Sex - "Race to Space"

Welcome to the weekly recaps of the new Showtime series Masters of Sex that follows the history of Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson's (Lizzy Caplan) actual studies of sex. Make sure to tune in every Wednesday for a dissection of the week's episode as well as thoughts of the show in general as well as potential thoughts of where things are headed. Also, please feel free to check out my recaps on Bob's Burgers every Tuesday and Brooklyn Nine-Nine every Thursday.

Plot: Masters fires Virginia after she refuses to go through with the experiments. Simultaneously, Barton Scully (Beau Bridges) kicks Masters out of the hospital because he considers his experiments to be not to the benefit of science. Virginia tries to find a different career path while raising her son Henry (Cole Sand), who is obsessed with "Race to Space" comics. Masters attempts to work at a brothel, but gets shut down when his studies are mistaken for prostitution. Virginia talks to the prostitutes and Masters discovers that he needs her, notably because of his inability to understand female sex. Virginia's ex Ethan Haas (Nicholas D'Agosto) keeps imagining women that he is sleeping with are Virginia. Masters' wife Libby (Caitlin Fitzgerald) has trouble taking the brothel studies seriously and demands that he moves back into a hospital. The episode ends with Virginia and Masters back together.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Left to right: Michael Sheen and Caitlin Fitzgerald

Yes, I have decided to take on yet another Freshman series for the recap column. The appeal behind Masters of Sex is that it would be a challenge for me on the grounds that I don't really cover drama series all that much, especially from the beginning. As I noted in my Channel Surfing column on "Pilot," I felt that the chemistry between Sheen and Caplan was something special and that while this was a show about sex, I was curious to see what was going to happen to make it feel more like a legitimate experience. Most shows use sex as a punchline or a point of provocation, but this one chooses to explore it from a human level. How do we all relate as humans through the sexual experience?

I especially liked that right off the bat, things were going to be tricky. Yes, Masters was a real doctor and yes he seems qualified to do these studies, but at the same time, you have a hospital crew telling you that it is too taboo. It set up the world and by throwing the conflict between Masters and Virginia as the closer to last week's episode, it did seem like a paradox. History has shown that these two do revolutionize the public's understanding of sexuality. There is no secret that they aren't going to end up together.

Of course, as the series debuted, we are 10 years before and that raises the question on how fast we are expecting this series to go. Will we end this season, 12 episodes total, and have faith that Showtime will renew it so we can follow the journey more? I am hoping that the series maintains the momentum of these first two, even though it does raise a question on if we'll barely get to the heart of their studies by the time we say goodbye.

What makes "Race To Space" an interesting episode is that it pits the two future partners against each other. We also get a better understanding of Virginia as a person outside of her relationship to Ethan and how she is as a mother. The basic premise that she wants to read to her son and stop him from misbehaving feels like a common problem. Throwing in the idea that she needs a new babysitter after her former one (April Parker-Jones) quits due to lack of a raise. There's financial stakes in Virginia's role now. She needs a job and needs to be there for her son. This becomes more prevalent when she ends the episode by reading the last "Race to Space" issue well beyond when he has read it, reading lines like "On Earth he had been different. Others had not understood him. He had been lonely."

Lizzy Caplan

Besides giving the episode the title, it does cover a lot of poignancy to the episode. It explains the son's behavior on the simple grounds that his mother wasn't there for him in a quest to find work. It even explained Ethan's lust for sex with Virginia, even though it was always with someone else. It explained that Virginia needed to get back with Masters to do experiments because otherwise, she wouldn't be understood. It explained why Masters was so bad at doing the sex studies alone. He didn't understand the female body no matter how much he used his "coochie light." Not bad for a little comic that greatly captured the obsession with space perfectly.

As stated, there was Masters to deal with. Besides the entire study being misunderstood, I thought it was an interesting thing to pit the two partners against each other. No matter how many times we see Virginia play out alternate realities of her accepting and rejecting Masters' offer, it created this conflict. What makes Masters enduring is that his name almost seems like a tragic, ironic joke. He isn't a master, but someone who tries to relate to women on a normal level, but cannot handle the intimacy moments. He is left trying to convince everyone to let him do studies when he himself is confused about everything.

The pieces begin to fit when Virginia comes into the picture and tells the brothel employees that they are the real masters of sex knowledge. In a way, that is a great shift from this buttoned-up, bow-tie wearing man who got kicked out of the hospital. Virginia relates to women better. As she showed in the pilot, she understands female sexuality far better than Masters does. She gets more progress in one small conversation than Masters did in trying to do a public study at a brothel. This proves she is necessary. Even if Ethan harassed her over this field before, she is not exactly capable of being just another employee at the hospital. She needs to do more with her life. It may sacrifice her family a little bit, but she does it just fine.

Now that we have seen them apart, I am curious to see what they can do as a team. "Pilot" hinted at it, but we haven't really seen it just yet. Maybe the brothel will not be a mainstay for the series, but it does raise interesting concepts to follow. Now that we know that they are working together, how fast are things going to go? The show seems to be approaching things with a slow burn. I am assuming that we're going to reach new levels. We already know that Masters is sort of a spazz with women, so maybe that is the next step. 

While we know that Virginia and Masters get together, it is the chemistry for the time being that sells the series. Both seem perfectly fine exploring sex, but I feel like we're about to get sexually awkward with Masters really quick here. Also, the relationship between Masters and Libby may start going south pretty soon here. With "Race to Space," the series shows us through isolated examples why sexual studies is important. Now we must see this catalyst in action.