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| Left to right: Lizzy Caplan and Isabelle Fuhrman |
Welcome to the weekly recaps of the 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 Tuesday for a dissection of the week's episode featuring thoughts of the show in general as well as predictions of where things are headed.
The episode news with Masters getting confirmation from Virginia about her pregnancy. With the news interfering with the book deals, she is required to go on leave. Meanwhile, Tessa (Isabelle Fuhrman) begins to hate her mother for being so frivolous. Masters suggests that Virginia marries George (Mather Zickel) to make a better public image. Virginia inevitably lives with the decisions. Meanwhile, Masters tries working with another woman to keep the image alive. As the Queen or Irn (Necar Zagegan) shows up for an appointment, things go according to plan, except that Masters isn't able to take of things by himself. Virginia is miserable and Masters is busy trying to look like the big shot that he inevitably thinks he is. Time jumps around and we see Virginia's pregnancy evolve as Master's career changes.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Suddenly, everything that was problematic about Masters of Sex in season two are starting to crop up again. While season two could get away with the issues because it was during a light period of the Masters/Johnson partnership, this is only episode two of season three and it feels like they are trying to cover a lot of ground in such a short amount of time. We are many years ahead of where we were at the end of last season. This isn't to say that we missed much. If anything, it is fine if the show decides to jump around to keep the story progressing. However, it does feel like it is tonally too abrupt from last season, which took its time and gave us some insight into the happenings.
The final results aren't fulfilling. Considering that the biggest appeal of Masters of Sex has been the show's ability to share a complicated look at sexual politics, this episode kind of feels reductive. Where Virginia has been strong and confident in the past, she is thrust into a position of compromise. Because she is pregnant, she has to take Tessa's abuse without much discipline. Because she needs to look better in the public eye, she needs to marry a man who we have only seen as bad. She is thrust into a regressive direction that doesn't seem to provide much for her. I know that this could just be a transition episode and we'll be back to our old tricks next week, but what exactly is gained from all of this?
For what it's worth, I think that Masters is a redundant character when left to his own devices. He is nothing but ego trying to feel qualified. Every stereotype that Virginia throws at him has truth. He needs someone there to balance him out. When he has various assistants, it isn't quite as gravy as one would like to make it out to be. Even if he is able to be competent and tell his potential clients what he is doing in basic English, he is still incomplete without Virginia. I am unsure if that is going to be the theme of this show. Much like how last season saw sexual inadequacy mirror a plot of meandering research, I do worry that the whole point of this season is not how the next generation is going to be sexually involved, but how incompatible our leads are without each other.
The show still works thanks to two great performances. I have yet to find much issue with the children characters, either. As a whole, this was just an off episode where a lot happened in a short time, but I don't know if it was all for the best. I do worry that maybe the show is going too fast, and it will keep any one moment from standing out. However, I do think that the show has some assurance still left in itself to pull together something far more compelling in a few episodes. Never forget that "Fight" was episode three last season and it is easily the best that the show has ever done. We could easily be seeing something on par with summarizing sexual politics and plot in a nice little package very soon here. That is, unless the show plans to see Virginia continue to be helpless and miserable, which is not something I would care for.
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