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| Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan (Showtime) |
Masters’
first season wasn’t concise, but it had a real knack for weaving in and out of
the central Masters/Johnson relationship. It explored how various other actors
in their orbit contended with their sexual ambiguity, assumed gender roles and
conflicting attitudes toward sex itself. The examination of Margaret Scully
(Allison Janney) and her closeted husband, Barton (Beau Bridges), struggling to
make sense of the love they still shared for one another was both independently
compelling and thematically rich as a part of Masters’ whole. Dr. Ethan Haus (Nicholas D’Agosto), sexually
awakened after a one-night tryst with Virginia, went on a sometimes-amusing,
sometimes-fascinating journey to figure out his own ideas about sexual desire
and romantic commitment. This was what the show was; even if a lot was going
on, everything felt thematically centralized and came together as a powerful
season of television.
Maybe
it’s because Ashford needed to jump so far ahead in time, or maybe it’s because
actors like Janney and Bridges and D’Agosto could only return for one or two
episodes due to outside obligations, but the second season of Masters of Sex didn’t really know how to
strike that same balance.
Ashford
wisely promoted season one standout Annaleigh Ashford, who plays the wry
prostitute-turned-secretary Betty, to series regular. And her arc with husband
Gene (Greg Grunberg, great) and former lover Helen (Sarah Silverman in a nice,
small guest turn) was a lovely little nod to the personal sacrifices that are
made, and the secrets that are hidden, as two people come together. But its
brevity and distance from the main action made clear some of the problems
Ashford and company ran into.
Ashford
herself has noted that this season was basically two mini-seasons, separated by
the series’ enthralling seventh episode “Asterion” which glided over the lives of
Bill, Virginia et al. over the course of two years. By the time we’d reached
episode seven, Betty’s marriage arc had concluded; Virginia’s superbly-executed
mentor-mentee relationship with Dr. Lillian DePaul (a fantastic Julianne
Nicholson, who was and will continue to be missed) ended as DePaul’s cancer
finally got the best of her; Bill’s wife Libby (Caitlin Fitzgerald), upon
realizing their new baby would not bring her husband back to her, acted out in
fits of gross racial prejudice; and Bill himself had moved through three – three
– medical centers, finding ultimately that his prickly temperament could mesh with
exactly no hospital to house his study.
Most
of the stuff going on worked before the time jump, none better than the ongoing
chronicle of Bill and Virginia. The oft-discussed, remarkable episode “Fight”
placed the two in a hotel room for an entire episode, as they acknowledged how
their pasts have shaped them, physically bared themselves for one another and confronted
their troubled interpretations of masculinity and femininity. It brought
together everything the series had touched on to that point in a manner that
was richly character-driven and explosively entertaining. Before and even after
that episode, it felt like the series had more or less continued on the path of
taking peripheral characters in their world to tell self-contained, absorbing
stories.
Such
a desire was unsustainable - the series had to change and grow, to move forward
and take the next step. It’s landed comfortably now that the season has ended,
but the journey to get there was a mixed one; in some ways, the series even
surpassed previously-achieved heights, but without question there came
substantial weak points.
One
of the main drivers of this second half asked: how can we compensate for our
pasts and our circumstances to create relationships that provide us with
meaning and fulfillment? How can Libby, trapped in a sexless marriage and
rigidly defined as a mother and a wife to Dr. Masters - a life, she herself
notes, that is not enough - break out of her shell? Can new patient Barbara
(Betsy Brandt, in a subtly magnetic and wonderfully surprising performance),
sexually-incapable due to trauma stemming from her youth, and
inexplicably-impotent Lester (Kevin Christy), romantically entangle despite the
absence of a sexual relationship? How are we to understand Bill’s difficulty in
performing sexually, as we continue to learn about the prescribed masculine
doctrine instilled in him, and his tendency to run away without a fight? What
of Virginia, sacrificing her parental duties and moral compass in order to
continue her secret affair with Bill?
These
questions, unified by that theme of history and circumstance, drove Masters to some of its best moments. And
though this back-half was by no means concise nor squarely focused on these
questions, the series worked episodically as well. In particular, the tenth
episode “Story of My Life” found Libby and Barbara and Virginia and Bill all
converging, as writer Amy Lippman - who has penned the series’ most ambitious
and successful episodes - beautifully exposed our tendency to project onto others
and seek out the qualities we ourselves do not possess. As Masters and Johnson
reoriented the study to also focus on sexual dysfunction, that became fertile
ground for Ashford to have an honest-to-goodness conversation about how sex is
profoundly messed up for everyone, in one way or another, and there’s no
“right” way to think about it or to do it. And if that weren’t enough, the show
smartly incorporated the ways in which marketing and advertising both objectify
women and prevent a real conversation about sexuality and gender.
But
sometimes idea trumps execution. In the second half of this season, Libby
joined Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), chasing after Robert (Jocko Sims),
the brother of her former nanny that she treated abhorrently. It was a good
idea, watching Libby try to assert an identity, amend the shockingly racist
behavior she’d displayed earlier, and to have something to do. Pre-time
jump, it became clear that Libby’s racism really emerged when her sexual life
was discussed, or when her relationship with Bill was critiqued. I found
Ashford’s conflation of suburban housewife anxiety with unapologetic racism to
be both incredibly hard-hitting and brilliantly cringe-inducing. But Libby’s
subsequent chasing of Robert, and of “fixing herself,” was both less
interesting and excessively melodramatic. It had strong moments, and Fitzgerald
really had a chance to shine with meaty material, but it mostly didn’t work,
too distanced from what the rest of the show was doing and too flat to succeed
on its own.
I
didn’t, in any way, understand what the Masters
team was going for in their decision to bring back Dr. Austin Langham
(Teddy Sears, likeable enough) in a regular capacity, especially with the
departure of the Scully clan and Dr. Haus. Last year, Langham occupied an
interesting space in the universe of Masters and Johnson - he fell hard for a
girl he was grouped with in the study, Jane (Helene York), and couldn’t shake
the fact that Jane was absolutely indifferent to him afterwards. Langham had
always represented that part of the universe not really aware of the changing
times, holding on to simplistic ideas of gender and sexuality as the women in
his path pass him by. This year, however, he was thrown into a totally
unrelated subplot that the Masters
writers mistakenly found amusing. He was put in a role-reversal relationship
with his female boss; this was a one-note idea that was boring in its execution
and unnecessary as a piece to the season.
These
are minor gripes, because Masters of Sex
continues to survey contemporary American history with an impressive depth of
thought and feeling. The core storyline and relationship between Bill and
Virginia grounds the show even at its most frustrating. So much of this season
dug into Bill’s past and into his psyche, and it provided a great point of
centrality for the series’ dozens of themes and stories to circulate around.
Here is an individual that cannot really reject the ideas of sexuality and of
masculinity that he’s grown up with, even as his research proves his
“shortcomings” to be absolutely normal and his crisis of manhood to be utterly
absurd. He can’t really link himself with the material, just as he can’t really
confront his own past. This season, he acted out, viciously attacking his
brother out of insecurity and guilt, and luring Virginia back into his orbit
with the presentation of his impotent “condition.” Bill anchors the series’ as
its lead, as characters all around him in this universe are similarly sexually-confused,
ethically-challenged and morally adrift.
It
also helps that Michael Sheen towers in the role; even at his most monstrous
moments, he plays Bill as totally frightened, perpetually humiliated and
profoundly damaged. He was called on to play so many contradictions and
internalizations this season; such a daunting task was handled deftly by Sheen,
who can convey his character’s external fury and internal shame with
astonishing grace. He is matched by Caplan, whom I may have underestimated last
year. She really is brilliant here; she can be so strong and so fragile, and in
her season-ending arc as Virginia prepared to lose her children, Caplan more
than rose to the occasion with emotionally-penetrating work. These two make Masters of Sex worthwhile in every
episode.
Grade: B+