Episode Title: “Pilot”
Writer: Michelle Ashford
Director: John Madden
While that other show everyone’s been talking about for the past few weeks came to an end last night, Showtime’s latest offering, “Masters of Sex” quietly premiered, though the network wisely allowed viewers to screen the pilot several days in advance. Showtime’s built a reputation for its quirky dramas and “Masters of Sex” fits the bill. The “quirk” is found in its premise, the story of a fertility doctor moonlighting as a sex researcher and the nightclub dancer turned secretary he recruits to assist in the study and later marry.
It’s definitely intriguing and the fact that “Masters” is based on Thomas Maier’s biography of Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the show’s two main characters, makes some of the pilot’s more outrageous moments fascinating in the fact that may have actually occurred. However, the problem with “Masters” is that after spending an hour with the doctor and his sexually adventurous secretary, neither character is especially likeable or all that interesting outside the trappings of their research.
Set in the mid fifties, Dr. William H. Masters (Michael Sheen) is a brilliant fertility specialist who’s dedicated to his work, so much so that he makes sure that one of his patients isn’t transferred to the all-black ward so that she receives the best care. It’s certainly admirable, but at the same time, Masters takes a cold, unfeeling approach to dealing with his own wife, Libby’s (Caitlin Fitzgerald) fertility issues. Add to that the fact that Masters’ colleague, Dr. Ethan Haas (Nicholas D’Agosto) suspects it’s the doctor’s impotency that’s actually to blame and it gets even harder to warm up to his character.
Meanwhile, former nightclub singer, Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) arrives on the scene and all we know about her, aside from her previous gig, is that she’s got two kids, two ex-husbands and is desperate to work in the medical field. She particularly admires Masters’ work and her progressive approach to sex makes her the perfect candidate for his assistant. What’s puzzling is why Virginia, who had to lie about her education to get the gig, would risk it all by sleeping with Ethan, whom she considers “a friend” and has no feelings for. The relationship inevitably turns sour when Virginia rebuffs Ethan, when he tells her he’s in love with her. Predictably, he slaps her in the face and when she strikes back, tells her she’s nothing but a whore. The scene feels like it’s meant to make us sympathize with Virginia while mourning the plight of the single career minded woman who just wants to have meaningless sex ala “Mad Men’s” Peggy Olson, except Peggy Olson is actually likable.
There’s also the matter of Virginia’s two kids, who she tells Masters’ she needs to go home to, but instead she sleeps with Ethan. Are the kids real and just good at staying out the way while mom has her fun? Virginia tells Masters the sole purpose of her first marriage was to have children, but she doesn’t seem too concerned about them now.
Aside from Ethan, the show’s only other real antagonist is Barton Scully (Beau Bridges). Though he lauds Masters’ work, he finds the subject matter distasteful and believes it could ruin his career. When he refuses to support the research, Masters threatens to leave the hospital, a facility he believes was built on his name. Scully gives in and backs the project.
As their research intensifies, the doctor and Virginia realize that watching women masturbate with “Odysseus,” a vibrator Masters personally designed, isn’t enough and look for new subjects to observe. Virginia recruits her friend Jane (Helene Yorke) and the two convince married but unfaithful Dr. Austin Langham (Teddy Sears) to join in. After taking notes on Jane and Dr. Langham’s encounter, Masters worries about a possible transference of sexual energy between researchers and patients. His solution? He and Virginia have sex, of course. If you didn’t like Masters before, it’s a little bit harder after he suggests cheating on his wife after lying to her about his own impotence.
As off-kilter as the pilot feels, “Masters of Sex” has promise, both in its source material and its cast. The pilot doesn’t do much to pull us in, unless watching people have sex in a lab while wired to an EKG does it for you. Both Lizzy Caplan and Michael Sheen make good use of the material they’re given in this episode, but both characters come off cold and their motives are unclear at times. “Masters of Sex” is indeed an odd one, but as I said earlier, that’s what Showtime is known for. We’ll have to wait and see if that’s “good odd” or just “odd odd.”
