Showtime 2013
On last week’s Masters of Sex, Bill and Virginia finally made that leap that we’ve been waiting for since episode one: they became participants in their study. This week’s research topic of choice? Sexual positions that are – ahem – “optimal for clitoral stimulation.” For all they say it’s in the name of science (if I had a penny for every time they qualified their affair with “science”), this opens a whole new can of worms. Let’s see where we stand:
* First, there’s Masters’ rather unhealthy obsession with Virginia – remember how he listened to her ex-husband wax poetic on their sex life on repeat on his tape player? What’s he going to do now that he’s finally got this “magical” woman into the sack? So far, he’s oscillated between happily humming a song after one of their sessions, to coldly brushing off her invitation to grab some dinner.
* And Virginia: this might be the biggest issue of all. It’s been established time and time again (both by her own admission and actions) that she is easily able to separate sex and love. But the look on her face when Masters left their last (very successful) session to go home to his wife? Heartbreaking – uh oh.
* Dr. Ethan Haas, who as much as he tries to deny it, still carries a torch for Virginia in a pretty major way. He saw her and Dr. Masters rather conspicuously (and guiltily) exiting that test room; he knows. Will he use the information to sabotage them? Considering his closeness with Masters’ wife, and his unrequited love for Virginia, we can safely assume he’s going to spill the beans to someone. Be it to Libby Masters, Provost Scully or even his girlfriend Vivian, it’s not going to be pretty.
* And speaking of Libby, it seems that she’s growing to consider Virginia as one of her closest friends and confidants: I mean, she thinks of her as someone she can discuss her sex life (or lack thereof, har-har) with. (By the way, how messed up is it that Virginia basically bribes Masters to have sex with his wife? They set it up like Libby’s the vegetables and Virginia is the dessert. Ew). Their friendship only makes the betrayal bigger – plus, there’s the fact that she has her own agenda to seduce her husband on a more regular basis to make her hopefully-future-pregnancy-via-fertility treatments look more like luck than immaculate conception.
I think we can safely assume that this is all going to blow up in their faces. I’d hazard a guess and say it’ll happen around episode 10 or 11, based on Showtime’s other fare. Oh, and by the way, the upcoming episode is entitled “Love and Marriage.” Read into that what you will.
