The Team on TV: Masters of Sex S3
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 9:00PM Last week we kicked off a new weekly series in which we assemble a few rotating members of Team Experience to discuss various TV shows. Here's Dan, David, Deborah, and Manuel on discuss Masters of Sex - Editor
Dan: Hello everybody, welcome to our roundtable discussion on Masters Of Sex. I want to begin with a general topic: How do you all respond to time jumps in TV shows? Masters of Sex does this a lot, with several months often taking place offscreen either in between episodes or even during a single episode (S2's "Asterion" comes to mind). The second season ended in 1961, and this season began in 1966, skipping anything dealing with finding a publisher and marketing the study as a book. Did that throw you? Did you miss anything that would have been covered in the years we didn't get to see?
I was taken aback when it turned out Isabelle Fuhrman was Virginia's daughter Tessa, because last we saw Virginia had given up custody of her kids and Tessa was still a little girl. Now she's all grown and sneaking alcohol and drunkenly attempting to kiss Bill.... what happened to our sweet girl?
Deborah: Hi Dan and all! I'm a Mad Men fanatic, so I don't mind time jumps in theory. But Masters of Sex has been clunky with it. A big time jump at the halfway point of a season (Asterion) is awkward. At the time, I wrote "Halfway through Season 2, Masters of Sex decides 'to hell with this.'" It was strange. Jumping forward between seasons is a more elegant way and it makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense: The show clearly wanted to get to the publication of the book, because all the years of research for the book were bound to become repetitive. That being the case, now that they've brought us to the book, why put so much attention on Virginia's kids and Bill's marriage?
The thing about Tessa being "all grown up" is in part the fault of "Asterion". Those kids aged two and a half years at a time when that age difference is HUGE, but the kids were not re-cast. Now that Henry and Tessa are the age they should be, they're 7 years older instead of 5, because of the previous mistake. Jarring!
I think the question is, is this the best path for supporting players? Dr Austin Langham's (Teddy Sears) time on the show had definitely played out, and I love love love with a big love that Allison Janey and Beau Bridges are back, but I'm not convinced that Tessa is an appropriate use of screen time that could be devoted to Betty and her lover, or new characters like the very interesting Dan Logan, Perfume Magnate.
Dan: Deborah, surely you mean, "the incredibly handsome Dan Logan, perfume magnate"? He's not particularly interesting to me yet, outside of being played by Josh Charles, who could have chemistry with an ice bucket.
David: This focus on Virginia's kids / Bill's marriage is the key to the season's issues so far. The first season was superb because it used Virginia and Bill's research and discoveries to inform the sexual nuances of their lives and those of the people around them. The second season, for all its faults, had a fascinating focus on the social repercussions of the study in a very specific time period. But so far in the third, the interpersonal drama seems entirely disconnected from the work. That makes for evergreen, vanilla dynamics.
David: Can we just spare a moment for Annaleigh Ashford, so far given basically nothing to do but doing such joyful work nonetheless?
Manuel: After a season that gave her such wonderful story lines, I worry that Tony Award winner Annaleigh Ashford will be relegated this season to a colorful if fleeting presence on the show. This is, as you've all pointed out, perhaps another example of the way the show's shifting focus away from Masters & Johnson, brilliant researchers, to almost painfully dull Masters & Johnson, parents and spouses.
The first episode of this season suggested we might still be treated to a season that would continue to skillfully use Bill and Virginia's personal lives to underscore their research findings. Why else intercut their press conference with their lake getaway? And yet, to return to Daniel's initial question, the episode felt like a missed opportunity precisely because it didn't effectively mark the very time jump it was making within the episode. Perhaps after being so carefully conditioned by Mad Men to track it's glacial if seismic passing of time through subtle hairstyles, clothes, accessories, etc. I just found these two time jumps almost indistinguishable? Not that I needed a drastic haircut or a mustache, but maybe that's also what made the reactions to Ginny's kids so jarring?
Dan: A contrary opinion: I actually think time spent with Tessa is good.
Hear me out: Aside from the writing and performance of the character perfectly capturing the teenage mindset, up to this point the show has only presented the study in terms of its impact on adults. But the book and its implications will reach much farther than either Masters or Johnson expect, and teenage kids of this time are at exactly the right moment (both in their lives and in history) for a book like this to have an effect, since underneath all the medical jargon is the simple message that sex isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it feels good. But teens won't think about the emotional impact of sex in the way adults do, so it can have the opposite effect that Masters and Johnson wanted the book to have. What I don't think was the best idea was making Tessa Gini's daughter. Surely they could have explored this through a neighbor of hers or Bill's? It certainly couldn't have been less clunky than both this and the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer metaphor of the Masters' current neighbors, the wife now being in a post-aneurysm catatonic state.
But, yes, whither Betty? The way she saw right through Bill's use of Dale Carnegie's seminal book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" was classic - I love the way Ashford has with friendly snark.
And more importantly, whither Libby? It almost seems as though the writers haven't known what to do with her since she gave birth, despite Caitlin FitzGerald's great performance. As fabulous as some of her moments have been this season ("Chinese menu’s in the top drawer. They deliver until 10." - BURN!), she hasn't had anything of import to do, even off in a storyline of her own like S2's social activism. I liked how the show widened its focus to the outer world last season, largely through that storyline, but this season seems to be focused more on Masters and Johnson and their families. I'm not sure this is to the show's detriment YET, but the show hasn't had a single episode as great as last season's third, the stellar (and sadly, Emmy-snubbed) "Fight".
David: I'd agree with that. Season 3 is still finding its feet in terms of exactly what it wants to explore. The Scullys (Allison Janney and Beau Bridges) returning gave the third and fourth episodes a significant boost, because their issues relate back to the sexual exploration of the study and are grounded in exploring how human sexuality works. Tessa's drama, though, seems much more rote. Adding another character's narrative threads is only worthwhile if they add to the show's overall progression. By expanding the role of Tessa, bringing back the Scullys, and still having the constant supporting characters of Libby, Lester and Jane demanding their own narrative threads, it's becoming like Game of Thrones -- still dealing out the cards four episodes in. For a show that's always felt more intimate - in every way, heh - this is a critical problem.
Maybe this also means the end of the season will provide more riches by bringing these characters together in some way that pays insightful dividends. Yet I'm afraid the writers have lost the detailed and subtle sense they seemed to have of the characters in the first season. I visibly recoiled from the screen when Bill took Virginia into that room to give her the fur - the creepy smile he gave just seemed so parodic of Masters' social awkwardness, so cartoonish.
Deborah: I actually enjoy the humor of the show very much. A lesser actor than Michael Sheen would make Masters's social awkwardness farcical (see: Teddy Sears as Austin), but he nails it every time. Give me more cartoon Bill! I actually loved the entire fur storyline: The broad humor of Virginia not being able to accept Bill being sweet, while Bill is as eager as a teenager, and the poignancy of Libby finding the fur and saying nothing.
Not to repeat myself, but the circumstances of Libby finding the fur were beyond irritating. Yet those beats played out beautifully. Libby never had to say, "you don't remember buying me a fur under similar circumstances." They understood the first law of television (and film): Show, don't tell.
What do we think we need to see in order for the rest of this season to be satisfying?
Dan: It wasn't until the season's fifth episode when the show finally laid out the season's main theme: The difference between sex and love. Bill's beautiful speech at Wash. U comparing love to gravity (using the metaphor of Einstein's theory that gravity is not a force, but the "lines and grooves... carved into space"). His statement that "love is not a force exerted by one body onto another; it is the very fabric of those bodies." while Virginia looked on adoringly was as good a mission statement for this season as they could have written. With this in mind, how does it shape your thinking of the season? I still think things are not holding together as well as they could, but if this is the main thrust of the season (and it certainly seems to be), I think they still have a bit of work to do to really make it hit home. It's coming together, but has no impact yet.
Also, Alison Janney just won another Emmy with her speech in the same episode.
David: I definitely feel like episode 5 was a more confident move towards a concrete theme, although I'd suggest that the attention is slightly more on the awkward coexistence of sex and family, as evidenced by the opening scene this week where Bill and Virginia's happy post-coital embrace is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Ginny's parents. All the drama with the children is beginning to take shape for me, in terms of how it affects Bill and Virginia's pasts and presents: this time, Tessa trying to understand and discover her mother's mysterious, hidden sexual mores, and Bill's vicious confrontation of his own tormentors through the vessel of his son's sparring partner.
When Virginia's parents showed up, I was hesitant about what yet more characters might add (despite Frances Fisher playing one of them!), but I really valued the moment where Ginny came home and relaxed against her father; it was just a flash but suddenly I saw Ginny as someone's child, and it casts a totally new light on her.
A totally different form of family is apparent in Tate Donovan's attempt to have his own little polygamous commune, which Allison Janney beautifully blasts apart in that stunning speech (how is she so good, always?!). Their sex scene, too, brought the show back to more interesting territory of how sex works between fully fleshed-out characters (as opposed to the bodies hiding behind all those curtains). All in all, the season seems to be slowly taking shape.
Tate Donovan and Alison Janney on Masters of Sex (Season 3)
Deborah: That's an interesting insight, David. I like the idea of the season being about love. That's a light feeling somehow, though, and the season feels heavy. The theme feels mired in family and the past, and the way we bring our pasts into the present. They may have killed Freud, but his ghost sure does linger. We see explicitly that Bill is compensating for, and revisiting, his past, both his childhood--being unable to please his father, and revisiting that on his son, and his past with Washington University. Margaret explains it quite clearly, she formed a relationship with Graham based on an idea of trying to erase the past, and yet, brought herself with her.
Manuel: I think our ambivalence about this season seems well-founded. While I love Sheen and Caplan, I have been underwhelmed by the notes they've been asked to play. That scene in this latest episode where he watched her fumble her way through a conversation with Dan ("You're a woman who deserves more than coffee in the lobby"; trust Josh Charles to sell a line like that, if only barely) was fascinating for it recreated visually and thematically the way their "romance" began and yet all I could think of was, how has Sheen's character seemingly not grown to understand himself and Ginny more? Also, why is Virginia so besotted with Dan? He seems the kind of guy Season 1 Ginny would have seen right through and wittily put down, no? I like the move towards examining love (is it only pheromones and are they at the intersection of science and sociology?) but we've reached a point where Bill and Virginia's "affair" has narratively stalled. Maybe that explains why the show's been so eager at bringing back old guest stars and fleshing out new and old characters?
For me the show's appeal was always, as Virginia puts it, "the work." The affair, the family drama, etc. always worked best as a refraction of Bill and Virginia's work. Now that the book is out, the show seems content with the plots around the research without really informing it.
But perhaps I'm impatient about what the rest of the season has in store. I will say, I am very much looking forward to seeing Sarah Silverman again in next week's episode.
Deborah: And Masters of Sex has been renewed for a fourth season, so we can keep this chat going!
Further Reading: Deborah covers this show weekly on Basket of Kisses
Last week: "Mr Robot" (USA) and "Humans" (AMC) were discussed
Next week: "Bojack Horseman" (Netflix)
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Reader Comments (6)
I do not respond well to the time jumps in "Masters of Sex". This is not a two-hour movie. Take your time creators!
The time jumps--clumsy or not, YMMV--are necessary because the story spans four decades and they're not expecting to be on the air for that long. That said, I think they'd be better served focussing on 1957-1980, as I'm not looking forward to Sheen and Caplan in old-age makeup.
Yay looking forward to Bojack next week.
I still haven't got round to watching MoS. so many shows on my list and I'm suddenly obsessed with British black comedies so it might be a while.
I dont much like the time jumps either. It's great when you have a unifying theme or super ambitious genre effort (mad men / battlestar galactica) but I question its validity in this story that has so many incremental upheavals. Their lives were so volatile at the beginning and though i dont know much about the original story I missed that volatility.
I also think when you have a really strong ensemble, as this show does, it is strange to time jump and lose a bunch of people or plot threads that you've developed so well.
i was obsessed with this show for two seasons but my interest has been waning. I think because I found the science so satisfying but aside from stellar work like "Fight" last season, it's a danger when you have a rich theme, as this show does, to narrow your focus so immensely to the relationship between two people.
I'm not caught up yet with this season but I'm eager to see this Tate Donovan/Alison Janney plotline
I'm losing interest in this show as well. I do not care for the excessive time spent on the kid storylines (Bill is a football coach? Really? Where did that even come from?) and I feel that Gini is becoming more and more of an obnoxious Mary Sue character (how obvious was it that Josh Charles would only be brought on as a love interest for her? She's like a magical unicorn that all men must fall in love with).
I was really excited to see Bridges and Janney back, I love Annaleigh Ashford, and poor Caitlyn FitzGerald does what she can with the weak storylines she is given. These days I watch the show in spite of the two central characters, not because of them.
Annaleigh Ashford should have been nominated for an Emmy. She's the most watchable actor on this series. She brings warmth, humor, insight, authenticity, charm and intelligence to her character. I would put her in a category with Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore. They all have a uniqueness and enchanted quality...something reminiscent of the old days of Hollywood where certain special actresses like Carole Lombard had the gift to amuse and delight and then turn around and elicit the deepest compassion and empathy...often eclipsing their co-stars and even the films in which they were featured. Can't get enough of Annaleigh Ashford. She's a keeper.
I have a question. Where is Virginia's baby? This woman is spending her evenings out with men while Tessa's hanging at the house...and Baby Lisa has not been accounted for. She was supposed to make up for Virginia's insufficient relationship with her older daughter....and now she's not even a blip on the radar screen. Have I missed something???