Her deepest desire is to have a baby, something Masters, with his low sperm count, cannot give her. Louis, married rather lovelessly to Libby (Caitlin FitzGerald), who is doing everything she can to preserve the ideal image of being a doctor’s wife.
He’s a preeminent OB-GYN at Washington University’s hospital in St. Michael Sheen (who played Tony Blair in “The Queen” and elsewhere) and Lizzy Caplan star as Masters and Johnson. The setting and period details - the 1950s American Midwest - reflect just how high viewers now set the bar when it comes to not only the right furniture and fashion but also the right feel. The writing has a confident pace and expert touch when it comes to balancing its more emotional moments with a refined wit. The characters get better and more complex, the story builds, strange things start to happen and now I can’t wait to see how its interweaving plots unfold - yes, I think that’s generally what Masters and Johnson would have called the plateau stage.īased (somewhat) on journalist Thomas Maier’s absorbing 2009 biography of renowned sex researchers Virginia Johnson and William Masters, “Masters of Sex,” created by Michelle Ashford, checks many items off the clipboard: The lead actors are excellent. Now that I’ve seen four more episodes, I could easily nudge that grade up to an A. When I wrote a short review of “Masters of Sex” two weeks ago in my fall television preview, I had seen the first two episodes and gave it a grade of B+, because it seemed like a sturdy launch - a show with a good sense of what it’s trying to accomplish. (When you send me e-mails denouncing the collapse of quality television and expressing your measured outrage, be prepared to get one back from me asking why on Earth you were watching in the first place.) It’s technically soft-core sex and narrative-appropriate, but there’s sex from the front, from the back, from the side, from the top, from the bottom - mattresses a-squeakin’ and EKG needles a-zippin’ back and forth.
#Masters of sex complete series series#
The new Showtime drama (premiering Sunday night, after “Homeland”) is certainly an excellent candidate for close study it’s easily the only show in the fall crop of series that makes me want to watch more, more, more, and not just because it’s got sex in it. So I guess when we ask whether “Masters of Sex” is worth adding to our DVR queues, what we’re really asking is whether it’s good in the sack. Some you’ll get into bed with, still, after everything they’ve done wrong! I mean you, “Mad Men.” (You, too, “Downton Abbey.”) Some shows, you’re still trying to decide whether you regret hopping into bed with them at all (“Ray Donovan,” “Boardwalk Empire”). Most shows fall into a pattern, a predictability, and start to take their prowess for granted (“Homeland,” “The Walking Dead,” even “The Good Wife”). Sunday nights are when we attempt to make love to the dramas: One show will get our blood pumping every time (“Breaking Bad”), while another show may seem irresistible, but all the moaning is manufactured (“The Newsroom”). A lot of times, as viewers, we just fake it. Some shows get it done but never really achieve it. It’s the same basic concept with roughly the same success rate, adhering to a certain mating ritual between network and viewer: The first episode manages to seduce, but the real pleasure - the plateau, the climax, the afterglow! - is so elusive that it enters the realm of the mythic. I’m thinking of all the couples who ask me to help them find a new show to enjoy together. Sometimes the hunt for a good television show seems no different from the hunt for what is popularly called the G-spot.