Mid-Season Catch-Up: Beyond The Boobs, What Is Masters Of Sex About?

Were it a movie rather than a cable drama, Masters Of Sex would probably win an Oscar. And yes, that’s exactly the backhanded compliment it appears to be. It is the Argo, The Artist, The King’s Speech of cable dramas. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, and safe as mid-century modern decorated houses. This, ladies and gentleman of the Academy, is the period set sex research drama that you can watch with your parents. It’s perfect for a dopey brained, tryptophan soaked Boxing Day, especially if your grandparent’s snooze off before the boobs are onscreen.

Which is not to say it is terrible – just that it’s safe. Since its debut a couple of months ago, the show has gone on to win some half-hearted attention for three main reasons: its principle casting (with Michael Sheen as the straight-laced fertility doctor, and internet favourite Lizzy Caplan as his uber-competent assistant), the fact that it appeared better than almost any other new offering (a terribly low standard; only British cop/grief drama Broadchurch, the quirky prison binge Orange is the New Black and French spooker The Returned have garnered any real critical traction), and the fact it managed to offer a little more than it said on the tin. Masters mastered the classy sex scene in the first few episodes, and then seemed as though it was going to promise more.

Midway through the season, let’s take a look at whether it has delivered.

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Is This Show Any Good?

Most of the markers seem to be there — the actors, the production values, the narrow cultural niche through which we can squint at society (see previously: organised crime, the drug trade, advertising et al). But Masters of Sex, so far, isn’t adding up to much more than a divertingly pleasant hour. Why not?

SBS has aired seven episodes, just four days after they air overseas; the latest is due to arrive tomorrow. Most of these episodes have been good, a couple were great. One, the second, was terrible, ending with screen shots of an amazingly anachronistic comic book, set to the music of James Blake — a badly researched flat note to end an episode full of dull developments and bland character announcements in place of dialogue.

Recent airings have seen Masters hit a pattern of delivery: the dark longings of the unfulfilled paired with the slow and steady satisfaction of work well done. It’s a watchable formula, but it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere.

Is There More Here Than Just The Sex?

It might just turn out that sex research in the ‘50s is a terrible premise upon which to set a show. I mean, I get it; the cultural titillations of a nation on the verge of sexual revolution had me sold too. If everyone onscreen is onboard with the experience, let’s by all means tune in and get tastefully turned on.

But for all the heated hallway whispering that takes place between characters about this taboo study, the men and women approached — from 16 to 60 years old — seem pretty game to masturbate and copulate in the name of science. After establishing their research in the first couple of episodes, Masters and Johnson have met with few prudish hurdles. And while we’re all grateful that Masters and Johnson were there to take note of clitoral stimulation, today’s audience (napping nannas aside) can hardly be shocked by the research undertaken. The characters aren’t surprised by the plot’s chugging engine, and neither are we. There’s a slight lack of tension.

Where then should we look towards in search of narrative conflict? It’s hard to find it in Masters’ halfway efforts towards tackling gender issues. The females of the ‘50s keep telling us that this research is just the ticket to gaining a little equality in the world, but it doesn’t seem to be the bedroom that holds any of them back. In what can seem like a writerly lack of imagination — but might actually be a nice wink to the double standards that still exist in our views on sexuality — every woman on the show seems DTF. In relationships, casually, in the context of affairs, they’re all healthily open to the idea of getting some. Masters gives gals the upper hand in coital confidence, and no one has once been ‘shamed’ — surely the most overplayed game of the year. While the males must stretch with the changing times (though their realisations are often limited to the novel concept that treating women as people is the first step towards a happy relationship), this gentle battling of the sexes has nothing to do with the readings that get printed out of Masters’ sex-o-meter each week.

Too often the show treats healthy intercourse as the answer to all issues – proudly brandishing a sex hammer while prowling for any and all problems to nail.

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What We Learn In Sex Research, Stays In Sex Research.

Maybe this is just the divide the show will never breach, and part of why I’m struggling to find it vital. Tony Soprano took the lessons of therapy and distortedly applied them to marriage and crime, and every new ad campaign is a chance for Draper and co. to examine their identities anew; meanwhile, Bill Masters seems to make little headway in understanding how the discoveries of his work can be applied to the drudgery of his life. The lack of intimacy between Master and his spouse (played by the winning Caitlin FitzGerald) is a standard work-vs-wife divide, and probably not solvable by any breakthroughs achieved in the monitoring of orgasms. For now, as banal as this marital strife may be in the world of television, I still really want to find out how the end will occur (apologies for spoiling a true life, well documented affair and divorce).

It’s the show’s intriguing tendency to push and push at relationships, like Bill and Libby Masters, episode by episode,  —  the likes of which I haven’t really seen since middle age weep-fest Once and Again — that’s keeping me watching. The tender yet touch-free marriage of Bill’s boss and his wife, Provost and Mrs. Scully, has been played out brilliantly, if melodramatically.  The Scully’s story has been one of a closeted man and an intimacy deprived woman (featuring a beautifully slow blossoming turn by Allison Janney), and this — the show’s most deeply felt diversion — has almost nothing to do with sex research at all.

Let’s Talk About Everything That’s Not Sex Research

At a time when women’s reproductive rights are a part of the political discourse, and every young performer’s outfit is dissected with the scrupulous standards of boarding school nuns, it seems odd that a show based on the studies of pregnancy and fornication would have so little to say. Luckily, the gaps where the show’s greater themes may have been are filled with the characters’ chatter — they talk to their colleagues about who they’re sleeping with, how well it’s going, and what they wish could be different. And then by episode’s end they say all that to their husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and casual hook-ups too. Maybe the show is just slowly pointing out that, as helpful as the study of sex was to science, it’s human connection that makes the real changes.

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Masters Of Sex is fast-tracked to SBS, and airs at 9.30pm each Thursday.

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Matt Roden helps kids tell stories by day at the Sydney Story Factory, and by night helps adults admit to stupidity by co-running Confession Booth and TOD Talks. He is 2SER’s resident TV critic — each Tuesday morning at 8.20am — and his illustration and design work can be seen here.