Masters of Sex, Ep. 1.06: "Brave New World" a touch too familiar

Masters of Sex, Season 1, Episode 6: “Brave New World”
Written by Lyn Greene and Richard Devine
Directed by Adam Davidson
Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on Showtime

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As Masters of Sex continues to grow and evolve, what’s increasingly clear is its clear affection for (and sly subversion of) classic Hollywood melodrama. That connection is made very explicit in “Brave New World,” whose two key motifs are the theories of Sigmund Freud and the novel (and subsequent film adaptation) Peyton Place.

If anything, “Brave New World” too prominently pushes those motifs. All of a sudden, every character is bringing up, questioning or outright mocking Freud’s theories on female and male sexuality. To make Freud’s work such a prominent issues only makes sense; after all, his influence had barely waned even two decades after his death, but the teleplay is a little too insistent on making that omnipresence clear. A little subtlety goes a long way, and the strangest thing about Masters of Sex is that it seems to understand that on a number of fronts, while being blaringly obvious on others.

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The talk of “Brave New World” has to be Alison Janney, who was actually introduced last week as Margaret, the quietly long-suffering wife of Provost Scully. Her plotline strongly evokes that of Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven, itself a tender riff on Sirkian film melodrama. Like Moore’s character, Margaret has found herself caught in a deeply unsatisfying marriage with a man who hasn’t been honest about his sexual orientation, though of course in both cases the period prohibits such open expression with disastrous measures. While her scenes are touching and sad in all the right places, and Janney is typically excellent throughout, the actual content of the subplot doesn’t have the novel sense of unfamiliarity of the best Masters of Sex plotlines. It’s sterling stuff, but it’s nothing new.

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The same goes for Libby’s Florida adventure, which strongly resembles a gender-swapped version of Don Draper’s sunny extramarital adventures, albeit without actual copulation. It’s admirable that Michelle Ashford and her writers are making an effort to flesh out Libby’s inner life, considering that “wife-of-the-protagonist” roles are typically thankless and hollow (or rely on nagging-wife stereotypes), but the notion of the grieving would-be parent inventing a new life away from home, only to be shoved back into reality, is also a familiar trope. Again, there’s nothing wrong with the execution, but the scenario is too familiar.

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What’s really odd about “Brave New World” is the way it botches its pivotal final moments. Virginia and William finally take a fateful step towards a physical relationship, with Virginia eager to test Jane’s purported breast-stimulation-only orgasm. The scene makes little sense from what we already know: Virginia is, it has been firmly established, a woman who knows her body and knows what she wants in the bedroom. Surely she’d have a grasp on how she can and cannot achieve orgasm. More importantly, the scene skips over any and all discussion of Virginia’s feelings (or lack thereof) for William, who made a rather gauche advance at Virgnia in the dubious name of “science” way back in the premiere. Next week’s episode has some heavy lifting to do if it’s to give their inevitable romantic relationship a believable, psychologically sound foundation – though perhaps it says something that, at this stage, I’m more concerned about Libby’s ultimate well-being.