#nymphomania volume 1

[annacase]

Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 (Lars von Trier, 2013)

[jastersmohnson]

Rewatching Masters of Sex: Volume 3

Season 2 Episodes 1-4

I’ll get to the start of Masters of Sex’s second season and that “Fight” episode and all that in a minute, I just need to get something off my chest:

What the hell does “to darn a sock” mean?  This was a line that Ethan Haas used in “Phallic Victories”.  Apparently it’s a sewing term or something, but of course Ethan Haas would know what that is.  At the end of season one, Ethan Haas has clearly become one of those lame dads who uses phrases like “what’s cookin’ good lookin’?” who claims to have had a rough background and done things he’s not proud of.  Only in Ethan Haas’s case, those things include woman-beating and being one of the most despicable characters in TV history.

But Masters of Sex fans rejoice!  For Ethan Haas is no more.  This season begins with Virginia dumping him in the most humiliating way possible (via long-distance) and calls of their marriage, making Ethan Masters of Sex history.  The fact that I’m staring down the barrel of 33 Ethan Haas-free episodes is cause for celebration.  I could give these first four episodes of season two an A+ just for that reason alone.  Although he does make an appearance at the end of the season to remind us we hate him, but that’s like fifteen seconds.  No more long-winded and hasty subplots of Ethan Haas getting it on with a candy striper, no more of any of it!

That’s right, Masters of Sex fans, we begin season two in a relatively bright place!  Bill and Virginia have admitted that there’s something there outside of the “work”.  Libby Masters has delivered a baby who is now three weeks old.  Barton Scully got to keep his job as provost.  Austen Langham has been faithful to his wife.  All is good, right?

Wrong!  For a season opener, “Parallax” is an awfully unpleasant one, to an admirable extent.  In fact, I left this premiere feeling more unsettled than last seasons miscarriage episode, because that was meant to be a tearjerker.  There are an abundance of borderline-disturbing scenes and storylines in this episode that set a grim mood for the rest of the season, including:

Child neglect

Financial woes

Sexual dissatisfaction

Barbaric conversion treatments, including electro-shock

Shame in one’s own homosexuality

Attempted suicide, resulting from a shame in one’s own homosexuality

Watching a loved one attempt to commit suicide

Unemployment

Infidelity

Public defamation

Sexual harassment

Slut-shaming

Fat-shaming

Damn Masters of Sex.  Save some misery for the rest of the season!  Seriously, I’m shocked they didn’t find a way to fit cannibalism in the premiere.  Although, “Kyrie Eleison” does add nymphomania among a minor and unwanted pregnancies into the mix, and don’t even get me started on “Fight”.  I’d have to crack open my old psychiatry textbooks (that I stole) to be able to analyze that episode!

Things look a lot less grim in “Kyrie Eleison”, which is definitely one of Masters of Sex’s slower episodes.  I may be wrong, but I believe it’s the only episode of this season where we don’t get a Bill/Virginia sex scene (or, in the case of the impotence saga later this season, an attempted sex scene).  Episode two certainly feels like table-setting, but it's an episode that I enjoyed much more than I remembered, similar to season one's "Race to Space".  "Kyrie Eleison" is certainly the spiritual successor to "Dirty Jobs", which is a marginal improvement and delivers small pay-offs on what "Kyrie Eleison" establishes.

Watching "Kyrie Eleison" made me jealous that the show didn't use Masters' Memorial Hospital office beyond two episodes.  To be honest, it might be my favorite office Masters had.  It has a real 1960s Mad Men vibe to it and I love it.

I don't think I can add any more insight into "Fight" than what has already been transcribed endlessly.  It's nothing short of a masterpiece, and the strongest written episode of the entire show, although my personal favorite episode of the show is coming later this season.  Stay tuned... Hospital scenes-aside, it honestly could fit in at any point during this season (apart from the impotency saga, which I do realize takes up almost half of it).

I will take this moment to declare Amy Lippman the crown jewel of Masters of Sex writers.  She has never written a season premiere for this show nor a season finale.  It's always been somewhere in the middle of the season itself and almost every episode she writes is a series standout.

She's penned some of the most critically acclaimed episodes of the series ("Fight", "Party of Four", Coats or Keys", "Phallic Victories"), as well as one of my personal favorites ("Three's a Crowd").  Even her lesser episodes ("Story of My Life", "Thank You for Coming", "One for the Money Two for the Show") manage to act as standalone episodes without feeling tedious, boring, or just plain filler.

"Dirty Jobs” is the last episode of Masters’ time at Memorial Hospital.  Masters’ job search at the beginning of season two is one of the reasons why this is my favorite season.  Apparently season two was originally going to begin with a time jump.  It was a very smart choice to save that for the middle of the season.  The immediate aftermath of last seasons events is the most captivating part of this first half of the season.

Parallax: B+


Kyrie Eleison: B+

Fight: A+

Dirty Jobs: A-