Showtime Sundays @ 10pm ET
"Masters Of Sex" stars Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan as real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality, William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory.
While AMC struggles to fill the gaping hole "Breaking Bad" left in their lineup last night with the floundering "Low Winter Sun" and spinoffs of both "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead", Showtime has already found a suitable replacement for its most recently departed show, "Dexter". "Masters Of Sex" is the next great cable show, easily surpassing other wannabes like "Sun" and FX's "The Bridge". Those series' attempted to capitalize on the fads created by other, better shows: The star of "The Bridge" has a mental disorder...just like Carrie on "Homeland"! The star of "Low Winter Sun" is a murderous antihero...just like Walt on "Breaking Bad"! "Masters Of Sex" blazes its own trail, much like its protagonist.
That's not to say it doesn't share similarities with other shows. The detail of its '50s setting is every bit as meticulous as "Mad Men". The frank sex talk is reminiscent of the popular documentary series "Real Sex". And, of course, its scenes of very naked bodies could be straight out of any HBO show ever. But instead of merely trying to copy these shows, it fuses them together into a fascinatingly original creation: a show about sex that doesn't feel exploitative.
Michael Sheen ("Frost/Nixon") stars as William Masters, who uses the prestige of his name to embark on a controversial study that even Masters' friend, the provost of Washington University in St. Louis, balks at. (Provost Scully is played by the fantastic Beau Bridges.) Masters is a sex researcher "out of touch with his own feelings", and the character easily could have been a one-note cliché defined by that implicit irony. Instead, Sheen breathes full life into Masters, making him a dynamic and layered protagonist. He's a man who, like Don Draper, values control -- but instead of asserting that control by embarking on a series of affairs, he finds it by making other people have sex in front of him while he watches.
Masters' relationship with his assistant Virginia Johnson is the show's compelling center. Lizzy Caplan ("True Blood", "Party Down") is without a doubt the breakout star here, bringing Ginny to full, vibrant life. She's a former nightclub singer who has decided to cultivate a more serious career for the sake of her children -- and is soon drawn into Masters' research, herself being an atypically sexual woman (for her time). William and Ginny make a great pair: he's got the medical knowledge, she has the people skills; he's cold, she's warm; and together they have the passion to buck the system and delve into unexplored territory. Caplan excels at both the excited, uninhibited side of Ginny as well as the despairing, bruised (physically and emotionally) one. This is a career-making performance for her.
The pilot moves at a slow pace that may be frustrating to some after the high-octane thrills of the show that precedes it (the equally terrific "Homeland"), and there's a surprising amount of talking for a show with the word "sex" in the title. But this is a show about intimacy, both physical and emotional, and the pilot takes plenty of time to expose us to the latter kind. The mysterious motivations of Masters are every bit as fascinating as the research he is conducting. Is he so committed to his research because he truly wants to expand the human knowledge of sexuality? Or is it because sex is such a problem for his own marriage? Or is it just because he gets off on watching women masturbate with a giant, transparent dildo? The fine line between his studies and his fetishes is a thin one, most blatantly exemplified in his proposition to Ginny in the pilot's final moments. It's a line that the series will undoubtedly continue to balance precariously on, and just one of the many reasons "Masters Of Sex" is a show about so much more than sex.
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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqwahKjI2bg[/youtube]
