The episode’s screenplay comes from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham, who knows a thing or two about sexual and romantic dysfunction. Cunningham wrote The Hours, which later became an Oscar-winning film, about the shared emotional lives of three women from separate times, repressed and struggling to find their own freedom. With Cunningham as the scribe, it is hard not to compare Libby Masters to his novel’s Mrs. Brown (played by Julianne Moore in the film adaptation), who wants to be more than just a prop for her husband.
This week, Libby and Bill share no scenes together. Instead, she befriends her African-American handyman, Walter (in a storyline similar to yet another Julianne Moore film, Far From Heaven). Walter entertains her at home and teaches her how to tango, which makes her giddy. Caitlin FitzGerald continues her remarkable work here, especially with an utterly delightful reaction to news of a rather pivotal plot twist at the episode’s conclusion.
Besides the irony of the episode title within the presented stories, another theme that coheres the episode is the arts. Several different kinds of culture are used this week to address and reflect the changing tides of the characters on Masters of Sex. One is the aforementioned tune that Vivian dances to, as Dr. Haas watches apprehensively. Another is the delightful tango that Libby watches and tries to imitate – her movement brings Walter inside to insist on teaching her. Meanwhile, the Scullys head to a drive-in movie, at his plea, hoping to relive some of their lost glory by capturing the aura of the location being a ‘hot and heavy’ dating spot. Even as they watch a romance and Barton attests that he would prefer Margaret to Judy Holliday any day, Margaret does not buy this last-resort package of romantic tricks. Their lives are not as easy as a movie character’s.
Speaking of movies, the most important use of art to further the episode is one long, tube-like camera that Bill intrigues a documentarian, Lester, to put inside of Ulysses (the vibrator). Bill wants to astound the scientific community by showing off some of the study’s results with film footage from inside the vagina. Lester tells Bill that he is closer to Hitchcock, an ironic statement since both Dr. Masters and the Master of Suspense were quite the voyeurs. Eventually, Jane becomes the test subject, cheekily telling Lester, “I’m ready for my close-up.”
A couple of side plots are also noteworthy in this episode: the prickly Dr. DePaul, who maintains a chilly opinion of teaching wannabe graduate Virginia, turns out to hiding some secrets of her own – cervical cancer. Another character hiding a secret and who adheres to the irony of the title, is Dr. Langham, who disdains his wife through buying her a vacuum and then turns to spontaneous flings once Margaret agrees to end their short-lived affair.
As Libby learns this week, it takes two to tango. However, several of the characters on Masters of Sex are happy to take their ménages of romantic conquest beyond the traditional tenet of two. Even Bill and Virginia are so casual with each other that they discuss their research in matching blue bathrobes. When Dr. Haas starts listing off his reasons to marry Vivian – the precedence of the prior generation who married young, the scientific likelihood that he will live longer – he clearly does not see the two subjects of the title intertwined either. Even if that is what Sinatra croons.
