Jamie Harsip

Content Editor

If you haven’t been keeping up with Masters of Sex, now is the time to do so. The show is really picking up, and you’re going to want to be a part of it; I promise. So, without further ado, here is your recap of this past Sunday’s episode, “Thank You For Coming”!

We open in the midst of an interview between some guy and Dr. Masters. Obviously, the guy is discussing his sex life, specifically that which he has with a specific woman. Something tells me we’ll be seeing more of him later on….

Cut to four days earlier.

Masters and Johnson are initiating some people into their study, and there is quite the range here – young and old, men and women.

Gini gets home that night to one of her ex husbands having sent her babysitter home and treated the kids to a cereal dinner. Awesome. It seems his latest gig was canceled. George – that’s his name – is surprised by how much work Gini does. As she says, she grew up. Gini tells him he’s not spending the night, although surprise surprise, he does. In fact, they have sex. It looks like awesome sex, too, by the way. Although it’s starting to feel like maybe Gini gives a lot of mixed signals when it comes to men.

Meanwhile at the Masters household, William has had a bout of sleepwalking. This includes sleep-turning-on-of-everything-with-an-on-switch. It’s loud, and probably pretty terrifying for Libby. Even more terrifying (for William) is that his mother is coming to stay over that day. Libby seems excited, at least.

In the morning, Gini’s son Henry comes to wake her up and asks her to make pancakes. As it turns out, George decided he would stay overnight after all, and Gini is not pleased. She worries it will make their kids think mommy and daddy are getting back together. Whatever Gini does in her (extremely minimal) spare time, her number one priority is her children. You have to respect that. When Gini tells George to go home, he tells her that he can’t. He is apparently three months behind on rent and wants to know if Gini could lend him some money. She can’t, though; she’s working sixteen-hour days and can barely afford a babysitter for the kids. And George’s response to that is just golden: Why doesn’t Gini let him stay there for a couple of weeks and watch the kids for slightly less than she pays the nanny? Gini is on point when she throws a brush at him and screams that she is not paying him to babysit his own children.

Surprise! Estabrook Masters shows up at her son’s house a few hours early. You can really tell there’s a long and painful history there, just from the way Bill is looking at his mother. He looks so sad, crushed and just torn. There is certainly some unsavory history there between Bill and his mother.

So it looks like Ethan has become a bit of a heartbreaker himself on his quest to get over Gini. He’s in the cafeteria line behind a nurse he apparently stood up, having lied about a surgery he said he was going in on, and he’s served by a woman whose name he gets wrong. It’s Velma, Ethan. Not Selma. She purposely puts his eggs on his tray instead of his plate. The fact that he eats them anyway is kind of gross. Suddenly a cute young girl sits down across from him, a candy striper, based on her outfit. She asks if he remembers her, and of course he lies and says yes, assuming this is yet another woman he’s screwed and forgotten. Seriously, this man is going to end up with diseases if he isn’t careful – although, to be fair, he probably is, given he’s a gynecologist. Anyway, she’s actually Provost Scully’s daughter, who he met at her sixteenth birthday party. And this girl is totally crushing on Ethan, the poor thing. She says one reason she’s volunteering is that her father said he’d buy her a car if she did, and then she seductively asks if he can guess the other reason.

Masters is seeing a patient, who says this baby has to be her last. She says her last doctor didn’t quite understand her when she said that. She says she can’t afford to have another, and she wants the surgery that will tie her tubes. Unfortunately, in those days, in order for a woman to undergo elective surgery like that, she needed her husband’s permission – and a “sterilization committee” to approve it. And it seems pretty clear that she will not be getting her husband’s permission, let alone the committee’s okay. On his way out after the appointment, Masters encounters the woman’s older son, who thinks he’s broken an anatomical model, and he’s panicking. Instead of reassuring the child that it’s okay, Masters is kind of really awkward. Unfortunately, I don’t think he likes children. This probably does not bode well for his future with his pregnant wife. Speaking of Libby, she and his mother come to the hospital to visit. They run into Gini, who is an hour late for work. When the three of them get out of the elevator by Masters’ office he comes out and greets them with a completely sour, “What are you doing here, mother?”

Masters excuses himself when he sees the patient from earlier. He lays it out on the table when he suggests that her not being able to “afford” another child had nothing to do with money. And he is right. The woman wants to leave her husband, whom we can assume is abusive, and she knows she would never be able to do that with three or four children.

That night Gini and Bill have three people lined up for their study, although Gini says the first may be a no-show. Apparently he sounded strange on the phone. Gini goes to see if anyone is there for the study, and lo and behold, it’s George. She is quite literally speechless, and has no choice but to go along with it. George is, by the way, the same man from the very beginning of the episode. I think it’s safe to assume Gini is the woman he was talking about, too. They have a couple of other volunteers, too. Now, evidently the measurements Bill and Gini are taking now are much more, er, thorough than they used to be. They’re measuring the width of their female subjects’ areolas, phallic length, testicle size, and probably a lot more, all throughout the masturbation process.

At the Masters home, Mother Masters is cooking “island chicken” and Libby has Bill set out the place cards for the dinner they’re hosting. Bill is shocked and a little horrified when he finds that not only was Ethan invited, but Gini was, too. He finds out that Libby is trying to set the two of them up, and boy does Bill get awkward. He says Gini isn’t right for Ethan, she’s too old, she’s been divorced, blah blah blah. One of these days, friends. One of these days we’ll get some kind of final straw and Bill Masters is going to explode. There is hardly anything there between Bill and Gini, but damn, I ship it so hard. I digress.

At the dinner party that night, Gini is silently livid and Ethan is his usual emotionally inept self.  But Bill is a whole new kind of awkward with Gini’s kids there. Libby asks Henry what his favorite subject in school is, to which he replies P.E., and the adults laugh. Bill, however, just says that’s not really a subject. It’s so awkward, you guys. Gini attempts to break the awkwardness by asking Essie to tell stories about Bill as a kid. The story starts out funny – Bill had wanted a new pair of trousers, but his parents said he couldn’t until he grew out of his knickers. In retaliation, Bill had cut and hemmed them so they looked too small for him. It sounds funny, and it is, until Bill concludes by telling everyone that his father made him wear those pants until he was fourteen. I think we’re starting to get to the root of his issues with his mother. Meanwhile, Ethan is just downing booze. After dinner, they start to dance. First Libby gets Bill to dance with her, then Libby suggests Ethan and Gini dance. Gini, of course, is not having that, and she asks another man to dance with her. Ethan stands on the wall, drinking. Gini is having fun, taking the lead in her dance. All the while, Bill has his eye on her.

photo courtesy of Showtime

Suddenly Gini’s daughter Tessa comes running into the room and gets Bill’s attention. There seems to have been a bit of an accident in the bathroom. Henry has clogged the toilet and it’s overflowing. In a true testament to Bill’s inability to deal with children, he gets angry, try as he might to suppress it. Suddenly Libby seems to get it – he’s not totally on board with the whole having-a-kid thing.

At the end of the evening, Gini and her children prepare to leave when Ethan stumbles drunkenly towards the door as well. He tries to get Gini and her children to take a ride home from him, but thank god she’s forceful when she declines. It ends up being Bill who drives them home. On the way, he asks Gini if she knew she would be good at being a mother before she had kids. In response, she says she doesn’t know if she even is good at it. It is, as usual, difficult to decipher what exactly Bill makes of that.

Ethan somehow makes it home (and parallel parks perfectly to boot). Vivienne, Provost Scully’s daughter, is there waiting for him. It seems he left a notebook at the table when they were in the cafeteria together. She just wanted to return it, but Ethan invites her in. He’s terrible. But for some reason Vivienne is totally into it. She lets him pour booze over her naked chest – yeah, he’s still boozin’ it up. Gini really did a number on him. Wow. Then the phone rings. Apparently there is a medical emergency he has to attend to, and it involves an OR. He asks Vivienne to give him a ride there. He’s totally wasted, and he’s about to cut open a pregnant woman. Good thing he gets sick and pukes. I assume he won’t be doing any surgery tonight.

The next morning Bill’s mother announces she’s going to put an offer in on a house she saw. She says she’s had enough of living with her sister, who is moody and hard to deal with. This is enough to make Bill snap, and he tells her he honestly didn’t think she had it in her to do something like leave an unfavorable living situation. We see Bill walking through the hospital corridor, intercut with shots of a flashback. His mother is in the kitchen washing dishes, while we hear a young Bill Masters being savagely beaten by his father. All his mother does is turn up the volume on her radio to drown out the noise of her child, who is screaming for help. The surgery he performed was a c-section on the woman from earlier, who wanted her tubes tied. It seems the resurgence of his memories from childhood really had an impact on him, because he decides to go ahead with the tying of the woman’s tubes – with no semblance of permission whatsoever from the husband. In fact, when the woman is in recovery and her husband is there, he doesn’t say anything about it. But when the husband steps out of the room, Bill gives her a small shake of the head that says it all. She thanks him sincerely. Before he leaves, Bill also gives her older son the model he thought he had broken.

photo courtesy of Showtime

Later that day Gini comes into Bill’s office to confess her transgression. She admits that she let her ex-husband participate in the trial, citing his monetary woes as a reason (but not an excuse). She won’t tell Bill the name her ex-husband used, saying that since the date recorded is still sound, he doesn’t need to know. He agrees…but this doesn’t stop him from letting his curiosity get the best of him. We see Bill examining the files on all of his past participants from the study, with a voiceover of him asking them questions that could point to which one was her ex (i.e. if they were married, if they have children, etc.) and finally he remembers one man, who had mentioned how with this particular woman, she would always take charge. He even says she would lead when they went dancing. Given the earlier scene from the Masters’ dinner party, it’s quite clear that this is the absolute giveaway. Bill goes through the confidential files that attach the subject’s name to their ID number, and finds that it’s Walter McAddy, in fact, who is the man he is looking for.

Oh dear. Bill has called George, aka Walter, back for yet another interview. Masters specifically asks about the woman George mentioned in his interview, and how the sex is between them. The way George describes Gini is like she’s some kind of sex goddess. He says this woman is different from other women, she knows herself, she knows what she wants and she asks for it. Bill is listening to the audio from the interview later, watching Gini through the window between his office and the waiting room where her desk is. The interview concludes with George saying, “I’m telling you, doctor; this woman is magic.”

You know, at first I legitimately could not tell how Showtime could possibly make me think those two characters would be a good match (because obviously they’re going to end up together). Gini is bubbly, light, beautiful, and happy; Bill is sour, stressed, serious, and solemn. I didn’t know how it could work, but now I think I do. Bill has already changed Gini, helping her to become a serious scientist. It remains to be seen just how Gini will change Bill. And I can’t wait to see how this show develops.

Be sure to tune in next Sunday to Showtime at 10p.m. for Masters of Sex!

http://www.Twitter.com/PopWrapped
https://pop-wrapped.tumblr.com
http://www.SoundCloud.com/PopWrapped
http://www.Facebook.com/PopWrapped
http://www.Instagram.com/PopWrapped
http://www.Pinterest.com/PopWrapped
http://www.YouTube.com/PopWrapped
https://pop-wrapped.wordpress.com
http://www.PopWrapped.com