The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

The University of Vermont's Independent Voice Since 1883

The Vermont Cynic

Characters fleshed out

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“Catherine,” this week’s episode of Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” proved to be another excellent installment of a show that’s starting to get a handle on the emotional depth of its characters. 

 It was much less focused on the research at the epicenter of the show and rather explored the emotional lives of the three protagonists.

Virginia, Bill and his wife, Libby, all end up in some level of despair by the episode’s end. 

Virginia experiences what many a divorced mother must go through-her son is fed up with her long work hours and wants to run away and live with his deadbeat father. 

Libby must deal with her miscarriage while Bill predictably shuts down. 

The performances in the episode were all spectacular. I’ve been impressed all season with Caitlin Fitzgerald’s performance as Libby, a stereotypical 1950s housewife with a rather uncommon emotional honesty. 

Here her misery for both her lost baby and Bill’s inability to comfort or commiserate with her-to act like a husband, the only thing she really wants-is the most heartbreaking part of a relatively melancholy episode.

Bill, of course, responds in the only way he is capable: leaving the room to tend to the pragmatics of the situation. He even goes through performing the surgery himself with only minimal hints at his mental and emotional state. 

It’s only when Virginia tries to push him to lay off the research for a few days that he breaks down, forcing her eyes shut so she doesn’t see him crying. Here we’re presented with a man who’s so profoundly insecure that he must see even expressing grief over the death of his unborn daughter as a sign of weakness. 

The series so far has made the oncoming progress of the time period, namely women’s issues and the sexual revolution, a major theme, and I think here it’s adding yet another facet to that: repressive expectations of manhood. 

Virginia’s scenes with her son manage to be almost as devastating as Bill and Libby’s heartbreak without feeling trivial. 

My only issue is that I don’t know what the show is trying to say about Ethan. 

He has the least conviction of all the characters, with serious violent patterns and a pathetic sense of self-pity, but he seems to be almost well meaning when handling the situation with Virginia’s son. I hope he doesn’t eventually direct his vindictiveness to the children. 

It didn’t move forward the research much at all, but “Catherine” was the strongest human story the show has told so far.

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Characters fleshed out