Masters of Sex: “Monkey Business”
“Hard to miss the metaphor, isn’t it?”
That’s Jane’s friend Keith, who is impotent, stating the obvious on this week’s Masters of Sex after his car won’t start in the parking lot and Bill rescues him with jumper cables. It’s a hamfisted scene that, unfortunately, sets the tone for the rest of “Monkey Business,” and calling attention to it doesn’t help things. You can almost hear the writers patting themselves on the back for that one. Get it?? The joke is funny because, like his car, his penis doesn’t work, and Bill has to fix it.
Of course, Bill is sympathetic to Keith because he too struggled with impotency and was “saved” by Virginia. So when he finds out Keith is single, he’s willing to make an exception to his own “couples-only” rule—the same one he refuses to bend to artificially inseminate a single woman (more on that later)—provided Keith can find a surrogate girlfriend to do the sensual touching exercises with him that will lead to his cure. Lucky for Keith, Jane is more than willing to volunteer; she tells her husband Lester it’s because she believes in the work so much, but she seems just a little too eager to hop into bed with her theater bud. Lester can’t say no, however, when she brings up his own impotence (which was caused by her dumping him for a Hollywood director years ago). It seems like “Hey, remember when I hurt you so badly you couldn’t get an erection for years? That’s why you need to let me have sex with my friend” wouldn’t exactly be a strong argument, but Lester’s a giant pushover, so now he probably stands to lose his wife to this Keith character because he, like Bill, can’t say no to “the male struggle.”
The female struggle is another story. We watch this week as Betty and Helen weigh their options when it comes to having a baby; this is the ‘60s, so of course a lesbian couple is not allowed to adopt or be artificially inseminated, and on paper, this is an important storyline—a reminder of why Bill and Virginia’s work is so important—but its execution feels goofy and illogical. They sneak into the office at 2 a.m. to steal donor sperm, which Betty will inseminate Helen with, using a catheter. Is Bill just not gonna notice the missing sperm? Does Helen really trust her girlfriend, who is a receptionist with no medical training, to poke around her cervix and somehow know how to successfully inseminate her? Her one hang-up is that they don’t have enough information about the sperm donors to choose whose is best, so Betty decides they should pay a visit to Austin (who is now a resident orthopedist at a strip club, because that is apparently something that exists) and ask him to be their donor. It seems like nothing more than a misguided attempt by the writers to get Austin back on the show and give him something to do. Why would Betty, who has been out to Bill for pretty much the entire time she’s known him, beat around the bush and ask him indirectly about inseminating a “single” woman rather than ask him point-blank if he’d help her have a baby with her girlfriend? Is Bill really so coldhearted that he’d say no to someone he’s known and worked with for over a decade at this point?