Every now and then, a TV show will knock the wind out of you for reasons that are purely coincidental. Writers always aim to have their work be relatable, sure, but sometimes things resonate in a way their creators could have never imagined.
On last night’s Masters of Sex, that moment came when Bill Masters, having just betrayed his own moral code by threatening to publish false data supporting stereotypes about African-American sexuality if a black newspaper editor published an article portraying him as a revolutionary, gazes at a framed “I AM A MAN” sign on his way out the door. The iconic sign’s obviously meant to remind Bill he’s completely in the wrong by calling to mind Civil Rights protests where it was famously carried, but last night it carried a second, much more recent weight; it’s the same sign being used by protestors in Ferguson, Mo. this week. The episode was obviously shot long before a white police officer killed an unarmed black teenager in the St. Louis suburb, but it was stunning to think that something intended as window dressing to remind us of the racial climate during the show’s 1958 setting is still a necessary tool to fight the same hatred 56 years later. How utterly sickening to think that in 2014—in the very same city that Bill Masters spotted that sign—we’re still fighting the same battle.
And, as you might have gathered from the episode’s title, race took center stage this week on Masters of Sex, beginning with the revelation that Dr. Hendricks has banned his staff from participating in the study. When confronted about it by Virginia and Bill, he explains he doesn’t think it’d look right, a white doctor observing African-Americans having sex from behind glass, and he reminds Bill of the stereotypes about African-American sexuality and cites the fact that black men were frequently castrated before being lynched (a fact that, in an awful twist, Bill uses later in his argument with the newspaper editor). Bill and Virginia try to rebel against Hendricks’ wishes by reaching out to an African-American reporter to do a story on the study in the hopes that it will attract some black participants, but when her angle becomes undesirable to Bill (she wants to include his conflicts with the powers-that-be at his past two hospitals and portray him as a revolutionary), he tries to kill the story and we see this new, ugly side to Bill that is surprising and reprehensible even to him. As we’re reminded, “There’s nothing more dangerous than a desperate man.”
Meanwhile, Libby continues to become increasingly awful. She’s taken to watching Robert pick up Coral from the window, “like a Peeping Tom,” as a horrified Bill describes it. He tells her something’s got to change with her relationship with Coral, and he presumably means on Libby’s end, but she of course takes this as an opportunity to do a background check on Robert and use his criminal record (which Coral explains was the result of being antagonized by police) as an excuse to ban him from her property, meaning he can no longer give Coral rides to work. Coral says she’ll arrange for her aunt to pick her up, and when it’s time for her to leave, Libby follows her—around the block, where she sees Robert picking her up, and then all the way home, where she’s caught by him in the lobby of their apartment building. It’s there she learns that Robert is actually Coral’s brother, not her boyfriend. Embarrassed, she fires Coral (via Robert, of course) and breaks down in her car.
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