Masters of Sex
マスターズ・オブ・セックス
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Masters and Johnson wire up volunteers in a 1950s St Louis hospital and invent sex research.
In 1956, at Washington University in St Louis, the respected fertility specialist William Masters sets out to study what happens in the human body during sex. He hires Virginia Johnson, a former nightclub singer and divorced mother, as his secretary; her ease with people puts the volunteers at ease, and she soon becomes his research partner. When the provost, Barton Scully, shuts the study down, Masters moves it to a brothel, then brings it back by blackmailing Scully, whom he has discovered to be gay. At home Masters lets his wife, Libby, believe she is infertile when the problem is his own low sperm count; she finds out and has a son, Johnny, by artificial insemination. Masters and Johnson begin having sex with each other, telling themselves it is for the study. When their findings are presented, the hospital fires him.
The work becomes an affair, conducted in a hotel across the state line, while Masters moves from hospital to hospital and they finally open a clinic of their own. When he learns that Johnson has been seeing other men he is left impotent for a year, and out of their reconciliation they develop a treatment for sexual dysfunction. Libby, discovering the affair, begins one of her own with a Black man she volunteers alongside in the civil rights movement.
By the third season it is 1965 and their book, Human Sexual Response, has made them famous. A perfume magnate, Dan Logan, invests in the clinic and courts Johnson. Masters launches a programme of sexual surrogates she opposes, and a surrogate's accusation gets them both arrested for prostitution. Libby leaves him. When Logan proposes, Masters finally says he loves Johnson, but she flies to Las Vegas to marry Logan, and he lets her go.
In the fourth season Masters is sent to Alcoholics Anonymous, Johnson comes back from Las Vegas without Logan, and they work apart until she realises she loves him. He takes a plea deal to protect her, and on an undercover visit to a rival clinic in Topeka they finally say it to each other. In the last episode, in 1969, Libby leaves for Berkeley to study law. Scully, who was nearly destroyed by the conversion treatment he once underwent, threatens to discredit Masters if he goes ahead with their new study of converting gay men. Masters marries Johnson at a quick civil ceremony anyway, and the series ends on his stricken face as reporters photograph the newlyweds.
Starring
Michael Sheenas William Masters
A brilliant, emotionally closed fertility specialist who stakes his career on studying human sexual response.
William Masters’s story
Masters sets out to study the human body during sex. He hires Virginia Johnson, makes her his research partner and sleeps with her, both telling themselves it is for the study. At home he lets Libby believe she is infertile when the problem is his own low sperm count. Fired after presenting the findings, he tells Virginia he needs her; learning of her other men leaves him impotent, and from that they build a treatment. He starts a surrogate programme behind her back, is arrested with her for prostitution and loses Libby; when Dan Logan proposes to Virginia, he declares his love and lets her go. Sent to Alcoholics Anonymous, he takes a plea deal to protect her, and in Topeka they say they love each other. At their quick civil wedding, as reporters photograph them, he looks stricken.
Lizzy Caplanas Virginia Johnson
A divorced former nightclub singer without a degree who becomes Masters's research partner, lover and finally his wife.
Virginia Johnson’s story
Hired as Masters's secretary, Virginia puts his volunteers at ease, becomes his partner in the research and sleeps with him for the study while seeing other men. She quits when he offers to pay her for her part in what he calls his study, comes back, and follows him from hospital to hospital until they open their own clinic. Their book makes them famous. She opposes his surrogate programme, is arrested with him on a surrogate's false charge, and, when the investor Dan Logan proposes, flies to Las Vegas to marry him. She comes back unmarried, spirals, and realises she loves Masters; he rebuffs her until an undercover trip to a rival clinic in Topeka, where they say it. At their quick civil wedding she is glad to let the reporters take pictures.
Caitlin FitzGeraldas Libby Masters
Masters's wife, deceived about her fertility and his affair, who slowly builds a life of her own.
Libby Masters’s story
Libby wants a baby and believes the fault is hers until she learns it is her husband's low sperm count; she has a son, Johnny, by artificial insemination. When she realises Masters is having an affair with Virginia, she volunteers with the civil rights group CORE and begins an affair with Robert, a Black man she works alongside. Later, depressed, she has an affair with a neighbour, Paul. When Masters is arrested she leaves him; after they try again, she takes a job and begins to think about law school. In the last episode she tells him she is moving to Berkeley to study law, declares that the days of organising her life around a man are over, and drives off with the children in a van.
Beau Bridgesas Barton Scully
The university provost and Masters's old friend, a closeted gay man trapped in his marriage and the attitudes of his time.
Why it matters
Masters of Sex is about the moment desire became something medicine could watch. Its protagonists measured what happens in the body during sex when a doctor could lose his post for asking, and Virginia Johnson, a woman without a degree, did work that Masters at first treated as his alone. The series is loosely based on Thomas Maier's biography and open about its inventions; Robert Kolodny, who worked with the real Masters and Johnson for decades, warned students not to take it as fact. What it dramatises truthfully is the gap between knowing about sex and knowing how to love: two people who chart the body's every response and cannot say what they feel. Its last turn is deliberately uncomfortable. They marry just as they set out to convert gay men, over the objection of Barton Scully, a gay man who was nearly destroyed by exactly such a cure.