Change is challenging, and this is a show about change.
5
By Shooshie
This is a very unusual show, and there will be widely divergent opinions about it, because it blurs the traditional lines of sex, of TV, and of the viewer’s part in the story. Yes, that’s you. This show is about a man and a woman who watched people have sex, and made a science of it while enduring criticism and ridicule from those who didn’t understand what they were doing. If it were ONLY about that, then this would be, essentially, Natl. Geographic’s “Animal Kingdom.” But this goes further, for it’s about the man himself, and his wife. And it’s about his assistant and her kids. And it’s about all the things they did wrong and right.
And there is where it gets weird for you; for you see, it’s about you, too. It makes you squeamish, because when you watch them watch others, you realize that you are watching them. But you can’t dissociate yourself from them as you would with “Animal Kingdom,” because there isn’t a steely narrator to tell you why this is interesting. Instead, Masters goes home to his wife, and you immediately realize that they have problems. Maybe YOU’VE had such problems. Or maybe you have known someone who has. Maybe you overcame them; maybe not. But from the beginning, you see that this is a guy who may not be able to overcome his personal problems.
Then you see that as a scientist he’s a superman. (and if you don’t make the connection, there are some comics that help the connection-challenged) So, this isn’t just any ordinary man, or woman. And for that reason, this show suddenly becomes very important in its depiction of science at its best (and sometimes most vulnerable), and its depiction of exceptional people working out their problems.
Then there’s you. They’ve blurred all those sexual values and boundaries that you consider normal to you, and that’s uncomfortable. But if it feels uncomfortable, chances are you NEED those lines to be blurred so that you can reevaluate them and grow out of the rut that society has put us in. Interestingly, that’s exactly what his study was about. And it’s about time that people find out that Masters & Johnson changed our perceptions of sex, thereby changing the world for everyone, not just scientists. They had begun to be forgotten. New ruts were beginning to form. This show, then, confronts YOU directly and squarely where you need it most: understanding why society’s sexual mores and traditional ruts, and even new non-traditional stalagmitism — the tendency for wrongheaded thinking to become standard and to control people because they don’t think about it for themselves — act as a shield behind which we hide our awkwardness and ignorance rather than learning about it the way you’d learn about reading, writing, science, math, and history, so that you won’t have to feel awkward and ignorant.
This show, then, is finally bringing directly to you the responsibility of making judgments of your own and challenging the traditional straitjackets of society. The show is vulnerable where WE are vulnerable. More than any show I’ve ever seen, this show breaks down the 4th wall of drama and enters the audience. You are sitting right there with them, feeling all their humanity in all its forms, because you’ve been there before, behind those shields. Now the shields are down.
And, it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that to do this requires the best writers and actors in the business. You forget that this is TV. It feels like it’s in your living room, and that in a moment they’re going to turn to you and say “but what do YOU think?” And you know what? They just might. And if they do, you’d better have an answer. So let the show provoke you to think, to reconsider everything, and I mean everything. Drop your shields —political, religious, educational, class, and aesthetic — and start figuring out what you think about everything this show puts in front of you. Not judging them; but judging yourself. Ask yourself WHY you feel that way. This is a very different program, and you won’t come away unchanged. No, you can try, but I promise you that you won’t. But don’t worry; this is the stuff from which we grow up and mature about life. Growth generally goes one way: up. Good luck.
Whatever you do, don’t miss it.
