‘Masters of Sex’ recap: Bill’s secret action has unintended results

Distraught that an upcoming CBS program won’t do justice to his human sexuality study, Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) secretly sabotages the documentary on the Season 2 finale of Showtime’s “Masters of Sex.”

In Episode 212, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Bill enlists Dr. Barton Scully (Beau Bridges) to leak the findings of a rival sex researcher to a competing network. When CBS discovers it no longer has a scoop, the documentary is shelved.

“A presentation of our work that puts sex back in the closet” is how Bill describes a rough cut of the show, which was sanitized to appease network censors in 1961. “It had all the gravitas of a toothpaste commercial,” he sneers.

Bill’s unilateral decision to torpedo the project has devastating consequences, however.

His research partner/lover Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) was embroiled in a legal battle with her ex-husband George (Mather Zickel), who wants to spend much more time with their children, Henry (Cole Sand) and Tessa (Kayla Madison).

George threatened to portray Virginia in court as an unfit mother who comes home late and is engaged in a longstanding extramarital affair with Bill. So instead of being admired by the public as groundbreaking scientists, Virginia and Bill would be shamed as “sleazy, amoral smut peddlers,” she fears.

Virginia was counting on the documentary to prove the legitimacy of her controversial research -- perhaps even turn Masters and Johnson into household names -- so she could reclaim her parental rights. But because the program won’t air, Virginia’s time with her children is being dramatically slashed.

“My kids, my kids,” Virginia sobs hysterically. “They’re gone!”

“You did tell Virginia you were killing the film?” Barton asks Bill when they meet later for drinks.

“Believe me, if I could take it back,” Bill says remorsefully, adding that he “never meant to hurt Virginia.”

Then Barton takes Bill to task for his bullheaded ambition.

“Blazing ahead like this, always the one-man show, always your terms and your terms only,” Barton says candidly, “well, it’s hell on the people around you. And no picnic for you either, as far as I can tell.”

Barton, a homosexual who eventually revealed his orientation to wife Margaret (Allison Janney), says he knows what it’s like to be “scared to let people in.”

“I took a leap of faith, decided to trust, told her everything,” Barton confides in Bill. “As tough as it’s been, at least we’re in it together.”

As for Bill’s wife, Libby (Caitlin Fitzgerald), she refuses to end her nascent affair with Robert Franklin (Jocko Sims), an official at the Congress of Racial Equality. After Robert returns from a trip to Atlanta in support of jailed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Libby knocks on his door at 2 a.m.

“This has got to stop, you know that,” Robert tells her, insisting he’s sorry about the night they had sex in her home. He regrets it as a “reckless, dangerous” act that “goes against everything we’re working so hard for” in the struggle against racial prejudice.

“What if you did it because you wanted me?” Libby counters. “What if that was the reason?”

Apparently that was the reason, for instantly they’re back in each other’s arms.

“I know that my husband has been having an affair for years,” reveals Libby, who used to pretend it wasn’t happening and that being the mother of two beautiful children was all she needed to be happy.

“And then I met you,” she tells Robert, “and I know that this thing we have, I know that I want it.

“I know I want to feel.”