Well, tonight Bill starts his new job at Buell Green and is thrilled about it, but Ginny not so much, at least at first, when she finds out about it second hand from Libby, who comes over with baby Johnny just to chat. When Ginny meets Bill at the hotel she demands a full contract in writing, seeing how Bill has hopped to three different hospitals in three months and she doesn't have that luxury because of her kids. Bill agrees, but spills the beans that Lillian probably doesn't regard her very highly, because she knows about their "work." Ginny confronts Lillian the next day and the two get into a shouting match about her personal life, as Lillian sees it as a betrayal of working women who sleep with their bosses to get a leg up (pun intended) and Ginny's furious that Lillian is judging her when the affair doesn't affect her work at all. Ginny then storms out of the office, presumably for good. But because she's a decent person, Ginny does still show up to take Lillian to her radiation treatments, and when Lillian passes out in the bathroom at the hospital and must be released to someone, she calls Ginny and tells her she can't work anymore, but also can't afford to be mad at her only friend. Aw.
When Ginny meets Bill in their new office at Buell Green (where the administrator Dr. Hendrix is played by Courtney B. Vance) they find it to be much smaller and more cramped than their quarters at Memorial, and Ginny's sour mood continues, as she asks Bill whether their "participation" in the study is a requirement of the job. Bill at first says no, but then changes his mind and insists that it is. Ginny nods and at their next session in the hotel decides to assert her dominance by demanding he strip down in front of her and masturbate. He slowly and somewhat reluctantly does it, but then seems to get into it, and when Ginny asks what he's thinking about it he confesses it's her. She then caves and makes him get down on his knees and service her, but they very nearly kiss this time too (I think they must be getting there soon, right?)
At the new office the next day the two try to separate their hot affair from their actual study work and Ginny gets busy putting up flyers around the hospital. But the flyers get torn down and they soon find they're having a hard time recruiting both new patients and their old ones, who don't want to come to the all black hospital. One even gets in a fight in the waiting room (which Bill shares with another doctor's patients) and Bill gets clocked in the face when he gets in the middle of it. Ginny wonders whether there's any value in separating the study results of African-American test subjects, if no other reason than to scientifically prove to everyone that there's no difference between them, but Bill is discouraged by all the difficulty they've had by the end of the episode. Dr. Hendrix is undeterred though and gives them both a stirring lecture about the need to force integration on the public, and says that's why he hired the pioneering Bill in the first place. Bill places the task of wooing the patients on Virginia, grudgingly admitting that she's better at some things than he is, and they are both set to go forward, but in the last shot of the episode we see that it was Hendrix himself who ripped down the flyers, clearly not approving of the study either and committed to this for his own agenda of integration above all else.
Meanwhile, in the B-plots tonight, let's start with the one that didn't drive me up a wall. Betty finally gets Gene to stop being mad at her by suggesting they adopt, but then her old lover Helen shows up (hey, it's Sarah Silverman!) and wants to get back into her life somehow. Gene suggests they set her up with his friend Al, but Betty tries everything to dissuade him from this, telling him about her addiction to gambling even, but it's to no avail. When Betty confronts Helen on the street we find out that they were a couple that lived together for many years while she worked as a prostitute but now she's willing to live a lie for the sake of security. Helen's not into that, angry at Betty for jilting her and goes on the double date with them and Al, flirting shamelessly with the man much to Betty's annoyance. Helen then tells the story of the time the two of them bet on a horse at the tracks called Beautiful Betty, and the memory of it brings the two women to tears of laughter, confusing their dates. They then meet in the bathroom and kiss, realizing they can't stop loving each other. So I guess Betty's kind of like the female version of Barton, huh?
Finally, we get to the awful, awful Libby storyline. God, I'm starting to dread this now, since they've apparently insisted on completely assassinating Libby' character by turning her into a horribly racist bitch (when there was no evidence of that in the first season) whose mission in life is to make poor Coral miserable. So, first of all, a man named Robert shows up at Libby's door (the description for the episode actually said it was Coral's brother, but Libby assumes it's her boyfriend and nothing is said about it, so I guess he is?) and kind of shakes her down about forcing Coral's head under the faucet last week. He doesn't say anything that bad really, but Libby is resultingly terrified and immediately tells Coral she has to see less of him. God, what kind of monster are they turning her into? Coral though, takes the chance to get back at Libby by describing in detail how they live together and sleep in the same bed at night, where all the problems of the day just fade away despite his temper, before taunting Libby for her and Bill's separate beds. Libby is cowed by that and tries to get Bill to have hot "makeup sex" with her (doesn't seem to take) and then goes to him about being scared of Robert threatening her. When she admits what she did to Coral, Bill is aghast and says she got off lightly and needs to apologize. So Libby goes to Robert in his car when he pulls up to take Coral home and says she's sorry, but when he thinks she should instead apologize to Coral, she refuses, saying Coral deliberately disobeyed her. Um, what? Robert then tells Coral to get in the car and says this is an example of white people refusing to take responsibility for their own actions. Libby's angry and throws a newspaper at the back of the car as it drives off.
Ok. Couple things. First of all, Libby was never this awful at any point last year, so to me this is clearly an attempt to turn her into a villain so that we can feel free to root for Bill and Virginia instead. That's stupid and totally unnecessary, because everyone knows (or at least the people who watch this show) that Masters and Johnson got together in real life and had this affair for years. That part is a true story, so why can't they just trust that people will accept it anyway without the need to make us hate his wife? Second, the execution of this whole Libby/Coral thing has totally misfired. I'm sorry, but would an 18-year-old maid have ever spoken to her employer like that in the 1950's, taunting her about her sex life, and not gotten immediately fired for it? I appreciate that the black characters on this show aren't victims, as opposed to Mad Men for example, but it still IS the 1950's right? Would anything like this scenario that's playing out between Libby, Coral and Robert actually be taking place? It seems like a massive reach for this to even be happening at all. And it looks like there's more next week, so I guess we have that to look forward to. Great. Other than this one plotline though, good episode. See you guys back here next time!
