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Even to someone who’s bad at taking notice of a lot of production design in film and TV, Bill Masters looks wrong with a regular tie instead of a bow tie. Of course, when he’s put in front of a camera, everything about him feels off. The man’s already extremely uncomfortable in his own skin, and the task of explaining his work to an audience of millions is daunting, to say the least. And that’s before the considerations of national television come into play — censorship (and lots of it), having to “dumb down” his talk without sounding prurient, and most troubling, having to use “creative reenactment” to fill out the story. Bill is obsessed with even the most minute details of how the study is perceived, to the point where even the slightest chance that the public could be misled about it sets him off.

It seems this is the year creative time skips became an unexpected fashion in television. Both True Detective and Fargo pulled off the unprecedented move of jumping forward in time in the middle of an episode, and now Masters of Sex has one-upped them both by performing several jumps in the same episode! My knowledge of TV history is far from comprehensive, but I can’t think of any other show that’s done something like this before (except for a few episodes of The Simpsons, in which time is a… malleable concept, to say the least). Of course, multiple series have ended on greatest hits montages in their final episodes (Six Feet Under, for instance), but to my knowledge, no one has plopped an episode like this into the middle of a season.

In case you haven’t already scuttered over to Google for quickie research, “Kyrie Eleison” means “Lord have mercy” in Greek. A bit of an on-the-nose name for an episode about people having to put up with all manner of off-kilter bullplop, but it works. While steeped in an unfortunate sophomore episode downturn after the premiere, this was still a good week. The show is still shifting gears as it maneuvers the leads into the place they’ll need to be to re-start the sex study.

“Parallax” is the difference in an object’s appearance, depending on the position from which one observes it. One thing won’t look the same from the points of view of two people looking at it from different angles. The season premiere of Masters of Sex showcases this phenomenon with a scene that directly follows the end of last season’s finale. After Bill makes his anguished declaration that he “needs” Gini, they go inside, have sex, and then she breaks things off with Ethan over the phone. We see it first from Bill’s perspective, and then from Gini’s, which reveals that it’s their work she’s choosing, not Bill, over Ethan. Later, Bill claims that he too considers their sexual relationship “part of the work” and not an affair. Which does not dovetail at all with the emotions he displayed when he said he needed her, nor their closeness in bed.

Once upon a time, it may very well have been possible to see all of the great television that aired in North America in a calendar year. For most of us, that time is over. From the ever-growing list of networks supplying quality programming to the advent of digital content providers smuggling in new and …

Masters of Sex, Season 1, Episode 12: “Manhigh” Written by Michelle Ashford Directed by Michael Dinner Airs Sundays at 10pm ET on Showtime – Project Manhigh was a primitive pre-astronaut experiment that sent men into the stratosphere in balloons; it’s all kinds of appropriate that this tentative step towards full-blown space exploration in a principal …

…the Homeland writers really handled the conclusion of Brody’s story with grace and have set the stage for next season in a way that ought to make people’s ears perk up instead of elicit more groans.

Masters of Sex, Season 1, Episode 11: “Phallic Victories” Written by Amy Lippman Directed by Phil Abraham Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on Showtime As the first season of Masters of Sex draws to a close, it’s worth taking stock of the series’ considerable contribution to the televisual landscape, even for those among us (myself …

After what will probably go down as the best episode of the season last week, Homeland returns with a much less exciting but structurally sound penultimate episode.

Masters of Sex, Season 1, Episode 10: “Fallout” Written by Sam Shaw Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter Airs Sundays at 9pm ET on Showtime – It seems to be a requirement of popular fictions set in times of war that, at some point, the looming threat of total annihilation brings interpersonal tension to the surface. …

Maybe, by default, calling “Good Night” the most suspenseful episode of the season carries less weight than it should. So, to state it more clearly, “Good Night” is a fantastic individual episode of both Homeland and television in general.

Homeland, Season 3: Episode 9 – “One Last Time” Written by Barbara Hall Directed by Jeffrey Reiner Airs Sunday nights at 9 on Showtime From its ominous title to how several characters come out and just say how much Saul’s new play feels like a suicide mission, “One Last Time” sets the stage for what …

Officially two-thirds through its current season, Homeland is pretty much back to where it was before a spiraling second season finish: some great espionage and character beats here and there, some questionable plotlines on the table and a whole lot of confidence that the story it is telling is something viewers are invested in seeing unfold. Of course, some viewers are not interested. Others have checked out completely. But for those who took the third episode from this season, “Tower of David,” with restrained optimism, maybe things are on the right track to getting paid off. It’s less of a stretch to convince us that Brody still belongs on this show than, say, to convince us that The Governor still belongs on The Walking Dead. And even though neither is particularly convincing given that each series can stand up without these characters, it’s at least interesting to see how Brody is being reintegrated and why. When Saul comes face-to-face with the man at the end of “A Red Wheelbarrow,” it’s less shocking and/or affecting than it probably should be. That said, the scene works on the level that Saul is owning up to his conceived mistakes and putting Carrie through hell, which adds more color to Saul in a season that has revolved around him.

Characters on Masters of Sex are prone to syntactically ambiguous pronouncements. In “All Together Now,” this one stands out: “I’m not discussing my sex life with you.” Those words pass between William and Virgnia, who quite suddenly fold themselves into their own study with little fanfare. Actually, no fanfare whatsoever: in the episode’s opening seconds, they are literally mid-coitus, and apparently not for the first time. The ostensible central couple of the series has made a serious move into practice, and though we see the moment they make that decision (the previous episode’s final scene), we skip the rest of the foreplay and get right in on the action.

Homeland, Season 3: Episode 7 – “Gerontion” Written by Chip Johannessen Directed be Carl Franklin Airs Sunday nights at 9 on Showtime Having passed over the halfway point of the season and looking at the state of Homeland last week, “Gerontion” is a great look at what an individual episode of this series can do when it …

As Masters of Sex continues to grow and evolve, what’s increasingly clear is its clear affection for (and sly subversion of) classic Hollywood melodrama. That connection is made very explicit in “Brave New World,” whose two key motifs are the theories of Sigmund Freud and the novel (and subsequent film adaptation) Peyton Place.
If anything, “Brave New World” too prominently pushes those motifs. All of a sudden, every character is bringing up, questioning or outright mocking Freud’s theories on female and male sexuality. To make Freud’s work such a prominent issues only makes sense; after all, his influence had barely waned even two decades after his death, but the teleplay is a little too insistent on making that omnipresence clear. A little subtlety goes a long way, and the strangest thing about Masters of Sex is that it seems to understand that on a number of fronts, while being blaringly obvious on others.

Homeland, Season 3: Episode 6 – “Still Positive” Written by Alexander Cary Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter Airs Sunday nights at 9 on Showtime Now that Homeland is officially halfway through its third season and is more than an episode removed from its major early twist, it is worth looking at “Still Positive” as not just …

After a mostly averse critical reaction to last week’s “Game On,” Homeland returns this week with a more recognizable entry in the series that looks and feels like it could have come from the earlier version of this series that viewers enjoyed for the first season and a half. There is the traditional espionage sequence – the Yoga Play that gives the episode its title – accompanying some smoke and mirrors fare surrounding our big bad (Javadi). Even though those familiar Homeland trappings are there, though, they mostly fall short because of how well the series has done this kind of stuff in the past.

One of the cornerstones of the Golden Age (or Second or Third or Umpteenth Golden Age – take your pick) of television lies in an individual episode’s ability to convey a thematic throughline without being too on-the-nose about it. Series like Deadwood, The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos and many more manage to convey motifs through means other than direct address, whether that involves allusion, visual connectivity, performance tics, or other, less obvious factors. As Masters of Sex continues to find its feet, its ideas about how to form an episode’s thesis continues to evolve, and “Catherine” will likely go down as an important turning point in that evolution.

Despite the wink-wink, nudge-nudge titling, “Thank You For Coming” is likely the gravest episode of Masters of Sex yet, concerned as it is with male abuses of power and privilege (not to mention outright physical abuse). The best thing the series has going for it right now is that it’s able to pursue its themes in multiple directions – even through the spectrum of a single character.

Homeland, Season 3: Episode 4 – “Game On” Written by James Yoshimura and Alex Gansa Directed by David Nutter Airs Sunday nights at 9 ET on Showtime For all the grief that Homeland has been getting, “Game On” serves as an excellent turning point for the season and both retroactively elevates the material from the first …

The title “Standard Deviation” more obviously refers to William Masters’s chance encounters with homosexual men, who provide his latest ethical and moral hiccups in pursuing sexuality scientifically, but it also works to demarcate the episode as being the precise point Masters of Sex decides to make a clean break from history and chart a potentially very different path for its characters. I won’t go into too many specifics for fear of potential future-series spoilers, but it’s already clear that Michelle Ashford is setting out to use Masters and Johnson as more of a loose framework to probe big ideas about societal relationships to sexuality than strict historical portraiture.

With the return of Brody to Homeland, there’s a lot at stake without even addressing how effective his incorporation into “Tower of David” is. If you look elsewhere on TV, you’ll find another series that begins its new season dealing with the temporary absence of an important character – The Governor on The Walking Dead. In both circumstances, these characters were used well last year at certain points, but were also used rather poorly at other points, culminating in season finale departures that raised a lot of questions (such as “Do we buy into this whole Carrie/Brody relationship?” and “Is Brody even a necessary part of this series? Are any of the Brody family members?” and “Is there any point in letting the The Governor live?” and “Was there a point in building up all that conflict between Woodbury and the prison if it was going to remain unresolved?”).