Our masters of sex take on Showtime's new series

"Masters of Sex," a series on the pioneering sexual research done by Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson begun in the 1950s, debuts Sunday night on Showtime. Romance columnists Steve & Mia previewed the first two episodes.

Steve: Because of the subject matter, I was concerned that Showtime would fill a series about serious scientific research with frequent and gratuitous sex scenes.

Mia: That's exactly what they did, Steve.

Steve: Thank goodness!

Mia: The show makes the point that Masters was clueless about female sexuality until he secured a female research partner.

Steve: He was stunned to learn that women sometimes fake orgasms. Back then, the male ego couldn't imagine such a thing.

Mia: It still can't. Nothing's changed.

Steve: One of my takeaways is something I've long suspected. Women know more about sex than men, although society doesn't want to hear that.

Mia: I don't know if it's that women know so much more about sex. But we do know when it's not right.

Steve: Masters was right to push sexual research. Ignorance is harmful and, in the patriarchal society of the 1950s, it was women who suffered most. Of course, he got all kinds of resistance from above. The dean (Beau Bridges) telling him his study would be seen as smut "and you will be labeled a pervert."

Mia: Men suffered, too. I'm thinking of that scene in the second episode where the young doctor wants a nurse to go down on him, but she won't because she thinks oral sex is gross. So, intercourse was OK, but not oral sex.

Steve: It was a self-conscious, unenlightened era.

Mia: Speaking of self-conscious, did you get the idea that Masters was a sexual prude in terms of his own body? I'm thinking about an early scene that shows him very mechanically making love to his wife. I was, like, "Dude, that's all you got?"

Steve: He didn't even take his clothes off. Just unzipped. And no foreplay at all. For a scientist, he sure has a lot to learn.

Mia: The show makes the 1950s look like the dark ages. Was it really that jacked up in terms of sex?

Steve: I've told you many times that sex didn't exist until my generation invented it in the late 1960s. With some help from Masters and Johnson's book, of course.

Mia: You baby boomers take credit for everything.

Steve: Another sad story of the 1950s is that women blamed themselves if they couldn't get pregnant - as Masters' wife did, even though he had a low sperm count. Men were never at fault.

Mia: I kept wanting her to challenge him and say, "Dude, maybe it's you who's shooting blanks." What was up with that? And how about that pathetic scene in the second episode, when she starts touching herself because she thinks it might turn the good doctor on? You could clearly see she wasn't into it.

Steve: Very sad and so tragic that talking frankly about sex was such a taboo.

Mia: So do you think you'll keep watching the show? I would if I had Showtime.

Steve: Bridges, Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan are terrific. Plus the high-minded science reduces our guilt at watching attractive people making love. Assuming you don't mind seeing them do it while hooked up to a half-dozen electrodes.

Steve & Mia have seen what the fuss is all about. You can, too. Watch the entire first episode here.