Getting To The Bottom Of The Bottle: 25 Best Bottle Episodes

Photo: Showtime

Masters of Sex – “Fight”

This exquisite episode of Masters of Sex gets to the heart of the push/pull of the main characters by trapping them in a hotel room with little else to distract from their tumultuous discoveries.

Framed by a historical boxing match playing on the television, Bill and Virginia offer more connectedness in this one second season episode than in all the eps leading up to this one. The conversations span from their fake back stories, concocted to cover their extra-marital affair, to sad and painful revelations about their respective pasts.

Although most of the episode takes place in a hotel room while they wear little else than bathrobes and lingerie, the sex scenes are not the most stimulating moments of the hour. Watching these two characters who have, until now, kept each other at arm’s length emotionally, if not physically, find other ways of intimacy with each other was among the show’s high points.

As far as bottle episodes go, this was pretty standard, but it never became tedious or trite. What was happening between the two characters was so mesmerizing that you never missed the other characters or change of scenery. They were enough to sustain the taut drama of the deepening feelings of the two.