In short, Masters of Sex is bad. No, worse than that — it’s boring.

It’s a boring show with a tragic ending. Don’t tell the writers, of course. To them, the story ends with liberation, with the defeat of the patriarchy, and with great sex for everybody.

But for millions in the real world, the story ends with grief, heartbreak, and a baby-momma sitting at home with three kids by two baby-daddies, with one late on child support and the other occasionally abusive. It ends with a bankrupt nation struggling to support an underclass whose salient characteristic is the very liberation from the stifling bonds of family that Masters of Sex so repetitively skewers.

And in that bankrupt, heartbroken real world, what do the intellectual and moral heirs of Masters and Johnson have to say to those baby-mommas at home? Cheer up. You could have a husband, an intact home, and a life untainted by the agony and guilt of abortion, but — hey — in the bad old days the orgasms were faked.