When they were on the bus back from the Knoxville medical conference, Lillian told Gini about the fact that she had cancer, and then pointedly said she'd need someone to "carry on the work" after she was gone, and asked Gini if she knew someone who'd be good for that (after having told her what an awesome employee she…

Her doctor said that the cancer had metastasized to her brain in episode 2.

Sorry, yes, it's late and I thought that was implicit in what I wrote. Exactly what you said.

It was a combination of jealousy and feeling betrayed because Gini turned out to be one of "those" women that Lillian has always told herself she's hated because they depend more on another person to get them where they want to go than themselves.

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder about that too, but I think that in season one, Libby was banking all of her hopes and dreams on a baby which had yet to pee in her eyes. There's a difference between stress before and after a complication like introducing a human being into your life and marriage.

I dunno, even though they're screwing each other on the regular, it still doesn't feel like their relationship (in all aspects—sexual as well as professional) is at all settled on any kind of foundation, and that's not sustainable long-term.

It seems to stem from her expectations about having a baby seriously not matching up with the reality—not only has her husband *not* bonded with this baby that she was so sure would fix everything, he's become even *more* detached from her, and he's assaulting people and constantly gone, to boot.

I feel like the season is dropping a lot of hints in these 4 episodes so far that Bill's inner life (beyond the obviousness of assaulting his boss) is spiraling wildly out of control—he's shown pouring himself drinks more frequently, and the near fall to pieces he had when Libby exploded at him felt close to a panic…

I really hope the show reveals even more, because he had some really surprising experiences, like the fact that he flew untested airplanes during the war for extra tuition money (there's that self-reliance coming into play). Or that he almost died the one and only time he tried walking along his plane wing before…

You make an interesting point, although I don't see the episode pushing for Bill as a saint, necessarily. He's more sympathetic, but he does "lose" at the end. One might argue that he has a bit of halo-glow just from *trying* the response Gini advocates for when she appeals to him through the guise of talking about…

It seemed fitting with what little we got of his character, though—a dominating hyper-masculine male looking forward to a son he'd mold into another version of himself. For that son to be possessed of something ambiguous is to be less than male, since the default gender is male, and then there's the question of what…

I think the people who have a problem getting behind Bill as a character in that sense maybe are thrown off-guard by the fact that he doesn't really fit the "power fantasy anti-hero" archetype. Because this is a prestige drama, people are expecting that, and for Bill to both display inner brokenness and at the same…

"As a personal power fantasy, Bill Master's life just doesn't work."

But "Bill is a horrible person" is never brought up in the context of Libby—it's always about things that haven't happened yet in the chronology of the show, that are decades away, even.

Every little detail in their faces when Bill went to put the bracelet back on her was so fucking perfect—he started out not enjoying or seeing the point of the roleplaying, trying to be normal and just using it as a simple backstory, to finding it freeing. I rewatched the episode and realized that Bill noticeably,…

"[T]hose who condemn Bill Masters (as they're always eager to do) seem to forget that everyone—everyone—is a product of an environment, and whenever your environment tells you to be something you're not on the basis of "this is how the WORLD is," that's going to fuck you up but good."

This episode marked the first time that we've ever heard Bill actually *laugh*. He's scoffed, chuckled, kind of mimicked the sound in the past, but he has never outright found something funny enough to laugh at.

Interesting that you saw Gini looking out for Number One in Bill's new office—I got a different impression from that conversation with Barb, namely that here was someone yearning to feel competent and settled in a confusing and somewhat chaotic situation who didn't deserve to have her job yanked out from under her…

"I was a little disappointed that there was not a direct effect to the revelation Margaret made to Bill, I expected him to be a little more shaken up, even outside."

The real Libby never seemed to have much ambition for a career—all her energies were directed toward being a perfect mother to her children, *especially* after she started getting suspicious that something was going on between Bill and Gini.