This week on Showtime’s very upsetting show Masters of Sex, we revisited the only lesbian couple, office assistant Betty Moretti (Annaleigh Ashford) and her pregnant girlfriend Helen (Sarah Silverman). Are you still watching Masters of Sex? Is anyone? I feel like the only person who can’t stop watching this show, even though every week it makes me want to throw myself off the Park Chancery Hotel. Our girl Betty’s been through a lot on this show, first introduced as the madam of a brothel Dr. Masters conducted research in, then as the plucky secretary of the clinic, and more recently as Helen’s devoted girlfriend. Ever since she was first introduced, it’s been obvious that Betty can’t catch a break, but she’s clever, funny and resourceful – easily one of the most endearing characters in the show’s repertoire.
Masters of Sex has followed Betty and Helen through the trials and tribulations that ostensibly would plague a lesbian couple during the time period of the show (are we still in the 1960s? Hard to say!). Unable to commit to each other in any kind of legal or even particularly public way, Betty and Helen attempted to forge relationships of convenience with men, with heart-wrenching results. Ultimately, the pair ended up living together and fellow homosexual Dr. Scully even helped Helen become pregnant! These guys were really defying the odds! Last week, Helen came clean to her parents about her relationship with Betty and although her parents didn’t take the news well, it seemed enormously ambitious for a show about queer people in such a conservative landscape. I don’t know why I thought this might end well.
When we meet Betty and Helen this week, they’re having a tender moment in bed as they adorably fake-argue about the gender of their imminent new addition. Helen had a dream about her now-estranged parents and she’s feeling oddly optimistic about the whole thing! “They still rejected me, rejected us… but when they left, I waved goodbye and they blew me a kiss! And it was really OK, and it wasn’t sad anymore, ’cause when I turned around, you and our baby girl were standing there and that’s when I knew how happy I was, how happy I’m gonna be – just you and me and Sweet Pea. A family. Aren’t we lucky?” It’s very dreamy and very obviously a setup for everything to be terrible forever.
When Helen finally goes into labor, they go to none other than esteemed Dr. Scully, who is much more understanding of Helen and Betty’s situation than any other doctor would be, but Betty still isn’t allowed in the delivery room. It’s mentioned a couple of times that Helen had quite a lot of blood when her water broke, but all the (male) doctors are like, “LOL that could be anything, probably everything’s fine. Why don’t you have a seat and read a ladies’ magazine and we’ll come get you if anything changes?” To his credit, Dr. Scully is charming and reassuring when he informs Helen that the baby is breech and odds are good he’ll need to perform a C-section. Betty hovers nervously in the waiting room, in no way comforted by the fact that her partner is being operated on by one of the best doctors in the business, a close family friend who has her best interests at heart. She knows she is a queer woman on television. She knows what’s coming.
Dr. Scully brings Betty and Dr. Masters in just as the baby is born, and congratulations – it’s a girl, and she’s healthy and fine! However, Helen is SHOCKINGLY in bad shape, and even though Dr. Masters scrubs up to help out, even the two best doctors in the entire known universe could not save her. Helen dies of disseminated intravascular coagulation; she bleeds out on the operating table despite her doctors’ best efforts. While still reeling from this news, Betty visits the nursery in order to finally hold the daughter that she’s been kept from through antiquated laws and red tape. Instead, she sees Helen’s estranged parents holding her child, and a nurse sternly tells her that the family have made it very clear that she is not welcome. After struggling constantly to create a family for herself and Helen, Betty is left with no girlfriend, no daughter and seemingly no hope. It’s a devastating turn for a beloved character.
According to Masters of Sex creator Michelle Ashford (via Entertainment Weekly), the character of Helen existed mainly so that Betty (a former sex worker) would have a stable relationship. “What we wanted to show is ultimately that Betty and Helen were women of substance and commitment to one another,” she explained, “They were trying to do something in an age when there was hardly any roadmap for this.” Apparently, Betty will have a much more involved story going forwards in season four, though it won’t all be tears and misery (just mostly that!): “So what we’re going to watch is how she [Betty] actually subverts a system that has nothing but roadblocks and actually finds a way to end up with the most bizarre family imaginable.” Sounds fun!
Showtime, you did not have to kill Helen in order to give Betty substance. This was cruel.
