'Masters of Sex' baby-making, hate-watching 'True Detective'

SUMMER TV used to be like summer books: easy on the eyes, easy on the brain.

There are still plenty of places to escape - CBS' "Zoo," anyone? - but TV's lately been digging deeper, with shows like Lifetime's revealing "UnReal," USA's dark "Mr. Robot" and a revitalized "Tyrant" on FX.

So, while I'm not losing sleep over the animals attacking on CBS, I do have a few questions about other summer shows:

* Have the writers of Showtime's "Masters of Sex" lost faith in their main characters?

One of the most intriguing things about the show, now in its third season, is that the things that seem the least believable often turn out to be true.

If only the made-up stuff were as interesting.

"Masters" isn't a documentary. Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan look nothing like the real William Masters and Virginia Johnson, whose relationship may have been kinky but who were more likely to be mistaken for Sunday-school teachers than pioneering sex researchers.

The show takes a fluid approach to time. The July 19 episode, in which a royal couple came to Masters for fertility help, was clearly drawn from the sad story of the shah of Iran and his queen, Soraya, who had consulted Masters, but nearly a decade earlier.

That's all fine.

What I don't get is why a show for adults is suddenly so interested in children.

Let the record - and the Thomas Maier book on which the show is ever more loosely based - reflect that Masters and Johnson each had two children.

Somehow, though, they've each ended up with three, Johnson the more intrusively. That July 19 episode also included Virginia's almost entire pregnancy, a shotgun marriage to her ex-husband George (Mather Zickel) and a labor and delivery, none of which ever happened.

All so Bill could try (and fail) to run the clinic for a few months without her? Or so we could look forward to another child who might someday declare Virginia "the worst mom ever"?

Unlike the teenage pharaoh in Spike's "Tut," whose real life probably wasn't eventful enough for a three-night miniseries, Masters and Johnson had stories worth telling.

Yet, from the beginning of the season, which began with a time jump that left Virginia's first two kids (clearly labeled as fictional by Showtime) just grown up enough to be dangerous, it's felt as this '60s show might have a touch of "Mad Men" envy.

There's only one Sally Draper. (And one Kiernan Shipka.) Let's accept no substitutes. And leave "Masters of Sex" to the adults.

* Why are so many of us hate-watching HBO's "True Detective"?

No one's forcing anyone to watch. (Apologies if you're enjoying it.) We're too far into the season to expect Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey to show up and save the day. Or fix the dialogue.

And stop blaming Vince Vaughn. He didn't write that stuff.

It's an anthology series. Next year will be different. Maybe we'll love it. Or learn how to leave it.

* How much does "Tyrant" need its American characters at this point?

FX's Mideast drama has been stronger in its second season, getting out of the palace and into the streets and villages of fictional Abbudin, where the challengers to the regime of strongman Jamal Al-Fayeed (Ashraf Barhom) include the ISIS-like "caliphate." Jamal's Americanized brother, Barry (Adam Rayner), is out there, too. Exiled and presumed dead, he'll finally see some real action in this week's episode.

Not that I'd been missing him.

Barhom, whose Jamal has emerged as a sad but weirdly compelling monster, is already starring in a much better show than Rayner got to.

* Why would I watch "Wayward Pines" when I'd never watch "Big Brother"?

It wasn't until the finale of Fox's M. Night Shyamalan series that it hit me how much it had in common with its time-slot competitor, now in its 17th season.

A group of people under constant surveillance. Regular cullings of the herd, which is always acting out. And as we learned in last week's "Pines" finale (spoiler alert), a mechanism for replacing participants with a new group.

I stopped watching "Big Brother" after the first summer. I stuck with "Wayward Pines" (which got pretty wayward at times) to the truly bitter end. But if some summer CBS puts "Pines" star Toby Jones in charge of the "Big Brother" house and invites Melissa Leo and Hope Davis to live there, I promise I'll be back.