A 30-minute Dark Comedy pilot. Drawn from Nova’s memory archive on: sexuality history.
THE KINSEY WING
Episode 1: “Normal Distribution”
LOGLINE: When a chronically repressed museum curator inherits the world’s most embarrassing collection — a defunct erotic history museum in Columbus, Ohio — she must save it from demolition while confronting every uncomfortable truth about human sexuality she’s spent her life avoiding.
SETTING & TONE: Columbus, Ohio. The present. A mid-sized city that considers itself progressive but still whispers. The HOPEWELL MUSEUM OF HUMAN INTIMACY is three floors of historically significant, deeply awkward artifacts housed in a converted Victorian building that smells faintly of old velvet and existential crisis. Think Arrested Development meets The Hours — dry, precise, tragic in the way only comedy can be, with the uncomfortable suspicion that every joke is also completely true.
CHARACTERS:
DR. MARGARET “MARGO” FINCH, 38 — Associate Professor of Social History, recently passed over for tenure. Crisp blazers. Very good posture. She has read every Kinsey report and cited none of them in polite conversation. Her marriage ended eighteen months ago in a way she has not yet discussed with anyone. She is the most competent person in any room and the least self-aware.
RAYMOND OSEI, 52 — The museum’s permanent staff member. Docent, janitor, security, and de facto archivist. He has worked here for twenty-two years and regards the collection with the serene detachment of a man who has simply seen too much. Dry. Unflappable. Quietly the wisest person in the building.
DR. PHILIP CRAY, 44 — City Cultural Affairs Director. Handsome in the way that a press release is handsome. Wants the building for a “Civic Innovation Hub,” which is a coworking space. Refers to this as his “legacy project” without irony.
JUNIPER “JUNI” WALSH, 26 — Margo’s graduate research assistant. Boundlessly enthusiastic, constitutionally incapable of reading the room, writing a dissertation on “pleasure discourse in Victorian medical literature” with the energy of someone who just discovered brunch.
DR. ELEANOR FINCH, 71 — Margo’s mother. A retired OB-GYN who speaks about human anatomy the way other people’s mothers speak about casserole recipes. She donated the collection to the museum in 1987 and has complicated feelings about what Margo has done with her life.
SERIES POTENTIAL: Each episode excavates a different corner of the collection — and of Margo’s life — as she fights to prove that the history of human sexuality is the history of everything, and that the most frightening exhibit in the building is the mirror.
FULL SCREENPLAY
FADE IN:
COLD OPEN
INT. UNIVERSITY LECTURE HALL — DAY
A large, well-lit hall. FORTY STUDENTS regard their phones with the focused attention of surgeons. At the podium, MARGO FINCH speaks with the precision of someone who rehearses in the shower.
She is presenting a slideshow. The current slide reads: “SOCIAL HISTORY 340: THE BODY POLITIC.” The next slide is a chart.
MARGO
The Victorian concept of
"moral hygiene" was, at its
core, a regulatory framework
designed to manage social
anxiety through the
medicalization of—
A STUDENT in the third row raises his hand without looking up from his phone.
STUDENT
Is this on the midterm?
Margo stops. Breathes through her nose.
MARGO
Mr. Holt. What I am
describing is the foundational
mechanism by which an entire
civilization pathologized
normal human experience for
two hundred years.
(beat)
So yes. It will be on
the midterm.
She advances the slide. It is a watercolor illustration of a nineteenth-century “hysteria” treatment device. Several students look up from their phones for the first time.
A DIFFERENT STUDENT raises her hand.
STUDENT #2
Is that what I think it is?
MARGO
It is a therapeutic instrument
described in the 1883 edition
of the American Journal of
Obstetrics as a treatment for
"nervous disorder in women."
(beat)
Which is what happened when
physicians refused to consider
that women might simply be
unhappy.
Silence. Then the entire class is suddenly, completely attentive.
Margo notices. She is not sure how she feels about this.
Her phone buzzes on the podium. She glances at it.
ON SCREEN: “DEAN HARTLEY - URGENT.”
She silences it. It buzzes again immediately.
She advances the slide. It is another chart. The class immediately returns to their phones.
Margo stares at the chart for a moment.
MARGO (CONT'D)
Dismissed.
INT. DEAN'S OFFICE — OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY — DAY
DEAN HARTLEY, 60s, looks like a man who golfs professionally but tells people he golfs recreationally. He has the practiced sympathy of someone about to say something awful.
Margo sits across from him in a chair that is slightly lower than his. She has noticed this.
DEAN HARTLEY
Margo. You know how highly
the department regards your
scholarship.
MARGO
The tenure review was
supposed to be finalized
last week.
DEAN HARTLEY
It was finalized last week.
Beat.
MARGO
I see.
DEAN HARTLEY
The committee felt that
your publication record,
while impressive, skews
toward the—
(searching)
—specialist end of the
spectrum.
MARGO
My last paper was on the
socioeconomic factors
governing marriage law in
post-war Ohio. That is the
opposite of specialist.
That is literally about
this city.
DEAN HARTLEY
The paper before that was
titled—
(reading)
—"Pleasure Deferred: The
Suppression of Female
Erotic Literature in
American Publishing,
1900 to 1950."
Margo opens her mouth. Closes it.
MARGO
That won the Bancroft Prize.
DEAN HARTLEY
Yes. Yes, it did.
(long pause)
The Provost found it
uncomfortable.
A very long beat.
MARGO
He found a Bancroft
Prize-winning historical
analysis—
DEAN HARTLEY
He had to read it, Margo.
It was on his desk for
three weeks.
Margo’s jaw tightens. She is doing the math of her entire life.
Her phone buzzes again. She looks at it.
ON SCREEN: A voicemail notification. Caller: COUNTY PROBATE COURT.
MARGO
I need to take this.
DEAN HARTLEY
Margo, I want you to
know the door isn't—
She is already walking out.
INT. UNIVERSITY HALLWAY — CONTINUOUS
Margo stands alone in a long hallway, phone to her ear. Around her, students flow past. She is completely still.
We hear the voicemail, tinny through the speaker:
VOICEMAIL (V.O.)
Dr. Finch, this is Diane
Kowalczyk from the Franklin
County Probate office. We're
reaching out regarding the
estate of Dr. Arthur Hopewell,
who passed away on the
fourteenth. You've been named
sole executor and primary
beneficiary of the Hopewell
estate, which includes
operational control of the
Hopewell Museum of Human
Intimacy...
Margo lowers the phone. Stares at the middle distance.
A student walks past wearing a t-shirt that reads OHIO: FIND IT IN THE MIDDLE.
MARGO
(to no one)
Of course it does.
SMASH CUT TO TITLE CARD:
THE KINSEY WING
The title card is presented on what appears to be a placard card — the kind used in museum display cases. Clean. Authoritative. Slightly too formal for what is about to happen.
ACT ONE
EXT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM OF HUMAN INTIMACY — DAY
A Victorian building on a tree-lined street in Columbus. Four stories. Brick the color of old burgundy. A brass sign by the door, tarnished to the point of impressionism, reads: HOPEWELL MUSEUM OF HUMAN INTIMACY — EST. 1971 — ADULTS ONLY — NO PHOTOGRAPHS.
A smaller sign below it reads: OPEN TUES-SAT 10-4. Someone has added, in marker: WE ARE ACTUALLY OPEN.
Two women walk past. One of them speeds up slightly as they pass the building.
Margo stands on the sidewalk across the street. She hasn’t crossed yet. She is holding a folder of legal documents and looking at the building the way you look at a family member who has done something unforgivable but also kind of understandable.
She crosses the street.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — LOBBY — CONTINUOUS
The lobby is quiet, dim, and smells of wood polish and old paper. Display cases line the walls. The reception desk is unmanned.
A single visitor — a RETIRED MAN, 70s, wearing a windbreaker and reading glasses — is bent over a display case, squinting at something. He straightens up when Margo enters, and gives her the polite, defiant nod of a man who has decided to be unembarrassed.
RETIRED MAN
Good afternoon.
MARGO
Hi.
She looks at the display case he was examining. It contains a collection of nineteenth-century medical texts, open to illustrated pages, and a placard reading: “THE MEDICALIZATION OF DESIRE: HOW DOCTORS DEFINED ‘NORMAL,’ 1850-1920.”
This, she can work with. She relaxes slightly.
Then she turns and sees the display on the opposite wall: a collection of elaborately carved wooden objects in a case labeled “THERAPEUTIC APPARATUS — EUROPE, 1880-1910.”
She turns back.
MARGO (CONT'D)
Is there a — is anyone
working here?
RAYMOND OSEI emerges from a door behind the reception desk, carrying a mug that reads “WORLD’S OKAYEST DOCENT.” He moves with the unhurried calm of a man who has watched many people become uncomfortable in this lobby and has made peace with it.
RAYMOND
Dr. Finch.
MARGO
You know who I am?
RAYMOND
Arthur showed me a photo.
He said if he ever died
you'd show up looking
like you'd swallowed
something sideways.
(examining her)
He was accurate.
MARGO
I'm the executor of the
estate. I need to do a
full assessment of the
building and collection
before I can make any
decisions about—
RAYMOND
About whether to keep it
or sell it to the city.
Margo stops.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
Philip Cray called here
three times last month.
Arthur kept hanging up
on him, but Arthur is
dead now, so.
He sips his coffee.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
I'm Raymond Osei. I've
worked here twenty-two
years. I'll give you
the tour.
MARGO
I don't need the tour.
I need the financials.
RAYMOND
The financials are on
the third floor.
(beat)
Everything is on the
third floor. Arthur
had a system.
He is already walking toward the stairs. Margo follows, gripping her folder.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — FIRST FLOOR GALLERY — CONTINUOUS
They walk through the first gallery. Margo keeps her eyes professionally elevated, which means she is looking directly at a series of ancient Greek ceramic vessels depicting scenes that would make the Provost need to lie down.
RAYMOND
First floor: Ancient
world through the
Renaissance. Greco-Roman
artifacts, mostly
reproduction. The three
originals are the Etruscan
pieces in case seven —
those are insured for
forty thousand.
MARGO
Why does a museum in
Columbus, Ohio have insured
Etruscan—
RAYMOND
Because Arthur Hopewell
spent forty years acquiring
things with the focused
mania of a man who needed
a project.
(beat)
Your mother helped him
with the medical collection.
Second floor.
Margo stops walking.
MARGO
My mother.
RAYMOND
Dr. Eleanor Finch.
She donated the original
medical history collection
in 1987. You didn't know that?
MARGO
I knew she donated
something. I didn't know—
RAYMOND
You've never been here
before, have you?
A beat.
MARGO
I've been busy.
RAYMOND
For thirty-eight years?
MARGO
I was busy for the first
seven as well.
Raymond considers this. Sips his coffee.
RAYMOND
Second floor.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — SECOND FLOOR GALLERY — CONTINUOUS
The second floor is different. Quieter. More clinical in presentation, more scholarly. Display cases hold antique medical texts, early contraceptive devices, anatomical models, and charts. It has the gravity of a real archive.
Margo slows down here. She can’t help it. Her professional instincts override her personal ones.
MARGO
This is — this is actually
a significant collection.
RAYMOND
Yes.
MARGO
Are these original
Kinsey survey instruments?
She is standing in front of a case. Inside: interview forms, statistical charts, a framed letter on Indiana University letterhead dated 1951.
RAYMOND
Reproduction of the forms.
The letter is original.
Arthur knew Pomeroy.
Wardell Pomeroy — he was
one of Kinsey's co-authors.
MARGO
I know who Pomeroy is.
RAYMOND
Arthur used to say the
Kinsey Reports were the
most important thing
America produced in the
twentieth century and the
only thing it was
immediately ashamed of.
Margo stares at the letter.
MARGO
He wasn't wrong.
A moment. Almost a real one. Then she pulls herself back.
MARGO (CONT'D)
Third floor.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — THIRD FLOOR OFFICE — CONTINUOUS
The office of DR. ARTHUR HOPEWELL is a magnificent disaster. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, paper everywhere, a desk buried under correspondence and catalogs, a chessboard mid-game, three different coffee mugs at various stages of abandonment, and one framed print on the wall: Magritte’s The Son of Man, the man in the bowler hat with an apple obscuring his face.
Margo stares at it.
RAYMOND
He thought it was funny.
The financials are in a binder on the desk, labeled in neat handwriting: “FOR MARGARET — YES, ALL OF IT.”
Margo opens it. Her face does a small, involuntary thing.
MARGO
The endowment is —
how is there this much
in the endowment?
RAYMOND
Arthur was very good at
asking people for money.
He had no shame, which
he considered a professional
advantage.
MARGO
There's enough here to
operate for at least—
RAYMOND
Four years. Maybe five
if we're careful. But
the building needs
structural work. The
boiler is—
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
—the boiler is a matter
of some urgency.
Margo looks around the office. At the chess game. At the three coffee mugs. At the man in the bowler hat.
MARGO
I don't understand why
he left it to me.
I never—
She stops herself.
RAYMOND
He said — and I'm quoting —
"Margaret is the most
qualified person I know
and the most determined
not to use it. This
will force the issue."
Long pause.
MARGO
He sounds insufferable.
RAYMOND
He was delightful. You
would have hated him.
Margo’s phone rings. She looks at it.
ON SCREEN: PHILIP CRAY - CITY CULTURAL AFFAIRS.
She answers it.
INT. CITY HALL — CRAY'S OFFICE / MUSEUM — THIRD FLOOR — INTERCUT
PHILIP CRAY stands at a window in a very clean office. He has the architectural confidence of someone who has recently had his teeth whitened.
CRAY
Dr. Finch! Philip Cray,
Cultural Affairs. I was
so sorry to hear about
Arthur. He was a —
a real character.
MARGO
I'm sure.
CRAY
I wanted to reach out
personally, because I
think there's an exciting
opportunity here for
both of us. The city has
been in discussion about
the Hopewell building for—
MARGO
How much?
A beat.
CRAY
I'm sorry?
MARGO
The city's offer. For
the building.
CRAY
Well, I wouldn't frame
it as an "offer" so much
as a collaborative—
MARGO
Mr. Cray. I've been
awake since five a.m.,
I was not given tenure
by a man who was made
uncomfortable by a book,
and I am standing in an
office that smells like
old coffee and unfinished
chess games. Please
frame it as an offer.
Cray recalibrates.
CRAY
Two point three million.
Which is above market,
given the—
MARGO
The collection? The
forty-year archive?
What happens to it?
CRAY
We'd work to find
appropriate placements—
MARGO
Right. I'll call you back.
She hangs up. Raymond is watching her from the doorway.
RAYMOND
Well?
MARGO
He said "appropriate
placements."
RAYMOND
Ah.
MARGO
What is your current
annual attendance?
RAYMOND
Twenty-two hundred.
Mostly academics,
some tourists, a
consistent number of
retired people who I
think are just
genuinely curious and
have nowhere else to
be on a Tuesday.
MARGO
Twenty-two hundred is
nothing. The natural
history museum does
two hundred thousand.
RAYMOND
The natural history
museum doesn't require
people to confront
anything personally
threatening.
MARGO
Dinosaurs aren't
personally threatening?
RAYMOND
People don't feel
implicated by dinosaurs.
Margo stands in the buried office and looks at the binder and looks at the chess game and looks at the man in the bowler hat with the apple in front of his face.
MARGO
I need to think.
EXT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — FRONT STEPS — DAY
Margo sits on the front steps eating a granola bar with the grim focus of someone eating for fuel rather than pleasure. She is reading the financial binder.
A car pulls up. Out gets JUNI WALSH, 26, carrying a canvas bag overflowing with books, a laptop, and what appears to be a framed picture of Alfred Kinsey. She spots Margo and immediately accelerates.
JUNI
Dr. Finch! I got your
text — I came as fast
as I could — is this the
Hopewell? I've always
wanted to come here,
I kept asking Professor
Hartman to include it
on the reading list but
he said it was—
MARGO
Juni.
JUNI
Right, sorry. You said
you needed research
support?
MARGO
I may need research
support. I may need
a graduate student who
can do a comprehensive
collection assessment,
identify digitization
priorities, and help
me build an argument
for why this building
deserves to exist.
JUNI
Oh my god. Are you
keeping it?
MARGO
I am currently sitting
on its steps eating
a granola bar. I
haven't decided anything.
JUNI
Because if you're
keeping it, I know
a curator at the
Kinsey Institute who
has been trying to
establish a Midwest
outreach program, and
there's a grant through
the NEH for under-resourced—
MARGO
How do you know all this?
JUNI
My dissertation is on
pleasure discourse in
Victorian medical literature.
I have been waiting for
something useful to
happen with this
information for three years.
She is already walking toward the front door with the energy of a golden retriever who has just been told there’s a park.
JUNI (CONT'D)
Is Raymond Osei still
here? I read his paper
on archival methodology
for material culture—
MARGO
He has a paper?
JUNI
He has six. He got
a doctorate from Case
Western in 1998 and
then never left here.
Margo looks back at the building. Something shifts very slightly in her face.
She eats the rest of her granola bar. Gets up.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — SECOND FLOOR GALLERY — DAY
Juni walks through the gallery with visible reverence. Raymond watches her from the doorway with a kind of cautious respect.
JUNI
Oh. Oh, is this —
this is a first edition.
She is standing before a case containing a book. The placard reads: SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN FEMALE — KINSEY ET AL., 1953. FIRST PRINTING.
RAYMOND
Donated in 1989. Arthur
bought it from the estate
of a biologist at Ohio
State who'd kept it in
a box in his attic for
thirty years.
JUNI
In a box. For thirty years.
RAYMOND
The man was embarrassed.
JUNI
It won the National
Book Award.
RAYMOND
Yes. He was embarrassed
by winning the National
Book Award.
Juni stares at the book.
JUNI
Do you know what's in
this book? Do you know
what Kinsey found? Like,
about women specifically?
RAYMOND
I've worked in this
building for twenty-two
years.
JUNI
Right. Sorry. It's
just — these numbers
have been sitting here
since 1953 and we're
still acting like
this is secret knowledge.
Margo appears in the doorway. She’s been listening.
MARGO
That's actually an
interesting curatorial
frame.
Both of them look at her.
MARGO (CONT'D)
The gap between what
we've known and what
we've acted on. History
as a series of
inconvenient facts
that everyone kept
in a box in their attic.
A beat.
JUNI
That's a really
good hook for a
funding proposal.
RAYMOND
That's what Arthur's
original mission
statement said, more
or less. Except he
used a different
metaphor. The box
was a closet.
MARGO
He sounds like he
was very proud of
that pun.
RAYMOND
He truly was.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — FIRST FLOOR — LATER
Margo is in the lobby, on a phone call. She paces. This is a woman who paces.
MARGO
Mom. I need to talk
to you about the
Hopewell.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Oh, finally.
MARGO
What do you mean,
finally?
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Arthur told me two
years ago he was
leaving it to you.
I've been waiting.
MARGO
You knew? Why didn't
you tell me?
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Because you would
have called a lawyer.
A beat.
MARGO
I did call a lawyer.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Before he died, I mean.
MARGO
The collection you
donated—
ELEANOR (V.O.)
The medical history
collection. Yes.
I spent fifteen years
acquiring those texts.
The early contraceptive
history alone took me
seven years because
nobody wanted to
talk about it.
MARGO
I know. I know why
nobody wanted to
talk about it.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Do you?
Margo stops pacing.
ELEANOR (V.O.) (CONT'D)
I raised you in a
house where we talked
about these things
like they were history,
and then you spent
your whole career
writing about them
as if they were
things that happened
to other people.
MARGO
That's what history is.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Margaret.
MARGO
I'm not having this
conversation.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
You're standing in
the most honest building
in Columbus, Ohio.
I think you should
have this conversation.
Raymond walks past carrying a small Roman reproduction figurine in a Ziploc bag. He holds it up to show Margo — it is extremely explicit. He gestures that he’s taking it upstairs to be re-catalogued. She nods professionally.
MARGO
I'll call you back.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — LOBBY — MOMENTS LATER
Margo looks at the display case with the Victorian “therapeutic apparatus.” She reads the placard. Really reads it.
Then she reads the one next to it, about the medicalization of female sexuality. Then the one about Havelock Ellis. Then the one about the Mosher Survey, conducted in 1892, in which a physician named Clelia Duel Mosher quietly asked Victorian women about their sexual experience and buried the results in a filing cabinet where they were not discovered until 1973.
MARGO
(quietly, to herself)
Eighty years.
Raymond appears beside her.
RAYMOND
I know.
MARGO
She conducted the
first systematic survey
of women's sexuality
in America in 1892 and
it sat in a filing
cabinet until 1973.
RAYMOND
And then was published
in a journal with
a print run of four
hundred.
MARGO
Which nobody read.
RAYMOND
Some people read it.
They found it interesting.
They put it on a shelf.
They stand together looking at the placard.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
Arthur used to say
the whole history of
human sexuality is
basically people
discovering the same
things over and over
and then being too
embarrassed to
tell anyone.
MARGO
He was right.
RAYMOND
He usually was.
It was extremely
irritating.
ACT TWO
INT. CITY HALL — CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY
A sleek conference room. CRAY sits at the head of the table with the settled confidence of someone on home turf. With him: HELEN PARK, 40s, City Attorney, who has the look of a person who has heard too many pitches and developed an immunity.
Margo sits across from them. Juni is beside her, laptop open. Raymond sits at the far end, observing.
CRAY
We see this as a
real win-win. The
building becomes the
Columbus Civic Innovation
Hub — private workspaces,
event venue, coffee—
MARGO
A coworking space.
CRAY
An innovation ecosystem.
MARGO
With coffee.
CRAY
Premium coffee.
Margo opens a folder.
MARGO
The Hopewell building
is on the National
Register of Historic
Places, which means
any significant interior
alteration requires
a Heritage Impact
Assessment with a
minimum eighteen-month
review period.
Helen Park looks up from her phone.
MARGO (CONT'D)
The collection is
subject to a deed of
gift agreement with
the Franklin County
Historical Society
dating to 1987, which
mandates public access
to the donated materials.
Dispersal would require
renegotiation with
eleven individual donors
including the estate
of Dr. Arthur Hopewell,
which is now me.
Cray’s smile is tightening at the edges.
MARGO (CONT'D)
And the museum's
501(c)(3) status
was renewed six months
ago with an IRS
determination letter
that includes a
specific charitable
purpose clause.
So: "appropriate
placements" is actually
a fairly complicated
legal proposition.
A beat.
CRAY
This is a lot of
research for someone
who only inherited
the building yesterday.
MARGO
I had a long drive
back from the
probate office.
HELEN PARK
She's right about
the Historic Register.
Cray looks at Helen. Helen does not look back.
CRAY
The museum has been
operating at reduced
capacity for years.
You can't realistically—
MARGO
I have a budget
projection. Juni?
Juni slides a document across the table with the confidence of someone who was up until 2 a.m. making it.
JUNI
We've identified three
viable revenue streams:
a partnership with
the OSU Medical School's
history of medicine
program, an NEH
preservation grant
for which the collection
clearly qualifies, and
a redesigned public
program series targeting
the existing audience
base and—
CRAY
Your audience base is
two thousand retired
people and some academics.
RAYMOND
(from the end of the table)
Twenty-two hundred.
And they're very loyal.
Everyone looks at Raymond. He sips coffee from a thermos he has brought from the museum.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
People come back.
Once they've been here
and understood what
they're looking at —
the actual history,
the scholarship — they
come back. Because
there is nowhere else
in this city, possibly
this state, where
you can stand in front
of the documented
truth of human
experience and not
be sold something.
A silence.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
The coworking space
would have premium coffee.
He says this without inflection. It is devastating.
CRAY
I'm going to need to
take this back to
the Mayor's office.
MARGO
Take your time.
The eighteen-month
Heritage review
starts whenever you file.
She stands. Juni snaps her laptop shut. Raymond finishes his coffee.
EXT. CITY HALL — STEPS — DAY
The three of them walk out into daylight. Juni is practically vibrating.
JUNI
That was incredible.
The Heritage Register
angle was incredible.
How did you know about—
MARGO
I don't know if I'm
keeping it.
Juni stops.
MARGO (CONT'D)
That was about buying
time. I don't know
yet. The building
needs structural work.
The boiler is apparently
a crisis. The attendance
numbers are—
RAYMOND
Twenty-two hundred
isn't nothing. Arthur
ran this place for
forty years on the
principle that if
even one person
walked out understanding
something about
themselves they didn't
understand when they
walked in, it was
worth the trouble.
MARGO
That is a beautiful
sentiment and also
not a business model.
RAYMOND
No. But it's a reason.
Margo looks back at City Hall. Then at her phone, which has a notification from the university: SOCIAL HISTORY 340 — SPRING SECTION ENROLLMENT CLOSED — WAITLIST: 47 STUDENTS.
She stares at this for a moment.
MARGO
Forty-seven students
are on the waitlist
for my survey class.
JUNI
Your class is famous.
Everyone knows if you
get into Dr. Finch's
section you actually
learn something
uncomfortable enough
to be true.
MARGO
The Provost finds
it uncomfortable.
JUNI
Yeah, but the Provost
is not twenty years old.
Margo puts her phone in her pocket.
MARGO
I'm going back
to the building.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — THIRD FLOOR OFFICE — EVENING
Margo is alone in Arthur’s office. She has cleared enough of the desk to work at it. The chess game is still going on beside her. She is reading from a ledger — the museum’s record of acquisitions, going back to 1971.
Each entry is in different handwriting as the decades change, but the last twenty years are all in the same neat hand: Raymond’s.
She pulls a particular volume off the shelf: a battered, annotated copy of the Kinsey Reports, FEMALE volume. Someone — Arthur, presumably — has written in the margins throughout. The annotations are not clinical. They are argumentative, delighted, sorrowful, occasionally furious.
Next to the 1953 data on the orgasm gap, someone has written: “And here we are in 1987 and nothing has changed and here we are in 1994 and nothing has changed.”
Margo turns the page. The annotation gets a new entry: “2003. Still nothing has changed. Why does nobody READ these books?”
She sits back.
Then she looks at the chess game. It is an interesting position. She studies it for a moment, then — despite herself — moves a piece.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — SECOND FLOOR — CONTINUOUS
Juni is photographing artifacts, cataloguing. She has her earbuds in and is singing quietly to herself. She stops in front of a display case Margo hasn’t been to yet.
This display case is labeled: “THE ORGASM GAP: WHAT WE KNEW AND WHEN WE KNEW IT.”
The case contains charts, statistics, timelines. Academic papers. Survey data. The presentation is meticulous, dry, scholarly, and absolutely damning.
Juni reads the placard. She already knows all of this. She reads it anyway.
Then she takes a photo and sends it to a friend. The text reads: “THIS BUILDING CANNOT CLOSE.”
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — LOBBY — EVENING
Raymond is closing up — turning off lights, checking the locks on the display cases. He does this with the practiced ease of a liturgy.
He stops at the case with the Mosher Survey reproduction.
He looks at it for a moment.
RAYMOND
(to the case, quietly)
Eighty years.
He turns off that light and moves on.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — THIRD FLOOR OFFICE — NIGHT
Margo is on the phone. The office is dark except for the desk lamp. The annotated Kinsey book is open on the desk.
MARGO
Mom. I have a question
about Arthur.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Of course.
MARGO
Did he ever — was he ever
actually optimistic? About
any of this? Because I'm
reading his annotations
and they get — they get
angrier as he gets older.
Not despairing, just—
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Impatient.
MARGO
Yes.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
He used to say: "The
information exists.
The evidence is there.
The history is documented.
The only problem is
that people keep deciding
it doesn't apply to them."
Beat.
MARGO
He thought a museum
would fix that.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
He thought a museum
would make it harder
to pretend. Which is
different from fixing it.
That was his version
of optimism.
Margo looks at the book.
MARGO
He was very strange.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
He was wonderful.
You're going to keep it.
MARGO
I haven't decided—
ELEANOR (V.O.)
You moved the chess piece.
A very long beat.
MARGO
How do you know I—
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Because you can't leave
a problem unattended.
You never could.
That was always the
thing I loved about you
and the thing that
made your father insane
and is probably what
happened with David.
Silence.
MARGO
I don't want to
talk about David.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
No. But there's a
whole second floor of
that museum that might
eventually have
something useful to say.
MARGO
Goodnight, Mom.
ELEANOR (V.O.)
Goodnight, Margaret.
Water the plant on
Arthur's windowsill.
He'd want you to.
Margo looks at the windowsill. There is a small, defiant succulent in a pot that reads IT’S COMPLICATED.
She gets up and waters it.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — LOBBY — NEXT MORNING
Margo arrives at 8 a.m. Raymond is already there. He hands her a coffee.
MARGO
I need to talk to
you about something.
RAYMOND
The NEH grant deadline
is February 15th.
Juni is already
drafting the narrative.
MARGO
I haven't actually—
RAYMOND
The OSU Medical School
history department
chair is a woman named
Dr. Patricia Yuen
who has been trying
to formalize a partnership
with this collection
for six years. Arthur
kept putting it off.
I don't know why.
MARGO
Raymond.
RAYMOND
The boiler company
is coming Thursday.
It is bad but not
catastrophic. Probably.
RAYMOND (CONT'D)
And I think if you
redesign the public
program — make it
more explicitly educational,
build school partnerships,
the way Arthur never
wanted to because he
thought institutions
would water it down —
the attendance figures
could be meaningfully
different in a year.
He stops. Sips his coffee.
MARGO
You've been planning
this for a while.
RAYMOND
I've been planning
this since Arthur
told me two years
ago he was leaving
it to you.
MARGO
Does everyone know
things I don't know?
RAYMOND
Almost everyone knows
things you don't know.
That's usually true
of everyone.
The front door opens. Juni arrives with coffee and a tote bag so full it appears to have its own gravitational field.
JUNI
Good morning! I found
a connection to the
Kinsey Institute's
new outreach program,
I have a draft grant
narrative, I discovered
there's a documentary
filmmaker at OU who's
been trying to get
access to this collection
for two years, and I
also found out that
Cray's Innovation Hub
thing fell through
in Pittsburgh last year
for basically the same
reasons it's going
to fall through here.
She puts everything down on the reception desk.
JUNI (CONT'D)
Also the barista at
Starbucks asked me
what all the books
were for and when
I explained she said
her whole book club
would come to a
lecture series.
A beat.
MARGO
A book club.
JUNI
Eight women, thirties
and forties, she says
they're "extremely
interested in history."
RAYMOND
That's how it starts.
Margo looks at the lobby. At the cases. At the tarnished sign. At the morning light coming through the Victorian windows and landing on a reproduction Greek vase depicting something that would make the Provost need a nap.
She sets her bag down behind the reception desk.
MARGO
All right. Here's what
we're going to do.
Raymond, I need a
full condition report
on the collection,
priority items first.
Juni, the grant narrative
needs a stronger
historical argument
in the opening —
I'll rewrite the first
two pages tonight.
And I need someone
to call Philip Cray
and tell him we're
not selling.
RAYMOND
I'll call him.
MARGO
Tell him the Heritage
Assessment has been
submitted.
RAYMOND
Has it?
MARGO
It will have been
submitted by the time
he checks his email.
Raymond looks at her. Something in his expression that might, in a certain light, be the beginning of approval.
RAYMOND
Arthur said you'd
be good at this.
MARGO
Arthur sounds like
he was extremely
annoying.
RAYMOND
You have no idea.
He picks up the phone and dials. Margo opens the financial binder. Juni is already typing.
The museum is open.
TAG
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — SECOND FLOOR GALLERY — DAY
One week later. The gallery is the same — dust, dark wood, quietly astonishing displays. But there are small changes: a new light over the Mosher Survey case, a printed schedule for an upcoming PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES taped to the window, a fresh coat of polish on the display cases.
Eight WOMEN stand in a cluster in the center of the gallery. They are 35-50, holding coffee cups, reading placards. This is clearly the book club. They are engrossed.
Margo stands at the front of the group, doing what she does best — lecturing. But something is different. She is without the blazer. She is slightly less armored.
MARGO
What Clelia Mosher
understood in 1892 —
what she quietly,
carefully documented
and then couldn't
get anyone to publish —
was that the official
story of what women
wanted and experienced
was almost completely
invented by people
who weren't asking
women.
The women are extremely attentive.
MARGO (CONT'D)
She put it in a filing
cabinet. It sat there
for eighty years.
Because there was
nowhere else to put it.
She pauses at the display case.
MARGO (CONT'D)
The argument I want
to make about this
collection — the reason
this building needs
to exist — is that
history is not just
what happened. It's
what we were willing
to look at.
A woman in the front raises her hand.
BOOK CLUB WOMAN
Are you going to be
doing more of these?
MARGO
Yes.
BOOK CLUB WOMAN
Can I bring my sister?
MARGO
Please.
Raymond appears in the doorway. He catches Margo’s eye and holds up his phone: a text. She reads it from across the room.
ON SCREEN: “CRAY - THE HERITAGE REVIEW IS REAL AND HE’S FURIOUS. ALSO THE DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER CALLED. AND DR. YUEN FROM OSU MED WANTS A MEETING THURSDAY.”
Below it, a second text from an unknown number: “This is your mother. I am coming to Thursday’s meeting. Don’t argue.”
Margo looks at Raymond. Raymond shrugs in a way that conveys twenty-two years of institutional experience.
Margo looks back at her group.
MARGO
Let me show you the
next case.
She leads them forward. They follow.
INT. HOPEWELL MUSEUM — THIRD FLOOR OFFICE — NIGHT
Margo is at Arthur’s desk. The chess game is several moves advanced from where it was. She is reading from Arthur’s annotated Kinsey book.
She comes to the back page. There’s a note inside the back cover, in Arthur’s handwriting:
“This book changed what I was willing to see. I spent the next forty years trying to find other people willing to do the same. I didn’t always succeed. But the information exists. The evidence is there. The history is documented. Pass it on. — A.H.”
Below it, in ink that looks slightly newer:
“P.S. The succulent is called Tolerance. Don’t let it die.”
Margo looks at the succulent on the windowsill. Tolerance is doing fine.
She closes the book. Looks at the chess game. Moves a piece.
She opens her laptop and begins to type. The document title: “THE KINSEY WING: A PROPOSAL FOR PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING.”
She deletes that. Types: “WHAT WE WERE WILLING TO LOOK AT: A PROPOSAL.”
She stares at it. Types beneath: “And what we kept in the attic. And why.”
She starts writing.
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
END OF PILOT
THE KINSEY WING
"Normal Distribution"
Written by Nova
SERIES NOTE: Episode 2, “The Mosher Survey,” concerns the arrival of Dr. Eleanor Finch — who did not come to the Thursday meeting alone — and a box of items donated from an estate that nobody has opened since 1967, which turns out to contain correspondence between two Victorian women that reframes everything on the second floor and constitutes, in Raymond’s words, “a significant archival event,” and in Juni’s words, “oh my GOD,” and in Margo’s words, a silence of approximately forty-five seconds followed by “I need to call the Kinsey Institute.”
FADE OUT.
Written by Nova. Source domain: sexuality_history. Pilot #5.