Groundbreaking, Declining, The L Word The Complete Series Is A Tougher Sell Than It Should Have Been!

The Good: Some truly interesting characters, Great acting, Engaging stories
The Bad: Focus on Jenny Schecter, Soap opera/cable television conceits
The Basics: For six seasons, The L Word presented the convoluted lives of a tight community of Los Angeles lesbians who struggle with defining themselves as individuals and within society.


When I first started risking my hard-earned dollars on DVD sets of television shows I had never seen, I was pretty cautious. After all, I only had limited dollars and sometimes, I stupidly pursued shows that were canned remarkably quickly while their DVD prices were still comparatively ridiculously high, like Carnivale (reviewed here!). But that strategy came to inform my reviews in a significant way; I began to truly think about the enduring qualities of the works I reviewed and how much viewers could expect to rewatch a show or series and derive pleasure from it. So, while I was originally exceptionally excited about The L Word, I soon discovered that it was a series of diminishing returns and that the DVD boxed set for the complete series was a much tougher sell than it ought to have been.

To be fair to the executive producers and creators of The L Word, the show had some daunting perception problems. While I think American adult audiences were well-past ready for a show that focused on the lives and loves of a lesbian community, the series had issues both conceptually and with its fan base that made it harder to continue the show with a level of creativity and realism that the series needed. On the production front, The L Word suffered because the series focused on Los Angeles lesbians. While there are lesbians all the world over, Los Angeles is hardly the indicative culture for . . . well, pretty much anyone. The L Word’s use of Los Angeles as a setting allows the producers to use a supermodel good-looking cast, have characters with incredible, high paying jobs and virtually no money worries (until Max comes into the mix, The L Word has characters in incredible jobs who might whine about losing their jobs, but have no apparent chance of actually living anywhere near the poverty line, which takes the punch out of some of the stories that skirt around discrimination issues), and compel the creators to fall into the cable-normal, but real-life anything but universal drug culture conceits. While The L Word might capture, in an entirely soap operatic way, the lives of some Los Angeles lesbians, the idea that the show was truly groundbreaking is diminished some by the representation of the culture as a splinter of the upper class is somewhat off-putting. At the other end of the spectrum, as is well-detailed by the bonus features which include featurettes on the fan response to the series, The L Word suffered because fans wanted it to be everything to everyone within the community and it couldn’t. As the series went on, new characters that were introduced were either poorly used (the Paige plot worked great until Shane’s character was reset once again) or were pointless (Papi!) and it’s hard not to suspect that some of the pull toward characters that did not quite fit the series came from fan pressure.

The ultimate result is a series that is erratic and is littered with as many problems as the series has triumphs. The show focuses on one of the least likable protagonists ever to grace the small screen; The L Word The Complete Series manages to accent that the series is truly about Jenny Schecter, who starts annoyingly naïve and develops into an utterly reprehensible, loathsome character. When the series is not focusing on the tragically unlikable Jenny Schecter, it follows the cyclical growth and reversions of Shane McCutcheon and the meandering, on-again, off-again romance of the series between Bette Porter and Tina Kennard, who (as the series progressed) it seemed the producers did not know quite what to do with.

The L Word: The Complete Series includes all six seasons of the Showtime series, though the discs are new pressings specifically for the boxed set. All of the bonus features from the original pressings of the discs are preserved, so fundamentally, there is little difference between the Complete Series boxed set and the compilation set of:
Season One
Season Two
Season Three
Season Four
Season Five
and Season Six

The series begins in Los Angeles with nine characters, who are in the process of finding themselves or finding their place in the lesbian scene in Los Angeles. Jenny Schecter moves to Los Angeles to be with her long-term boyfriend and she discovers that her neighbor’s lesbian lifestyle intrigues her. While she plans to marry Tim, she finds herself fascinated by the owner of a local lesbian hangout, The Planet. As Jenny falls more and more into love and sexual obsession with Marina, she and Tim fall apart.

At the same time, Bette Porter and Tina Kennard are settling down to start a family of their own. Having been together for seven years, they are focused on getting Tina pregnant so they can begin the next phase of their relationship. Bette, however, is very focused on her work. Working at a small art gallery, she is determined to bring the controversial art exhibit Provocations to the gallery and that often causes her to neglect Tina, who has given up her own work to be with Bette.

Surrounding Jenny and her odyssey into sexual ambiguity and Tina and Bette’s very stable relationship are the friends they share. Tim and Jenny are neighbors to Tina and Bette and as Jenny becomes sexually obsessed with Marina, Tina and Bette find it uncomfortable to be around Tim and not reveal what they know or suspect. Tina and Bette are friends with the promiscuous Shane, the openly bisexual Alice and the still-closeted tennis pro Dana. Bette’s sister Kit comes around with increasing frequency to complicate Bette’s life.

As the series goes on, Jenny Schecter embraces her love of women and, in the process, becomes a famous author whose most significant work is made into a movie that she muscles her way into directing (for a time). Tina and Bette deal with infidelity, raising their daughter Angelica, and Tina’s less firm sexuality. Shane leaves a slew of one-night stands in her wake, gives up drugs and partying, finds true love (Carmen!), but has relapse after frustrating relapse. Alice has a long arc whereby her social nature leads her to create a website that opens a number of doors for her and ultimately puts her in a relationship with the far more straight-laced Tasha. Dana’s life explodes when she fires her manager and comes out, but is complicated by breast cancer. Kit becomes more influential when she buys the Planet and has unconventional relationships of her own (with a woman posing as a man and later with a transvestite man who sings, as a woman, at her club) and one of the antagonists, a tremendously rich woman named Helena Peabody, finds her way into the group when she romances various members and bails some of them out of some real scrapes.

Outside the cable television conceits of drugs, The L Word is largely solid in its presentation of a realistic view of the lives of the characters. To keep things interesting, the show unfortunately uses the tried and true soap opera conceits of lies (made and then truths revealed at inopportune times) and infidelity on a pretty consistent basis. The L Word is not at all about long-term loving couples who are mature, realized, and truly comfortable with who they are. They are all people in the process of becoming and, as such, the show can be unfortunately erratic as the writers struggle to define and redefine the characters. To their credit, at the outset of the series, Shane is almost as unlikable as Jenny, but she develops (despite some unfortunate reversions) into an incredible character who is worth watching and who has moments of emotional triumph and revelation that are among the best of the series. In a similar fashion, it is not until Tasha appears and has a very political (and personal), compelling arc with Alice - while most of the rest of the characters are floundering for purpose and decent stories – that Alice’s character actually falls out of the Los Angeles fantasy life and becomes a very meaningful and real character.

That said, a severe detraction to the entire series is the focus on Jenny Schecter and the performance of her by Mia Kirshner. Jenny is literally wide-eyed and eager when she arrives in Los Angeles, but through the course of the first season, her sexual exploration takes a disturbing turn as the writers of the series make her younger and younger in her emotional responses. She literally giggles, jumps up and down and acts more like a teenager as the season goes on and (ironically) is less mature than Tim’s swim student. Her character devolves emotionally as the season progresses and when that is factored into her indecision and the way she blithely glides from experience to experience without and real sense of consequence, it makes it virtually impossible to empathize with her character. In subsequent seasons, her character breaks down and when she is put back together, she becomes a nasty, mean-spirited woman who stops caring about anyone except herself. That makes her impossible to watch and unlikely to root for.

Jenny Schecter’s character is not aided much by the performance of Mia Kirshner. While Kirshner is able to land some of the most poetic and romantic lines that could otherwise have come across as canned and blasé, much of her performance ultimately is opening her eyes wider and staring with her jaw hanging loose. There is only so much of that one may watch before they get entirely bored of it. In the later seasons, her range is stunted to looking put off by anyone saying anything to her and that makes Schecter into a terrible character, though Kirschner’s body language sells much of that horribleness.

Like all worthwhile television, The L Word succeeds (as much as it does) because of the strength of its characters. Over the course of the series, the primary characters include and are defined as:

Bette Porter – A cool and collected professional, she is eager to bring success and controversy to the gallery she is the director of. While she and Tina try to work through a slump after seven years of their relationship, she finds herself deprioritizing things like therapy with Tina. But as Tina’s pregnancy progresses and Bette moves in on getting Provocations for her gallery, she becomes more secure, even to the point of meaningfully reconnecting with her half-sister, Kit. But with all of the stresses she is under, her eyes begin to wander to someone at the gallery . . .

Tina Kennard – Having given up her career to have a baby with Bette, she gets into the whole maternal nesting thing, despite how it makes her boring to her friends. She eagerly embraces therapy and group therapy and is committed to working on her relationship with Bette. She is the most visibly upset by keeping Jenny’s attraction to Marina a secret from Tim. Later, she embraces social work to make the world a better place and then goes back to work to strike out on her own,

Alice – Openly and eagerly bisexual, she manages to escape the destructive cycle of a relationship with Gabby (with a lot of help from her friends!) and finds herself involved with a man who sexually identifies himself as a lesbian. She comes up with the relationship web that connects virtually every lesbian in Los Angeles with one another via six degrees of separation. She writes for a magazine and has a pain in the ass mother who is an aging actress and blowhard,

Shane McCutcheon – The sexually promiscuous hairdresser, she is stalked by an ex-lover and finds herself involved with a very powerful wife of a prominent businessman. She tries to help out her gay friend who is drug addicted and being passed around the Los Angeles gay scene and generally has the least in common with any of her friends. When she starts getting tired of cocaine, parties, and promiscuity, she finds herself meeting women who actually love her for her talents instead of just her body,

Dana Fairbanks – A tennis player who is on the cusp of making it big, she remains in the closet for half the first season. Despite developing an intense romantic relationship with (an incredibly alluring!) sous chef, she sacrifices her passion for a shot at a sponsorship from Subaru. When she discovers the company is embracing her homosexuality (and has built the advertising campaign around her being “the gay Anna Kournikova”), she eagerly comes out and discovers that being out doesn’t solve all of her problems,

Kit Porter – An aging blues and R&B singer, she is Bette’s half-sister and is no more loved by their father than Bette is. Wrestling with alcoholism, she gets a chance at a career resurgence when rapper Slim Daddy samples one of her old songs. She also begins to discover her own sexual openness when a drag king develops an attraction for her,

Marina Ferrer – The predatory owner of The Planet, she seduces Jenny without regard for her relationship with Tim and without telling the confused young woman that she is already in a long-term relationship with a costume designer who travels most of the year. Utterly vacuous and uninteresting, she continues to pursue Jenny even as Jenny tries to move on,

Tim Haspel – A swim coach, he loves Jenny and is absolutely shocked when he learns his long-term girlfriend has begun having an affair right under his nose. Heartbroken, he nevertheless marries Jenny, yet finds himself utterly disgusted by the person she has become (not because of her lesbianism, but because of her dishonesty, manipulative qualities, and emotional disregard for him or anyone else in her life),

Helena Peabody – A wealthy socialite, she whisks Tina away from Bette when the two are having trouble. When their relationship falls apart, she sticks around and gets into trouble, though she funds Shane’s wedding trip. She gets into serious trouble when she falls in with a gambler,

Max Sweeney – Brought to Los Angeles by Jenny following Jenny’s breakdown, she struggles with gender identification issues. Max decides to become a man, but finds that is much more complicated when her new friends are conflicted about supporting him and his romantic entanglements lead to a lot of self-loathing,

and Jenny Schecter – An aspiring writer, she arrives in Los Angeles where she professes her love for Tim while getting more and more sexually and emotionally entangled with the exotic Marina. She takes life as it comes and shows less emotional awareness than even Shane, quickly degenerating from an interesting person to one who is meandering through life without any real purpose or sense of identity.

On the acting front, The L Word is a resounding success. Jennifer Beals is incredible as Bette and she and Laurel Holloman – who genre fans will recognize from The Incredibly True Adventure Of Two Girls In Love (reviewed here!) – have great on-screen chemistry. Holloman is wonderful, though I noticed several instances where her character slipped into an enthusiastic (almost Southern) drawl out of nowhere. Leisha Hailey, Eric Mabius, Pam Grier, and Katherine Moenning give wonderful supporting performances as Alice, Tim, Kit, and Shane (respectively).

The one to watch is Erin Daniels, as Dana Fairbanks. Daniels has a great sense of a physical presence and she emotes extraordinarily well through Dana’s internal conflict. She has amazing on-screen chemistry with Lauren Lee Smith (Lara) and she also has a wonderful sense of comic timing. Daniels manages to create a character who is instantly conflicted and compelling in an intriguing way without ever making her seem tragic or dull.

The two to wait for are Daniela Sea and Rose Rollins. Rollins plays Tasha in the fourth season and beyond and she is absolutely incredible. Tasha is a soldier and Rollins is entirely credible in the role. What could have been an unfortunately monolithic role that would serve only to add some political realism to The L Word is made into a viable and compelling character. Rollins gives a layered performance that is smart and interesting to watch.

Daniela Sea arrives as Max and when Max is apart from Jenny Schecter, the character takes off. Sea is arguably given the most to do as an actress (certainly the most that is interesting or positive) and she more than rises to the occasion. Sea has to play Max as conflicted and she keeps the character in a state of perpetual struggle without ever making Max seem whiny or annoying. Sea is captivating in emoting internal conflict and while Max might not initially fit in, his/her arc is one of the few that makes the last two seasons worth watching.

On DVD, The L Word The Complete Series features a smattering or commentary tracks and featurettes that have the stars of the show gushing about it. I particularly enjoyed the panel discussion with possibly the worst-prepared interviewer (who was so busy promoting her own agenda and views that she was not at all listening to what the panel members were saying) of all time. I actually liked how one of the producers continually reminded everyone that the cast was not all-lesbian and that there was a man in the cast for the first season who added something distinctive to the show. Featurettes on the groundbreaking nature and fan reaction to The L Word are not only good historical documents, but entertaining as well.

Ultimately, The L Word The Complete Series is worthwhile, but it leaves the viewer hoping for the show that this series paved the way for; a series with lesbian characters that does not seem like a soap opera or a cable television drama.

For other shows that premiered on Showtime, please visit my reviews of:
Dexter - Season 1
Dead Like Me
Weeds - Season 1
Jeremiah - Season 1
An American Crime

6/10

For other television reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Jenny Dies In The End (And The Beginning): The L Word Season Six!

The Good: Good acting, Moments of character
The Bad: So many soap operatic conceits, Very short, Still focuses a lot on Jenny!
The Basics: For the severely shortened final season of The L Word, the writers and producers seem to realize that Jenny Schecter is a loathsome character and they push the series to its resolution.


As a television series comes to a close, the producers have to decide whether to make it a complete conclusion or to treat the show as a snippet of a larger continuum (i.e. the story we see on screen is merely a few years out of the lives of the characters in the series). In the case of The L Word, the final season takes the tact of presenting the series as a slice of life for the bulk of the characters and the end for one. It’s not a spoiler to say that Jenny Schecter dies in the sixth season of The L Word. The death of Jenny occurs in the teaser to the first episode of the season and the rest of the season builds up to her death.

It’s almost like after the fifth season of The L Word (reviewed here!), the producers realized what a loathsome character Jenny Schecter had become and they decide she must get rid of her. Just as the fifth season used a new conceit where the teasers frequently played with moviemaking conceits of the events of prior seasons as Jenny and Tina work to get Jenny’s book Lez Girls made into a film. The sixth season has a similar conceit where virtually every episode begins with a character realizing how Jenny Schecter has affected their life and they comment on how it would be nice to see Jenny dead. As a result, the season builds the tension through the eight episodes to ask the question, “Who is going to kill Jenny Schecter?”

Dealing with the fallout of the studio deciding to change the end to Les Girls, all of the relationships are strained. Jenny evicts Shane after Shane screws Nikki, then sabotages Shane’s relationship with Molly. Tasha leaves Alice for her near-affair, while Tina and Bette actually come together thanks to Angelica’s fever. When Alice chases Tasha to Papi’s, she is able to talk her way back into the apartment as the friends fracture into two groups based on how they feel about fidelity. After being spurned by Jenny, Nikki has a meltdown and threatens to kill Jenny. Tina makes the same threat when the negative for The Girls goes missing. Jenny becomes erratic and Shane sleeps with her. In the process, she comes to fear that Jenny will kill herself if she leaves and she makes the uncomfortable choice to stay with Jenny, despite the fact that Shane does not want anyone to make her change.

Max finds out s/he is pregnant and after a brief fight with James, decides to commit to the pregnancy. Alice and Tasha go to therapy and shortly thereafter, they develop an uncomfortable threeway with Jaime, a social worker in the gay community. As Tina and Bette reconcile, despite Bette’s college roommate returning to the equation, the two restore their relationship. With all of the dramas between the members of the tight-knit lesbian community in Los Angeles, they all find themselves loathing Jenny.

The L Word Season Six is hampered by soap operatic conceits. There is an annoyingly gossipy, girlish sequence the moment Shane and Jenny sleep together. As well, the climactic events surrounding Bette in the season are based on Jenny’s video evidence of a non-event. Bette’s old roommate makes a pass at her and from Jenny’s house, Bette cleaning up the glass she dropped looks vaguely like Bette going down on her. The conflict is easily resolved by Bette explaining literally what happened and telling both Jenny and Kit exactly what the video portrays. Instead, Bette remains tightlipped and that causes an unfortunate bit of dramatic tension between her and Tina.

In the final season of The L Word, the main characters are:

Bette – Who forges a new relationship with Tina and with Angelica they once more come together as a family. When fallout from her failed relationship with Jodi causes Phyllis to fire her, she starts working with her former college roommate, who views her as the “one who got away.” She comes to loathe Jenny for the way Jenny continues to interfere with her relationship,

Tina – She loses a lot of her connections when Jenny pretty much ditches her professionally. She starts trusting Bette again, despite Bette’s old roommate coming around and shamelessly flirting with her partner. She and Bette try to adopt again. She comes to hate Jenny when the negative for The Girls goes missing,

Alice – Desperately tries to save her relationship with Tasha. She gets fired from the daily talk show by highlighting the story of a gay person who was killed. She then goes to a crisis center where she becomes enamored with the head therapist. Unfortunately, the more time she and Tasha spend with Jaime, the more she suspects that Tasha and Jaime have true feelings for one another,

Tasha – Furious about Alice flirting with another woman, she leaves Alice. When Alice talks her way back into her life, she starts to believe Alice has real talent for social work. She agrees to therapy and commits to Alice, despite her underlying feelings for Jaime,

Helena – In business now with Kit, they rename Denbo’s nightclub The Hit and it is a tremendous success. The woman who betrayed her years before comes back into her life and tries to convince her that she is now trustworthy. With her trust issues, though, she finds that virtually impossible,

Max Sweeney – Once the transgendered woman becomes comfortable with himself, he gets into a gay relationship with Jodi’s interpreter. However, when he gets pregnant, her gender issues become more of a conflict again for both herself and his relationship. He comes to hate Jenny for Jenny’s lack of acceptance for his gender identity issues,

Kit Porter – She supports her sister and develops a friendship with the transvestite guy who starts working at The Hit,

Shane – Tries to talk her way out of having sex with Nikki, then admits she actually loves Molly. She begins a relationship with Jenny and starts to fear Jenny might hurt herself if she leaves,

And Jenny – Having lost everything, she does her best to ruin Shane before pushing Nikki away once and for all. As everyone turns against her, she tries to assert herself. She meddles in Helena’s relationship, threatens Tina’s career, and starts trying to change Shane once they sleep together.

The final season of The L Word features solid acting. Despite the soap operatic qualities of the season, the performers do a good job. The banal aspects of the show are mitigated by the Tasha/Alice relationship which is presented with a decent amount of realism and enjoyable (to watch) tension and conflict. The other worthwhile aspect of the season is the character journey Max goes on. Max is a character who is an outsider of the outsider culture and when he gets pregnant, it is heartwenching to watch her suffering.

That said, the short sixth season of The L Word finishes the series and it might not be the most satisfying end, but it has a few moments that make it worth watching once, at least.

For other final seasons with intriguing endings, please visit my reviews of:
Frasier - Season 11
Lost - Season 6
V - Season 2

4/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Ruining Character For Familiarity, The L Word Season Five Flounders!

The Good: Moments of character (Alice, Tasha, Max), Moments of performance, Narrative creativity
The Bad: Focus on Jenny, Not all of the narrative experiments work, Guts the character of Shane, Soap operatic qualities, Dawn Denbo subplot
The Basics: While trying to be fresh, The L Word clunks along in its fifth season, undermining much of the prior seasons’ character growth.


When I love a television series, there is very little that can keep me from plowing right through it. In the case of The L Word, I’ve enjoyed the first four seasons (despite the fact that the only casualty in the entire series was my favorite character!), but it took me two tries to get through the fifth season and since completing it, I’ve been sitting on the review for about a month. The reason is, honestly, I was caught between a 3.5 and a 4 out of ten rating. If the series had still been on the air when I watched it (and I thought I had any influence by reviewing it), I probably would have bumped it up to a four, if for no other reason than to encourage the creativity and the season’s lone heartfelt moment (I’ll admit, the climactic moment between Alice and Tasha in one of the last episodes of the season brought a tear to my eyes!).

But, as I had been warned by a friend and fan of the series, The L Word Season Five shows a marked decline in the show. While I enjoyed the way the producers, writers, and directors played with the narrative – many of the episodes have teasers that are campy dreams, alternate scenes – actresses on the set of the film Les Girls acting out prior scenes from the series and homages to other works – the fifth season goes into dramatically shakier territory and to go there, the series severely undermines much of the character growth of characters, most notably, Shane. As well, the fifth season – which has expanded the cast yet again – has a number of tangent stories that essentially go nowhere and, in the process, end up creating a much more soap operatic show than The L Word has been. In other words, realism is sacrificed for melodrama and those living outside Los Angeles are likely to find the season even more offputting than the prior ones.

Jenny rewrites the screenplay to Les Girls as Bette and Jodi work on their (now) long distance relationship. Jodi returns to Bette almost immediately, while Jenny becomes more a part of the Hollywood machine to get Les Girls made into a feature film. Max’s working for Alice is going well, though Alice marginalizes Max and she misses Tasha. Shane and Paige make a move toward being together, but Shane (characteristically) flips out. With Helena in jail, she becomes terrified by and enamored with her cellmate. Jenny continues to go through assistants while Shane goes through an entire wedding party following her breakup with Paige. As Tasha faces discharge from the military, Alice starts to fight for her.

Tina uses her friendship with Jenny to get her studio Les Girls, though she quickly discovers that the hassle of working with the increasingly difficult Jenny might not be worth it. Max and Kit discover a fan of Jenny’s, Adele, at The Planet and hook her up as Jenny’s new assistant. Max, though, starts to notice that Adele might not be all that she seems. Kit, for her part, is soon overwhelmed by competition from a new lesbian bar in town, one that goes to war with the Planet. With Jenny romancing the star of Les Girls and Tasha fighting for her military career, tensions in the group begin to run high . . . which puts Tina and Bette on a collision course with one another again!

In order to set off the ridiculous plot that has a new nightclub opening in Los Angeles that starts to mimic and poach from The Planet, Shane has to almost completely revert to her original characterization. Following her fleeing Carmen at the climax of season three (reviewed here!), Shane was in the perfect place to develop in season four (reviewed here!). The writers of The L Word smartly developed Shane; as she became closer to her father, she made a conscious effort to reject his parenting patterns by essentially becoming a mother to her young half-brother in season four. With his departure, Shane and Paige were together to raise Paige’s son and almost immediately that entire arc and years of character growth were cut down. The point of undermining Shane’s calculated and worthwhile character growth? So Shane could get into a threesome with Dawn Denbo and her girlfriend at the new nightclub in order to set off the jealous war that Denbo would then rage on The Planet.

This is not a good reason to ruin a character.

Shane is not the only character problematically undermined in Season Five. In order to make the growing passion Tina has for Bette work, the viewer has to forget how Tina was shattered by Bette cheating on her. But that is the folly of The L Word; none of the characters are reliably monogamous, though many claim that they want that type of love and lifestyle.

At the other end of the spectrum is Jenny Schecter. Jenny has become progressively worse over the seasons and in the fifth season she is the embodiment of the spoiled brat (there’s another B word or even C word that more accurately describes her character in this season!). Jenny has completely lost any sense of humbleness as she becomes a Hollywood stereotype and a jerk to everyone around her. In fact, despite the fact that Bette calls her out on her poor behavior, there is no real reason why any of the characters consider her a friend any longer (though, to be fair, she does get Shane a job as a hair stylist on the set of Les Girls and Shane stands by her for that reason).

The L Word, like all worthwhile shows, succeeds (when it does) because of the characters it presents. In the fifth season, the cast of characters includes:

Bette Porter – With her professional life generally placid, she focuses on her relationship with Jodi. Unfortunately for her, she has a disastrous weekend with Jodi’s friends (who are much livelier than she is), which ends abruptly when Kit is robbed at gunpoint at The Planet. She shares parenting duties with Tina and is furious with Jenny for what Jenny wrote about her in Les Girls. Despite loving Jodi, she finds herself drawn back to Tina as they share common challenges,

Tina Kennard – Quietly pines for Bette while putting up with Jenny at work. She is minimized this season until there comes an opportunity for her and Bette to rekindle their relationship and when their affair comes out during a bike-a-thon the group is on, she sympathizes with Jodi,

Jodi Lerner – The artist returns to Los Angeles for Bette. She complicates Bette’s professional life when she allows one of her artists to do a performance art piece where he appears to hold a gun to his own head. Personally, she is embarrassed by Bette when Bette is aloof during a weekend she plans with her friends. When she realizes Bette is still in love with Tina, she takes it poorly, publicly embarrassing her lover,

Shane McCutcheon – Cheats on Paige while looking for an apartment for the couple. When (probably) Paige burns down her hair salon, she refuses to press charges. She seduces an entire wedding party and gets involved with Dawn Denbo and, more significantly, Denbo’s partner. She stands by Jenny when the production of Les Girls is threatened,

Alice Pieszecki – Her star is on the rise. Her podcasts and radio show begin getting her real attention. That gets her invited to a posh, secret, gay’s only party in Hollywood. When Tasha accompanies her, she is shocked by a prominent athlete appearing at the party. She is furious when that same athlete is later quoted making homophobic remarks and Alice uses video footage to “out” him. When that makes Alice a bit of a celebrity, she is offered a chance to co-host a prominent morning show. As Alice is used against Tasha when Tasha is forced to defend herself against charges of homosexual conduct in the military, she accidentally stumbles upon Tasha’s salvation,

Tasha Williams – She is delayed from her deployment and when one of her fellow MPs sees her out in public with Alice, her career is menaced. After the hassle of convincing her JAG officer to advocate for her, she prepares to fight for her career, even as Alice is used against her,

Kit Porter – Is robbed at gunpoint, so she gets a gun. When Dawn Denbo makes a play to ruin her and The Planet, she gets into a murderous rage. On the verge of losing everything when Denbo is able to buy out The Planet, the most unlikely ally comes to her aid,

Max Sweeney – No longer determined to get gender reassignment surgery, the transgendered member of the group calls Alice out on her exclusion of transgendered individuals on her podcast. Max develops a crush on Jodi’s interpreter. Max is also the only member of the group to not trust Adele and work to expose Jenny’s new assistant,

Adele – A mysterious, initially mousy, young woman who is a fan of Jenny Schecter’s works. She becomes Jenny’s assistant and begins pursuing her own agenda. Her personal narrative contains a number of contradictions that only Max initially catches,

Phyllis Kroll – Alice’s former lover and Bette’s boss pops up periodically, though she offends Joyce and then later needs her legal services,

Helena Peabody – Absent most of the season, she is imprisoned for her crimes in the prior season before skipping town prior to her trial. She returns when her mother is dying after having fallen in love with her cellmate,

And Jenny Schecter – Returning to Los Angeles with the financial backing of a sugar daddy who is enamored with her work, she weasels her way into being the director of Les Girls. After Adele and Tina convince Jenny to cast Nikki Stevens as the lead in the film, Jenny and Nikki begin a romantic relationship which threatens production of the film! She treats everyone around her like a tool and exhibits little humanity in dealing with others.

In the fifth season of The L Word, the acting is fine, which sells many of the teasers – like the campy Charlie’s Angels parody that opens one of the episodes – but few of the performers are given much to do that actually stretches their talents. Arguably the best performance of the season is one of the most simple and profound: late in the season, actress Rose Rollins is able to stretch Tasha in a new direction. Adrift and without order, Rollins makes a simple moment of being compelling and fascinating to watch. The rest of the cast does what is asked of them, but there are no extraordinary performances for the remainder of the season.

The L Word Season 5 is not abysmal, but it lacks a compelling element to make it worth recommending or watching. The story of lesbian culture in Los Angeles has become unfortunately inbred in this season and, lacking anything real, it treads toward the melodramatic and soap operatic.

For other works with Wally Shawn, please visit my reviews of:
Toy Story 3
Furry Vengeance
Southland Tales
The Incredibles
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
The Princess Bride

3.5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Less Inspired Than The Prior, The L Word Season Four Has A Decent Character Mix!

The Good: Wonderful characters, Good acting
The Bad: Formless sense of plot for the season
The Basics: Figuring out its new mix of characters, in the fourth season, The L Word is good, but in no way extraordinary.


There are very few shows I stick with after the generally-agreed upon time when the series jumped the shark, at least as far as older shows I am now discovering on DVD. With The L Word, rumor is it took a pretty steep dive after the fourth season. As I consider the fourth season of the series, that idea – that the fourth would be the last one worth watching – was actually sadly unsurprising to me. After all, for some of the key characters in the show, Season Four finds the writers and producers stretching to figure out what to do with them. That said, I’m happy I watched the fourth season (I was pretty much ready to give up on the series when the third season saw the untimely demise of my favorite character!), though objectively it is a somewhat aimless series bloated by several new characters and an abandonment of some of the early seasons’ more compelling individuals.

On the big plus side, The L Word Season Four seems to be where the writers and producers realized just what an unlikable character they created with Jenny Schecter. In this season, the character is acknowledged as loathsome by everyone but Shane, who both does not care what others think and spends most of the season very much wrapped up in her own thing. In fact, this season of The L Word finds most of the characters seriously disconnected from one another.

After Bette runs off with the baby, Tina is furious. Shane reverts to old habits after fleeing her own wedding. Helena, cut off, begins to learn thrift from Alice. Returning to Los Angeles, Tina and Bette play a game of legal chess to come to an arrangement over their daughter. Bette surrenders and buries herself in academia while Tina is charged with wooing Jenny to represent her suddenly popular work, Lez Girls. As various members of their social circle are outraged over Jenny’s book, Alice becomes obsessed with a new nexus in her website, a woman who has slept with thousands of women, named Papi.

When Angus arranges a rebirth of Kit’s career, things seem to be going well for them until Angus hooks up with one of the nannies and he is caught. Shane, meanwhile, is saddled with her younger brother, Shay, and becomes a model for a Hugo Boss campaign to pay for his medical attention when he breaks his arm. The pseudo-parental bond with Shay leads Shane to a new, serious, relationship with a single mother, Paige. And as Bette deals with her boss coming out and starting a new relationship with an artist/professor at her college, Jodi, Alice finds herself in a relationship with a soldier, Tasha.

The L Word in its fourth season is well-focused on Shane, Alice, Bette, and Max, with the others working as supplemental characters to their main stories. Helena is relegated to a recurring b-plot as she works to survive without money and discovers a love of gambling. Shane has a good arc which both cleverly utilizes her character – she is utterly indifferent to the hype surrounding Papi and does not care at all when Alice tries to make a big deal out of her and she rejects the initial offer from Hugo Boss because she has no interest being the face (or body) of their advertising campaign – and gives her growth and development – she feels guilty over abandoning her fiancé and becomes emotionally dependent upon Shay when he is abandoned on her doorstep. Shane seems very Shane throughout the season, but she grows and develops well beyond who she has been and where she has been before now. It is a smart use of character growth for a character I initially did not like and who had a somewhat tragic feel to her end in season three.

Alice gets a decent challenge as she has a somewhat promiscuous season going from Papi to Phyllis to Tasha! Ultimately developing a serious relationship with Tasha, who has politics very different from Alice (and most of her friends), makes for a dynamic seeming character. Bette has a similarly dynamic sensibility to her in that her new job takes her away from most of her friends, but into a series of relationships that complicate her life both personally (with Jodi) and professionally (her mentor role to “the culture” with her boss, Phyllis). Her relationship with Tina seems completely dead this season (though Tina’s end of that comes into play very late in the season). Max continues to struggle with her gender identification, but he finds a woman who accepts him for who he is and champions him when he has to stand up to his father and boss.

Because the show is not particularly plot-focused, the characters in The L Word are what is important in the fourth season, the cast expands and the essential characters are:

Bette Porter – Professionally-driven, she pretty much abandons her daughter to Tina after abducting her. She buries herself in academia as Dean Porter, who tries to keep the funding for her college up. As a result, she finds herself in an awkward position when her new boss, Phyllis, comes out and gets in an awkward first relationship with Alice. She is challenged by the visiting artist, Jodi, who she quickly develops a relationship with. She is horrified when Kit falls off the wagon,

Alice Pieszecki – When her website gains an abrupt new Nexus (Papi), she is instantly intrigued. After a one night stand with her, she gets involved with Phyllis, whom she is charmed by. After that, she develops a relationship with the very in-the-closet Tasha and unfortunately complicates the soldier’s life,

Tina Kennard – A virtual non-entity this season, she is in a heterosexual relationship for the entire season, though late in the season she begins to find herself attracted to Kate, a famous director. She awkwardly tries to represent Jenny in getting the movie rights to Lez Girls and discovers she is a real jerk,

Jenny Schecter – Becomes an uber-bitch after Lez Girls is serialized by The New Yorker. When the book gets a bad review, she goes psycho, getting into a relationship with the reviewer’s girlfriend to ruin their relationship,

Shane McCutcheon – After bailing on her wedding and discovering her ex wants nothing to do with her, she returns home to discover her half-brother, Shay, abandoned on her doorstep. She rejects an offer by Hugo Boss to model for them, until Shay breaks his arm. When she becomes invested in Shay, she gets invested in Paige and soon she is in a new, serious, relationship. She is heartbroken when Shay is taken back by her father,

Kit Porter – She has a chance to hit it big again, thanks to Angus. While she and Angus work on their relationship, she is shocked when Tina lets slip that he cheated. After befriending Papi and learning of Angus’s infidelity, she falls off the wagon,

Helena Peabody – Cut off from her funds, she gambles and loses, putting her at the mercy of a woman who is content to use her and keep her on a short leash,

Max Sweeney – Having successfully passed for months at her new computer job, he is put in the awkward position of dating the boss’s daughter. When he comes clean to her about her current gender, their relationship ends and soon thereafter, her boss begins pressuring her by making his life there uncomfortable,

Jodi Lerner – A deaf artist, she challenges Bette and develops a troubling relationship with her,

Tasha Williams – A friend of Papi, she is a soldier who served in Iraq. After meeting and falling for Alice, they develop a relationship and her position in the military is threatened when a soldier sees her and Alice out together and reports it back,

Phyllis Kroll – A professional and Bette’s boss, she comes out, ending her marriage of more than twenty years. She has a fling with Alice, which she thinks is much more serious. She gets an unlikely partner, while continuing to complicate both Bette and Jodi’s lives,

Papi – A player who puts Shane to shame, she has flings with Alice and Helena, but then befriends Kit. She helps Kit get alcohol and tries to support Tasha,

Angus Partridge – Generally a good guy, he commits to being with Kit, until he has a fling with a blonde nanny. Following that, he works hard to make things right, becoming a constant once again in Kit’s life and a much healthier alternative for her than Papi. His band gets a contract, but he gets booted from the group,

and Paige Sobel – A single mother, she gets involved with Shane very hesitantly.

The acting in the fourth season of The L Word is universally good. The characters from the prior seasons perform flawlessly and newcomers to the series Marlee Matlin (Jodi), Janina Gavankar (Papi), Rose Rollins (Tasha), and Kristanna Loken (Paige Sobel) gel flawlessly with the established performers. As big a coup as Marlee Matlin is for the series, she is overshadowed on screen by the recurring appearances of Cybill Shepherd as Phyllis, who arrives on the show with a stature that matches Jennifer Beals’s Bette and plays uncertain in her sexuality enough to be plausibly obsessed with Leisha Hailey’s Alice.

Ultimately, the fourth season is good, but it did not leave me with the driving need to see what happened to the characters. In fact, where The L Word Season 4 ends, all of the characters I cared about had pretty much resolved their arcs and whatever comes next is just gravy. I can only hope it is good gravy!

For the other seasons of The L Word, please visit my reviews of:
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

5.5/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Post-Apocalyptic Christian Theater: The Book Of Eli Is Dark And Troublingly Familiar.

The Good: Themes, Acting, Setting
The Bad: Plot structure is very familiar, Brutal mood
The Basics: Following an apocalypse, a man protects the last known bible in The Book Of Eli.


As I looked through my library of reviews, I was actually shocked to realize how very few films starring Denzel Washington I have actually seen or reviewed. I have long recognized him as a great actor and I have enjoyed the works I have seen that he is featured in, but her remains one of the great actors whose filmography I have limited direct experience with. So, as I debated today which of the films to knock off my “want to watch” list, it was unsurprising that The Book Of Eli with Denzel Washington leapt to the top of the list.

Recently, I saw a preview for The Book Of Eli before another film and I was intrigued. I was quite surprised that I had missed the film in theaters. Perhaps I let it pass by because I was not yet a big fan of The Walking Dead (season 1 reviewed here!) or the whole post-apocalyptic genre. Now that I am, though, I was eager to watch The Book Of Eli and for the most part it did not disappoint.

In the wake of a cataclysm, a lone man hunts a cat in a burned-out forest before wandering on to the nearest shell of a former city. After a night in the house of a hanged man, he encounters a band of ruffians on the road. After dispatching of them and witnessing a motorcycle gang kill and rape two others, he continues west to a small town of survivors. There, the local power is Carnegie – the one who hired the motorcycle gang – whose sole objective is to find a book. The man fends off an attack from the motorcycle gang’s leader when trying to get his water refilled.

In refusing to take advantage of Solara or her blind mother, the man (Eli) inadvertently reveals to Carnegie that he has the very book Carnegie has been searching the world over for. But, while Carnegie wants the book, a bible, to enslave and control, Eli moves west in search of a place where his faith might be rewarded and he can help rebuild the world. After Eli moves on, Solara follows him and he must rescue her from bandits and together the two head west, trying to elude Carnegie and his forces.

My fundamental problem with The Book Of Eli comes from how it buys into the most common conceits of the genre. The post-apocalyptic genre commonly portrays a world where man is set against every other man in a desperate fight for survival. While many of the dystopian situations intrigued me, now it has become a common genre and one where I find myself less impressed by the continuation of. I completely understand how, facing the destruction of the world we know, most people will become frustrated and fight over the last canned foods, stockpile guns and water and hunker down to defend what little they have. I get that (I have a plan for myself and my family in that regard), but the stories that take place longer after the actual apocalypse are rapidly becoming passé. The films seldom illustrate how the human spirit endures and our desire for freedom is stronger than the quest to dominate.

Thirty years after the apocalypse, it is hard to imagine even the degenerates will still believe they can get anything of use by raping and killing anyone who passes by. Far more likely, in the wake of the established world order coming to an end, after a few years of unpleasantness, the survivors hunker down in houses that they do not pay mortgages on, farm what they can grow and hunt what they can eat enough to survive. So, while the setting of The Book Of Eli - the desert wasteland of the American West – seems initially intriguing, it really is more of a cliché now than anything audacious.

That said, I like the philosophical bent of The Book Of Eli. The Book Of Eli is basically about people from the world before the war that wiped out humanity attempting to bring religion back to the world. It’s the classic story of using religion to exert power (as represented by Carnegie) vs. a person of actual faith (Eli). The Book Of Eli is laudable for taking the view that is unpopular in the current political climate that organized religion is the cause of more suffering than it is the source of joy and a positive series of guidelines for people to live by in order to live better with one another. I like that about the film.

As for the characters, they are more average than truly memorable or distinctive. Carnegie is a monolithic villain, a senseless evil who wants to dominate and exerts his power over those around him. Eli is a monolithic good, despite the methods he lives by in order to protect the book. The unfortunate character is Solara. She is a generic sidekick and rapebait, who is not given a real chance to evolve in the film.

Still, the principles in The Book Of Eli are good. Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, and Jennifer Beals each make the most out of their time on screen, even if their characters are more one-dimensional than incredible. Gary Oldman plays another villain who is well-created by the versatile actor, though the role seems more familiar than new. The same can be said for Denzel Washington; he plays Eli well, but it seems well within his established range.

Directors Albert and Allen Hughes make The Book Of Eli look good; in fact, in the case of the costumes, too good. Thirty years after the apocalypse, it is hard to believe there are no bibles, but there are (apparently) sweatshops. The clothes on many of the characters look underworn and that is a detail that is way off. The soundtrack sounded a lot like the main theme from Prometheus (reviewed here!), which actually made me respect that film just a little less for being derivative. Even so, The Book Of Eli is good, but for fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, it has very little we have not already seen before.

For other post-apocalyptic visions, please visit my reviews of:
I Am Legend
Doomsday
Jeremiah - Season 1

6/10

For other film reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

With Enhanced Realism, The L Word Season Three Moves The Series In A Positive Direction!

The Good: Increased realism, Acting, Characters, Bonus features
The Bad: Could use commentary tracks . . . One or two character decisions that seem oddly dropped
The Basics: The L Word Season Three has the show in full stride, with more realism and (generally) fewer soap operatic moments than the prior seasons!


The third season of a show can be the time it really hits its creative stride. Such is certainly the case with The L Word. The L Word is a show I am just now discovering on DVD and I have found it worthwhile in its first (reviewed here!) and second seasons (reviewed here!). But, Los Angeles lesbian culture has an elitism that has made parts of the show fairly inaccessible . . . until the third season. In the third season of The L Word, we finally see someone hassled for being gay and while I have openly been glad that The L Word doesn’t have its characters as victims of hate crimes (I’m pretty much through with depressing stories of gay/lesbian/bixsexual/transgender abuse in this life, much the way I am done with Holocaust films), but that Shane picking a fight in the wrong neighborhood was pretty much the peak of antigay behavior on the show until now rang a bit false.

In the third season of The L Word, there is far more than a minor altercation to enhance the realism of the series. In addition to adding more gender confusion with the introduction of Moira/Max (a pre-op transgender individual), elements like being lower class and sexual identification issues (in the form of Tina falling off the hole and onto the pole - sorry, could not resist the rhyme!) make the characters of The L Word less like archetypes and more like individuals in this season.

Set six months after the second season finale, The L Word Season Three finds Bette and Tina once again struggling with sexual dysfunction. They are also beginning to have money issues (though how that is given Bette’s contract was bought out, she was not outright fired, is entirely unclear), but are working to get Bette declared the adoptive mother of Angelica (the baby Tina gave birth to at the climax of the prior season). The line that implied the potential break-up between Dana and Alice is borne out as the season opens with Alice as a crazed stalker, self-medicating and obsessed with Dana. Dana is back with Lara and her tennis career is really rising fast. Kit is finding keeping The Planet profitable is harder than she would like, so she hires a new manager, who starts bringing big events to the small venue. Helena buys a movie studio, which puts her in an interesting position relative to Tina and Shane and Carmen’s relationship is actually pretty solid after six months.

Jenny Schecter returns to Los Angeles after six months of mental health treatment with Moira, a woman who is very masculine in her demeanor who wants to become a man. As Max, Moira falls in with Billie (The Planet’s new manager), who hooks her up with testosterone treatments. When Jenny is liberated from her day to day toiling by a publication offer from Simon & Schuester, she becomes more assertive and defiant.

One of the real treats of the third season of The L Word is that Jenny Schecter, who dominated the first season and had a significant role in the second season, is a virtual nonentity in the third season of the show. The producers awkwardly squeeze her into situations (her toast to Shane in the final episode, for example, seems like a real stretch for the character), but she takes a back seat in the storylines to Max more often than not.

The third season of The L Word further complicates the characters and explores the complexities of family and sexuality. Basic liberties being denied to people are made explicit in the third season and it takes a real bigot to watch Alice being kept out of Dana’s hospital room and not feel like something is wrong with the situation! The L Word is fearless in its third season and explores a full range of experiences and emotions that are universally relatable, even as it showcases lifestyles (like Max’s struggle with gender identification) that many people might not have direct experience with.

Much more than the plots, The L Word is about characters. In the third season, the principle characters are:

Tina – Against her better judgment, she takes a job with Helena at Helena’s new movie studio. She resents Bette taking up the cause of arts instead of staying home with Angelica. Sexually bored and frustrated, she goes online and chats with a man who wants her sexually. She decides to explore her renewed interest in men, much to Bette’s dismay,

Dana – who moved on from Alice to return to Lara, finds herself in an awkward social situation as a result. When she and Lara are making love, Lara finds a lump in one of her breasts. When she is diagnosed with cancer, the change throws her and strains her relationship with Lara. She wins a major tournament,

Shane – Now in a full relationship with Carmen, she agrees to wear a dress and play straight for a quincinera. But, when Sherry pops back up in her life, she is punished by Carmen for not being monogamous. In the resulting fall-out, she proposes to Carmen and that choice leads her to hunt down her father. She delights in having family experiences with Carmen,

Alice – Self-medicating over her loss of Dana, she gravitates toward Helena. While speed dating, she meets a lesbian vampire literature teacher. After getting over Dana, she starts dating again, but that is complicated when a friend needs her help,

Jenny – After six months of therapy, she moves back to Los Angeles, with Max. When her book is actually picked up by a publisher, she gets a big advance and begins reevaluating her life. Otherwise, she just hangs out,

Carmen – Still in the closet with her family, she enlists Shane to come with her to a family event, as her friend. She loathes Max’s tendency toward being a slob. She gets irked at Shane for not being faithful as well. She gets a cool gig as a d.j. for Russell Simmons,

Helena – When a tarot reader gives clues that Alice is her next romantic relationship, she begins pursuing her. She buys a movie studio and hires Tina. Continuing her tendency for the predatory, she seduces a documentary filmmaker whom she is financing. Actually hurt by that and as a result of being swindled multiple times, her mother steps in with a drastic decision at the climax of the season,

Moira/Max – Jenny’s new love interest, she has a very masculine build and is the subject of an assault when she and Jenny are on the road. She is not as well-off as the rest of the women and has serious gender identification issues. Still young in many ways, she crashes with Jenny and is much more slovenly than her friend. Her gender identification issues make her more masculine and she is surprised that Jenny embraces that in her. Becoming Max, he starts taking hormones, uses a prosthetic penis to urinate publicly in men’s rooms, and throws a fundraiser for the surgery that will transform him,

Kit – Turning day to day management of the Planet over to Billie, she falls for Bette and Tina’s Manny, Angus. Despite Angus’s youth, she develops a romance with him and she is pleasantly surprised when he pushes her effectively to get back in the studio and record a new album. Going through a very rough menopause,

and Bette – Practicing “attachment parenting” with Tina, she has to adopt Angelica in order to have parental rights, a process that is annoying and nerve-wracking for her. Fighting against the Bush Administration’s policy against the arts, she begins to move away from parenting and back toward her familiar lifestyle, despite not having the income any longer to realistically live the way she wants to. When Tina gets into a relationship with a man, she hires Joyce to represent her interests, though the subpoena comes at the worst possible time for them both.

In the third season of The L Word the acting is highly tuned. The prior castmembers all know their beats perfectly and even Mia Kirshner, who has not previously wowed me, manages to play Jenny’s defiance this season in a more grounded and interesting fashion than the character’s prior incarnation (which was basically enough to give the viewer whiplash). Daniela Sea is an excellent addition to the cast as Max and she plays the transgendered character perfectly.

The real winners on the acting front in the third season are Leisha Hailey, Erin Daniels, and Katherine Moennig. Despite the fact that the series has been off the air and basic curiosity when looking at the actor appearance dates on the IMDB’s page for the show is enough to lead one to spoilers that are now years old, I refuse to spoil things for viewers who are just getting into the show. Even knowing what was coming in the third season with one of my favorite characters from the show, The L Word Season Three is surprising with the power of the performances. So, despite the fact that these three actresses give standout performances, I won’t be going into the context of those performances. I will, however, say that Leisha Hailey is able to express an emotional range as Alice that she has not been given the chance to before now and she is amazingly adept as an actress. Similarly, when Katherine Moennig plays off Eric Roberts in the final episode of the season as Shane and her father meet in a bar, her body language is so tight and expressive that the end of the season is no surprise at all as a result.

Erin Daniels, similarly, plays Dana incredibly through her breast cancer arc. It is a shame she was not nominated for any awards for her performance this season.

On DVD, the third season of The L Word has a featurette that focuses on Daniels’s arc, a documentary on the show and its effect on lesbian culture, and a few minor featurettes about jewelry and contests surrounding the show. I would have loved commentary tracks for almost every episode of the season, but, alas, they were not to be found!

The L Word is strong in its third season and while friends have warned me that the show takes an abrupt quality leap off a cliff, I am eager to continue with the series given how incredible this season was!

For other works with Alan Cumming, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Smurfs
It’s Complicated
Tin Man
X-2: X-Men United
Nicholas Nickleby

9/10

For other television reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

| | |

After A Rocky Start, The L Word Season Two Hits A Wonderful Stride!

The Good: Interesting characters, Great acting, Engaging stories
The Bad: Intrusive soundtrack at the beginning, Jenny Schecter/ Mia Kishner
The Basics: The L Word Season Two begins with an oppressively obvious soundtrack and annoying character combinations, but evolves into a pretty fabulous season of television.


I recall when I was in college and Ellen DeGeneres was “coming out” on Ellen how a good friend of mine (at the time) and I had some wonderful debates. In the final season of the series, there was an episode where Ellen, in encountering an ex-boyfriend, has to ask herself if she really was gay. I remember enjoying the episode quite a bit and thinking that the episode did a good job of illustrating the complexity of human relationships and identity. I recall she was upset because she thought that it added a layer of ambiguity that she thought undermined the strength of Ellen’s “coming out.” Regardless, the episode did show some complexity and I like how it presented the gay community as anything but monolithic.

By the time the second season of The L Word aired, viewers were, no doubt, used to a complex set of characters to portray “lesbian culture” as it actually is: a truly diverse subculture willed with all sorts of people with different beliefs, political leanings, and senses of personality. Unfortunately for people who do like complexity, The L Word Season Two undermines itself by creating a different sense of a monolithic culture. If The L Word Season Two is to be believed, there is no sector of the lesbian subculture that actually respects fidelity, honesty, and/or monogamy. That’s not me saying that; that’s actually “in the text.” By the end of the second season of The L Word every character has had sex with someone who is married, engaged, or otherwise in a relationship (or while they, themselves, are married or in another relationship that leads them to lie about the affair). EVERY character. For those who don’t follow my reviews to know I am actively involved in Gay Rights, I preface the following comment with my unabashed acknowledgement that I am openly gay friendly and politically active:

Note to the producers of The L Word (even knowing the show is over): if you want to change the perception that lesbians and gays cannot be trusted because they lead a “secret double life” and thus lie (due largely to the pressure from the dominant culture and its own faults) to protect themselves, the very least you can do to debunk the perception is have at least one set of characters on your show who are entirely honest. The characters in The L Word (at least in the second season) are not lying to save their lives from homophobes or persecution, they lie to one another because it’s convenient and they genuinely don’t care about how others think or feel.

It seems like I keep starting my reviews of The L Word with notes about what I don’t like, but the truth is, once it got past its first few “speed bumps” (in terms of production, not so much content), the second season of The L Word actually is quite wonderful. Part of the way I know that is that I continue to think about the show and process what I saw, which is not something I do when I blow something off or it is not any good. But, to finish off my last notes on what I did not actually like about the second season, I hate the opening credits/theme song (it actually reminded me of one of the ridiculous ones that they came up with on Ellen as a parody!) and the season starts off with an intrusive, annoying use of the soundtrack. Several early moments and transitions are gutted by the use of music that does not fit the moment. Later in the season, like the use of “Finally” when Dana and Alice hook up, it seems the producers and musical directors have found the right balance, but at the beginning, the clips in the show feel self-referential and intrusive.

That said, the second season of The L Word is, at least, equally enjoyable to The L Word Season One (reviewed here!). Picking up shortly after where the first season ended, the second season of The L Word is heavily-serialized, adult programming. While the first season was mostly focused on Jenny Schecter and the Bette and Tina relationship, the second season relegates Jenny Schecter to a subplot and brings Shane to the forefront instead, which makes for a more interesting direction for the season. The subplot between Dana and Alice also takes a more important role in the season. It is impossible to discuss the second season of The L Word without revealing some of how the first season of the show ended. As a result, for those who want a pure viewing of the first season, this is your last chance to stop reading and get that!

Tina is now five months pregnant, having re-inseminated herself before Bette had her affair on her with Candace. In no mood to forgive Bette, the fallout creates tension between Bette and Tina’s mutual friends. Shane continues to deny the emotional impact of her relationship with her wealthy benefactor and Dana and Alice work to deny what their kiss actually meant as Tonya builds corporate sponsors for her wedding to Dana. Kit takes over the Planet following Marina’s attempted suicide and Jenny struggles to find exactly what her sexual identity is. As Shane falls for Carmen the D.J., she finds she really needs her privacy and she moves in with Jenny. While Jenny slowly unearths a traumatic childhood memory, she and Shane take in an aspiring filmmaker, Mark (because of his ability to pay the rent).

When the Peabody Foundation is turned over to Peggy Peabody’s daughter, Helena, both Bette and Tina find themselves unfortunately influenced. Bette discovers Helena has no real love for the arts, but she soon moves in on the gallery at which Bette works. Tina, at the same time, develops a romantic relationship with Helena and as her child comes closer to due, she struggles with the pull from both Bette and Helena.

The L Word Season Two trades off the sexual ambiguity struggle of Jenny Schecter for a much more interesting internal conflict involving Shane. Shane, who has been a player the entire series, begins to develop a greater sense of sexual maturity. Her exploratory youth (helped along by the fact that she was a hooker as a child) comes to an end in this season as she realizes that it is no longer emotionally fulfilling for her. Unable to completely express how she has fallen in love with Carmen, Shane continues to sleep around, but she also stops herself several times from doing the same, especially as Carmen rejects Jenny.

Throughout the focus on Shane, there is an important thread with Mark, who actually creates an additional sense of betrayal for Shane. While that sense of betrayal leads Shane to a greater understanding of what she wants in a relationship with Carmen, it also serves to push Jenny to the psychological break she needs to uncover the repressed memory. Unfortunately for viewers who want clarity, Jenny’s story is not made explicit in this season, so there is something of an anti-climax for the character.

The L Word Season Two is sufficiently complex, which is nice. As soon as Tonya is out of the picture, Dana and Alice openly begin their relationship and it proves to include elements that are seldom explored in film or television. Alice’s desire, for example, for Dana to use a strap-on, but not be a man, explores the sexually complicated nature of Alice’s bisexuality. And Tina’s pregnancy does not mean the end of the end of her sexuality; The L Word Season Two has an unabashed presentation of her sexuality and that is something I, at the very least, had never seen in a show before now!

While the show continues to have a strong soap opera quality in the relationship between Bette and Tina and Tina and Helena, it feels remarkably fresh. After Tina uses a civil rights lawyer to pursue a separation agreement with Bette (the lawyer is played brilliantly by Jane Lynch!), the sense of conflict between them is raised. The introduction of Helena is interesting and provides the requisite conflict to keep the estrangement of Bette and Tina realistic.

Like all worthwhile television, The L Word succeeds (as much as it does) because of the strength of its characters. In the second season, the primary characters include:

Bette Porter – Her professionalism slipping as she drinks her way through the break-up with Tina, she drifts when Tina rejects her attempts at reconciliation. Deeply hurt by the rejection, she reverts to a more promiscuous incarnation of herself while still working to win Tina back. She helps Kit bankroll the Planet and finds herself once more in conflict with her father, who is dying. When Helena Peabody joins the Board of the gallery she works at, she finds her professional future imperiled as well,

Tina Kennard – Very pregnant now, she struggles to find the right time to break the news to her ex, Bette. Her non-profit is given a huge grant by the Peabody Foundation and she finds herself under Helena’s influence, though she still craves Bette in her heart. After her rejection of her lawyer, she moves back into the house she and Bette shared. Struggling with both sets of feelings, she slowly sees Helena’s true nature,

Alice – Openly and eagerly bisexual, she starts a tryst with Dana. After taking a radio job, she and Dana go public and she finds herself succumbing to jealousy,

Shane McCutcheon – The sexually promiscuous hairdresser, she finds herself actually developing serious emotional ties to Carmen after a one-night stand. She befriends Mark and works to forgive him after his betrayal of her and Jenny,

Dana Fairbanks – The out tennis player, she listlessly continues her engagement to Tonya despite the fact that her heart is not at all in the relationship. She and Alice work to not further their romance, unsuccessfully, and when she and Tonya end their engagement, she and Alice openly explore the full potential of their relationship. She has trouble telling Alice she loves her,

Kit Porter – A blues and R&B singer, she is Bette’s half-sister and wrestles less with her alcoholism after she takes over the Planet. She falls in love with a married man who runs a self-improvement workshop and reluctantly gives up on Ivan after she sees her out of drag. With Bette, she struggles with Melvin’s aging and death,

Carmen de la Morales – A D.J. who Shane meets while working for Arianna Huffington, she really likes Shane but wants a monogamous relationship. When Shane seems unwilling or unable to commit. She spends more and more time with Jenny,

Helena Peabody – The daughter of Peggy Peabody, she has no real love of the arts and takes over the Peabody Foundation with her own agenda. Moving to Los Angeles, she quickly becomes a predator on the scene, seducing Tina and working to exert influence over Bette. Fighting with her ex over children, she quickly establishes an m.o. where she works to control and dominate those around her,

Mark Wayland – An aspiring documentary filmmaker, he sets up cameras in Shane and Jenny’s house after he is pressured by his financers to come up with something juicier than he is initially developing. He comes to Shane’s rescue and works to earn her trust back after he hurts both her and Shane,

and Jenny Schecter – An aspiring writer, she gets the house when Tim leaves for a job in Ohio. She begins taking a class taught by a famous writer and in the process begins to expose a repressed traumatic memory.

The acting in the second season of The L Word is largely magnificent. As I noted as I watched the episodes, what a difference a year makes! Ossie Davis, who recurs in this season as Melvin (Bette and Kit’s father) looks thinner and diminished in this, his final role. He steals the scenes he is in, just as Charles S. Dutton is absolutely captivating as Benjamin Bradshaw opposite Pam Grier’s Kit. Even Mia Kirshner, who I was not at all impressed with in the first season, does a decent job as Jenny Schecter. To wit, when Kirshner as Jenny claims that Shane is her best friend, it is only later, upon reflection, that I realized how absolutely preposterous the claim is when she makes it (the two have had remarkably few scenes and have had no memorable exchanges or encounters at that point!). Yet, Kirschner sells the phantom relationship between the two characters.

In fact, the only other unconvincing aspect on the acting front is also an issue with the way the characters are written. Erin Daniels, who is absolutely magnificent in the second half of the season, is utterly unconvincing in the first half in the scenes she shares with Meredith McGeachie (Tonya). Daniels plays Dana as so smart and otherwise confident that how she lets Tonya continue to rope her along – when the two have no sexual chemistry and even less of a relationship – never seems right. Sadly, Daniels cannot make that convincing, though she and Leisha Hailey have amazing on-screen chemistry and Daniels is a treat to watch for the latter half of the season. As well, the scene where Daniels as Dana explains to Tonya her emotional state going into the engagement is powerfully and perfectly delivered; one just wishes it came about five episodes earlier!

While Jennifer Beals and Laurel Holloman continue their amazing performances as Bette and Tina, season two of The L Word truly gives Katherine Moennig the chance to breakout. Moennig does more acting with her eyes and body language this season to express Shane as a deeper, more conflicted character than she was able to in the first season, which is far more complicated to pull off than it may sound. Yet every time she has to enhance Shane’s burgeoning sense of desire and soul, even wordlessly, Moennig pulls it off.

On DVD, The L Word Season Two includes a few truly decent commentary tracks as well as featurettes on Gloria Steinem’s appearance and the newbies to the cast of the show. While I would have preferred more bonus features, it is hard to deny that there is enough wonderful content within the primary programming to enthusiastically recommend The L Word Season Two!

For other works with Laurel Holloman, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Angel - Season Three
Boogie Nights
The Incredibly True Adventure Of Two Girls In Love

8/10

For other television reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |