Goodbye L Word

A   sadness-soaked eulogy for the show that was better than   everything else in its time slot. Usually. Click the byline to view more stories by this author.

A   sadness-soaked eulogy for the show that was better than   everything else in its time slot. Usually.

By Dave White

An Advocate.com exclusive posted March 9, 2009

       

Mia   Kirshner as Jenny

                  

       I like to fantasize about how things go down behind the scenes at shows I’m in love with, and I don’t want  to hear about the reality if it   contradicts with what I’ve created in my mind. Like, for example, I used to love Gilmore Girls and now I’m pals with one of the former cast members. But we usually only talk  about reality television or desserts when we chat because I never want to know about what life on that show’s set was really like unless it absolutely lines   up with my fantasy.    

       

       So here’s  my L Word fantasy: Ilene Chaiken       watches The Sopranos final episode with its       ambiguous ending and thinks, “I’ve got it! We start the season with Jenny       dying and spend every episode between then  and the finale getting all the other characters to  utter something somewhat incriminating like, ‘I WILL FUCKING MURDER JENNY SCHECTER WITH THIS, MY LATEST  BALENCIAGA SCARF  PURCHASE, AS I WRAP IT AROUND HER  EVIL THROAT, THEN TIE IT TO THE GUY       FROM THOSE SAW  MOVIES AND THEN TO THE BUMPER OF MY PRIUS! SNAPPIN’ LEZZIE  NECKS! THEN I WILL THROW HER INTO TINA AND  BETTE’S POOL!’ and then when  the final  moments are rolling, all of the characters will don evening gowns and flash hazy Ativan-powered grins straight into the  camera as  they float on a fragrant and invisible  conveyor belt that glides them       into the police station where they will be interrogated. Or not. Who       cares?   The check cleared! Artistry!”

           

Rachel   Shelley as Helena

              

       Here’s why I think, if you’re a fan, you should be happy with  the  self-congratulatory, full-on-bonkers final  sequence: because it makes as       much sense as a lot of other stuff that went down during those six  amazing  seasons. Stuff like Kit’s new going-nowhere  relationship with the       heterosexual drag queen. Stuff  like Helena’s disappearing children       (cleverly  given the nod by Alice early this season: “And don’t get me       started on her kids because what happened to       them?!”) and her time  spent on lockdown. Stuff like the disappearance of Shane’s arch sex rival Papi. Stuff like Tasha being friends with Papi and       meeting Alice through her but then ditching Papi and all her old friends  to hang out with the fancy ladies 24/7. Stuff like Alice outing famous sports figures and then outing Tasha and no one ever keying her car because of it. Stuff like Shane performing oral sex on a movie star on the balcony railing of an upscale restaurant and no one but Jenny       catching them doing it. Stuff like Jenny’s transformation from unstable, annoying waif into a prissy couture-grabbing             villainess. Stuff like Max       being the only trans in the village and his fake beard that flashed like  a neon sign and pulled focus in every scene he was in, giving way to an even weirder fake mustache that he chose to wear             with maternity overall shorts. Stuff like Dawn Denbo basically giving Helena ownership of her Beautiful Lover Cindy in this weird human sex-slave trade and then… yes,  the disappearance of Beautiful Lover Cindy. Stuff like Dawn Denbo period. I could spend an entire day lamenting the departure of the fire-breathing Dawn Denbo, how she bloomed and flowered for a while in the universe of  the Marc Jacobs–beskirted, David Yurman–jewelry acquiring, art-collecting       Los  Angeles lesbians, terrorizing them with style and humor  (“You messed with the wrong bitch, bitch!” and “I’m gonna ruin you and all  of your smug little motherfuckin’ friends” are staple rejoinders at my house) and             then fleeing the city, shamed and stripped of her Beautiful Lover Cindy and her all-lady, all-oil-wrestling-all-the-time nightclub.    

   

       I also think the who-cares-who-killed-Jenny finale dovetails nicely into  fan desire for either A) Alice eventually explaining what  happened  in that spin-off show that’s coming where she winds up in prison, or, even better,  B) an L Word movie. I mean,  if Noah’s Arc can have its own  tie-up-the-loose-ends moment  in cinemas, then so can these ladies. Fair  is fair.

           

Rose   Rollins as Tasha Williams and Leisha Hailey as Alice

                  

       But let’s say that that’s it. Let’s say we get nothing  more. Let’s say that the Alice spin-off show  pretends that Alice never knew these women at all (Oh, you think that can’t happen? Then you never really watched this show) and that there’s not going to be a movie. It’s OK. We were thoroughly, maddeningly entertained for almost six seasons -- admit it, season 4 kind of sucked a moose -- and that’s  more than you get from a lot of other TV programs that  don’t feature weekly extended sequences of             under-the-sheets cunnilingus set to bad songs by Betty (And that theme  song? Worst/best thing ever. You know I’m right.), or Marlee Matlin       teaching you how to properly sign the expression “boring lesbian fiction,” or Terminator 3 burning Shane’s hair             salon/smoothie  emporium/skate park (which was also  maybe a Planned-Parenthood clinic, comic book shop,             and designer cupcake emporium) down to the ground. It’s  a lot more.    

               I will miss watching Jenny Schecter prance through rooms and I will miss Alice stirring the shit. I will miss Bette and Tina being  really boring and barely present parents to that little girl that occasionally showed up to act like             their daughter. I won’t miss Shane’s hair  because I always  found it bothersome and because if I want I can just go down the block to  my grocery store  where Katherine Moennig shops and look at it in person.  But I will miss the early seasons where they all sang along  to Indigo  Girls songs and I will miss pausing the TiVo  to get real-life lesbian       reality consultations from my  friend Lindsay, who showed up every Sunday  night, cookies and ice cream in hand, to help a roomful of gay guys  watch  the show properly. I will miss it mostly because  it was “my story” and they were my             ladies and now they're gone and Jenny’s dead. But,  weirdly  enough, I guess I don’t really care who  killed her either.