Reactions to 'The L Word' Ten Years On
March 25, 2015 2:10 AM   Subscribe

The Emotional Stages Of Rewatching The L Word Ten Years Later
1. No. No. No. No. No no no. No. NO.
2. YES.
Listling Without Commentary: 22 Excerpts From Brutal Amazon Customer Reviews Of “The L Word”
16. I couldn’t bear having it in my room so I broke it and threw it in a huge garbage next to our house. Hope this review stops you from buying it, don’t repeat the mistake that I’ve done.
17. Turns out lesbians aren’t that interesting.
Also, the comments on the articles (both contain spoilers).
posted by moody cow (63 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Spoiler alert) This one raises a good point: "Yes, Jenny needed to die – but was it necessary to make ME want to be the killer?"
posted by gingerest at 2:32 AM on March 25, 2015 [16 favorites]


I was honestly impressed how Jenny managed to become more unlikable with every passing season. It's astonishing, really. To the point where you're glad she's dead.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 2:37 AM on March 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


I was not a fan of the show. Watched too many episodes only because my best friend was a lesbian and she only watched it because there weren't many shows with lesbians in it back then. Inconsistent and unimpressive writing. A couple of the actors were wonderful, but overall the cast was blah. Jenny seemed like she had multiple personalities and changed each season. I seem to recall one scene where we watch her being raped by her ex-boyfriend and instead of referring it as rape, she calls it a "revenge fuck" and proceeds to have a weird relationship with him that includes having dinner with him and his pregnant fiance, etc. I constantly got the strange feeling that the writers were using their scripts to say "F-U" to the audience.
posted by rancher at 3:08 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yay an L word thread! I was looking for it on FanFare the other day. I am actually watching this show for the first time (don't care about spoilers though, I already know a couple of big ones). These articles are making me wonder if I'm making a huge mistake, but, like Super Hans from Peep Show, all I can say is "That crack is so more-ish". I love the old phones, the mad outfits and how Marina's sophisticated older lover is the only person who knows what Prosecco is. I do however hate Jenny, and her dreadful writing which she reads out in that annoying whisper to make it sound Extra Forboding.

For people who miss their addictively terrible TV, a few years ago there was a short-lived and very similar (almost to the point of being a rip-off) BBC show set in Glasgow called Lip Service with a very Shane-esque heroine played by the perfect Ruta Gedmintas.
posted by Ziggy500 at 3:39 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Spoiler alert: the second link is, like, 80% knee-jerk homophobia.
posted by duffell at 4:31 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Spoiler alert: the second link is, like, 80% knee-jerk homophobia.

Now, now: there are some very astute commenters in there. At least one is keen to boast of his shrewdness:
13. I watched this show for the first couple of minutes and it became very clear to me what the “L” word means. This is not my kind of show.
Not for this commenter the gnawing mystery that some viewers faced.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:54 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


Hahaha, ricochet biscuit, that Onion link is even funnier for the way it COMPLETELY spoils Twin Peaks for no reason at all. :)
posted by heatherann at 4:58 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Perhaps because it had been 14 years since the relevant show aired. Let me just get this out there now: I will be okay if someone writing in 2029 wants to talk about the cliffhanger that ends the first season of Better Call Saul.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:11 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


I think I watched the first three seasons of The L Word and my hatred for Jenny grew so much that it pretty much ruined any interest I had in the rest of it.

But highlights: SHANE!!!, Kelly Lynch playing a very good-looking drag king that seduced Kit, Sara Shahi's character whose relationship with Shane might have been forever if not for Shane's asshole dad, and slowly hating Tina.
posted by Kitteh at 5:15 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


You know how during the last season they make a big effort to show why everybody ends up hating jenny, and anybody could have been her killer?
Complete waste of effort, they could have had Dana pull a gun and shoot her in the head at the end of season one and I doubt anybody, in or out of the show, would have minded.
posted by signal at 5:26 AM on March 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


Not the primary audience, and I got bored with it about halfway through the first season (I felt like I could just watch Go Fish once a week and be covered), but I laughed at:

14. “Those bone-white button-down shirts whose cuffs extend past the wrist almost to the first knuckle” that Bette wears all the time is a valid sexual orientation.

So many things are.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:35 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


BBC show set in Glasgow called Lip Service

FYI, this show is on Hulu Plus, all 12 eps. My girl is from Glasgow but hasn't lived there for 20 years, so I'm going to surprise her with it. I hope it's not too terrible. Thanks, Ziggy!
posted by Huck500 at 5:56 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Now that we have universally established that Jenny was objectively insufferable, how about Best Character? #teamshane
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:58 AM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


The worst part of The L Word was how they tried so hard to pass off Vancouver as Los Angeles. Sorry, Showtime, you're not fooling anyone.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:07 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Now that we have universally established that Jenny was objectively insufferable, how about Best Character?

Max was clearly the best. He deserved better friends.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:10 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


"T. T, Let's make a baby. T."
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:12 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think I actually hated Max more than I hated Jenny. His voice was SO ANNOYING, and whoever wrote his lines had no idea what a computer was.
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:16 AM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


This is a spoof of the L word made by Leisha Hailey, Kate Moennig and Erin Daniels, which was an extra on the Season One DVD.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:22 AM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


how about Best Character?

Carmen de la Pica Morales (also Best Surname)
Runner-up: Tasha!!!!
posted by moody cow at 6:23 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


BBC show set in Glasgow called Lip Service - The Wikipedia page has more information - and some spoilers. It did not do very well critically - but the actors did a great job IMHO.
posted by rongorongo at 6:36 AM on March 25, 2015


I loved Lip Service to bits - was always sad it didn't get a third season. Fiona Button is adorable, Ruta Gedmintas scorching hot.

I've tried to watch The L Word but I keep getting bogged down around season three. It seems so repetitive and many of the characters so darn unlikeable. Pam Grier, Kate Moennig, and Erin Daniels made me happy, but everyone else? Big meh. I know, turn in my queer lady card.
posted by angeline at 6:46 AM on March 25, 2015


I couldn't get past the first episode. Too male gaze-y (I just remember a part where their neighbor was watching two of the ladies make out for some reason)
posted by dinty_moore at 7:04 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


People go watch GirlTrash on YouTube, It’s got:

A) A Shane look alike
B) Funny-ness
C) Crime drama

There's also an adorable full length movie pre-quel that's an into the night musical available on Netflix. A sound design that doesn't alternately fill you with rage or make you want to shove sharp implements into your ears in order to never have to hear again. Girltrash has been out forever but we just found it a month ago and I immediately turned to my wife and asked why wasn't this what the L Word was.

ALSO Jenny dies in the end?! That's the best news ever. Maybe I should go back and actually finish the series.
posted by edbles at 7:53 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


I remember really liking Sugar Rush while I was waiting for new eps of The L Word to come out.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:01 AM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


So when is Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For being turned into an eternal lesbians and friends telenovela? We could call it Northamptonitude or something.

I'm sorry, but only LA lesbians remotely resemble L word types. To the rest of us, they look like Sex & the City with bright pastels, and those are the men.
posted by Dreidl at 8:20 AM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


This show was QAF for lesbians but made by the same male team. Or at least that's what it felt like.

Still, I watched the hell out of it. DEATH TO JENNY. Shane5eva. Pam Grier's character was pretty much the only one who actually had any kind of long-term development and growth, and I'll give Beals' characterization credit for showing her frantically trying to hold onto her powerglam life when everything started falling apart.

Complete waste of effort, they could have had Dana pull a gun and shoot her in the head at the end of season one

You misspelled 'episode' there
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:23 AM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


I have hate-watched a lot of shows, but I have never hate-watched a show with so much passion as The L Word.

The worst part was that I would see it at lesbian watch parties, and most of the other attendees didn't seem to hate the show. I would have to stop myself from saying snarky things at the television in front of them, and save it for online forum and recap comment threads.
posted by aabbbiee at 8:30 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


What's weirding me out is that I heard of someone on NPR this morning with the last name "Kennard," and that got me thinking about The L Word for the first time in YEARS before I saw this thread.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:32 AM on March 25, 2015


Alice was the best, and I STILL like her haircut from season 1, so there.
posted by likeatoaster at 8:32 AM on March 25, 2015


One of the best things about The L Word was KC and Elka's podcast.
posted by fiercecupcake at 8:33 AM on March 25, 2015


80% knee-jerk homophobia.
I think most homophobia is knee-jerk.

/off topic
I served under a lesbian briefly. Good officer. The problems in military service with that were always almost purely civilian politics. Anyone who had any experience with it or took two minutes to think about it rationally and practically never had a problem.
Good story about Eisenhower (posted here before. I mean, as a practical matter from the military standpoint, you can just see Ike reading the letter and the part about how no lesbians had illegal pregnancies and going 'hey ... yeah.." and realizing how doofy the initial order was)
posted by Smedleyman at 8:33 AM on March 25, 2015


nah, I've sadly come across some incredibly well thought-out and deliberate homophobes
posted by flatluigi at 8:40 AM on March 25, 2015


Alice was the best

Okay yeah, Alice was pretty fucking awesome. And I went to culinary school with a girl who was basically the slightly more glam-femme version of Shane, and she was ridiculous amounts of fun. One time a bunch of us walked past this gaggle of skater girls on our way to have lunch lots of beer. She held back for a moment when we went in, came in five minutes later with multiple phone numbers. Impressive.

I should expand my QAF thing above... QAF (UK) was a great, tightly-scripted little show that purported to show a slice of life in a group of gay men. It largely succeeded on that front.

QAF (US) did mainly the same during the first season because they basically just did a find/replace on place names in the script. After that, it fell the fuck apart. There were some very true moments--Justin giving the bully a BJ in the locker room, for example; Justin (again) being underage and picking up men outside a bar. Mostly it seemed to be this weird sort of broken anthropologist look at Where The Wild Gays Are written either by or for straight people. It was our story, and it wasn't actually about us. For me at least, and it was airing at a time in my life when I was immersed in exactly the gay male culture the show was about, there was very little reality or truth to recognize.

Even as an outsider, L-Word seemed to be much the same: the idea of what (super glam wealthy all very very very hot) lesbians are like, as written by/for straight men. Not being a lesbian I'm not sure--were there real moments of truth?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:46 AM on March 25, 2015


There was that moment where Alice and Tasha were spinning around each other and were all happy and since they were the only two character I still liked and I wanted them to be happy forever, I just stopped watching right there. I also stopped Downton Abbey after the season two finale.
posted by carolr at 8:56 AM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


There were moments of truth, but they were not the same moments that the show thought they were.
posted by clavicle at 9:22 AM on March 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


I went to school with Ilene Chaiken. Oh boy, did I have a crush on her. I wasn't the only one, and I'm guessing that we all feel a little better about ourselves after finding out later in life that our failures in that department weren't necessarily due to our ineffectual presentations.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:52 AM on March 25, 2015


Complaints about anorexic women and characters who have jobs but don't seem to work enough to sustain their lifestyle can be applied to a great many shows. If that's all you've got to complain about, perhaps television isn't for you.
posted by tommasz at 9:57 AM on March 25, 2015


It was more than that, though - I didn't watch very much of it, but the overall feeling I got from my group of queers was that it didn't look like what our relationships looked like at all. And maybe some weird anti-bisexual stuff I remembered hearing about at the time? Admittedly, we came from a much different queer scene than the L word (Smith College vs. LA), but the toast piece hit my facebook feed a while ago and the general consensus was that the Middleman was more true-to-life than the L word.

Also, re: Dykes to Watch Out For: Someone told me that it didn't canonically take place in Northampton, MA - that parts of it were based on St. Paul, MN, and I was completely shocked.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:11 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Dykes To Watch Out For was initially set in a slightly fictionalized NoHo, because Alison lived nearby and dated a Smithie. Culturally, it could have been Athens GA, Austin TX, Ann Arbor MI, Eugene OR, Olympia WA or a few other college/post-hippie towns with a lot of granola dykes and a wimmin's bookstore.

For that matter, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics background illos were of Northampton, and the comic artists worked in a building with Womonfyre Books and The Iron Horse music cafe on the ground floor.
posted by Dreidl at 11:41 AM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


I watched it with a bunch of friends for the second and third season, and while my initial impression was "these people are nothing like us, but they're pretty," the third-season wedding shenanigans made me walk away and never look back. I have zero patience with shows that spend a whole season (or more) on character development only to throw it all away. I don't watch soap operas for the same reason.

There were bits of it that felt true enough, but for the most part, the characters were people of a wildly different class and lifestyle (often mysteriously - who can afford those clothes on a stylist's wages?) and that was sufficiently alienating that the orientation thing did very little to make up for it.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:13 PM on March 25, 2015


It might be interesting to rewatch for an ‘in my day, we had to walk thirty miles uphill both ways and have our only source of representation be the L Word – and we liked it!’ sort of thing. But that’s it.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:25 PM on March 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Not to turn this into Jenny Yay or Nay, but when I was watching the show I might have described Jenny as my favorite character. The L Word for me was definitely the "What the fuck is Jenny up to now" show. She's vulnerable and tormented and yet unrelentingly, perversely antagonistic. More than anything else Jenny is contrary. At any given moment she is ready to burn my house to the ground for daring to assume that I understand her.
posted by wrabbit at 12:39 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


(I mean, FWIW, I feel like a terrible queer here, since I also never saw QAF US/UK, or Looking, or whatever other shows there are/were.

If anybody ever gives you grief about that, just stick your chin up and announce:

"I don't need to watch it. I'm LIVING it."

(Turning on your heel and walking away loudly optional but recommended.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:16 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Why do I get the feeling that most of the people in the second link aren't lesbians at all?

Regardless--the comments here seem to be polarized. Never having seen it, is it worth spending any time on? It seems like a cultural touchstone of sorts.

(I mean, FWIW, I feel like a terrible queer here, since I also never saw QAF US/UK, or Looking, or whatever other shows there are/were.)

posted by qcubed at 2:53 PM on March 25 [+] [!]


Eh. If you’ve got a group you can hate watch it with and rag on all the shows flaws with it’s fun to watch. I think you could probably try the first season out and get a general feel for its nonsense, but if you’re not enjoying it I wouldn’t struggle through much more than that. Minimally you should watch it to know why people are drooling over Shane. It’s deeply, deeply flawed but it’s sort of like going to a gay bar or visiting a place like Fire Island, you may not like everyone there personally, but at least in one area you share similar interests.
posted by edbles at 1:38 PM on March 25, 2015


I'm sorry, but only LA lesbians remotely resemble L word types. To the rest of us, they look like Sex & the City with bright pastels, and those are the men.

This was what was so confusing to me, and has in general been confusing to me about queer women characters on television - none of them ever, ever seem even like Super Hot Actress versions of actual queer women I see in life. In a way, I find it more depressing than before - right now, I often end up feeling that queerness has sort of been crystallized into this ultra-skinny mysteriously-ultra-straight-feminine-appearing-yet "kickass" characterization well-suited to neoliberalism.

Honestly, I felt like the L Word started all that and did not like it at the time, but I realize that other people are capable of, like, watching things for actual fun.
posted by Frowner at 1:49 PM on March 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


At my old job, two of the most prominent things that marked me as An Old were never having watched the L Word or Dawson's Creek, both of which were surprisingly popular with 18 to 22-year-old LGBT folks. I've tried both of them now, but maybe they're something that you have to get into before you actually remember the '90s.

(Gilmore Girls too, which apparently had tons of queer subtext? For some reason, I thought it was supposed to be some churchy show about a big family or something.)
posted by klangklangston at 2:23 PM on March 25, 2015


I...think you're thinking of 7th Heaven, klang?
posted by clavicle at 2:25 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


And I am late to the Alison Bechdel party BUT YES, the real life inspiration for Madwimmin Books was the erstwhile Amazon Bookstore Cooperative located at 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis.
posted by clavicle at 2:27 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


No, no - the original Amazon was located just off Loring Park on the edge of downtown. It did look like Madwimmin, and that part of town - eighties real estate contraction-era into the early nineties - was Pretty Queer. Ballet of the Dolls is still there, I believe.

Amazon moved to 38th and Chicago after they won their lawsuit and lost their lease. But the world had changed and frankly 38th and Chicago wasn't that good a location for them. I think they were somewhere else for a little while too.

I used to go to their old location in the mid-nineties when I was in college. I bought a lot of Allison Bechdel books there, too. And I still have an old, old Mo button - that's a collector's item.
posted by Frowner at 2:30 PM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


I just remembered a moment that rang true for me personally:

Jenny: Hi
Extra: What are you doing here?
Jenny: I am celebrating gay pride I guess. I don't know.
Extra: You mean gay shame. That's what it really is.
Jenny: Why?
Extra: Cause most of us have more shame than pride.
Jenny: I think that you might be right.
Extra: You wanna dance?
Jenny: No
Extra: What's the matter? Am I too old, or too suburban or something?
Jenny: No, you are perfect.
Extra: You wanna kiss me?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:44 PM on March 25, 2015


(Oh my bad yes. Loring Park does make quite a lot more sense, or would have.)

Upon reflection I wish to blame Chasing Amy for starting the ruining of the representation of queer women.
posted by clavicle at 3:45 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


neoliberalism

Attention American Leftists: enough with this word, you broke it.
posted by atoxyl at 3:58 PM on March 25, 2015


"I...think you're thinking of 7th Heaven, klang?"

Then what's Gilmore Girls about? Does it have well written LGBT characters or something? They all had passionate arguments over Gilmore Girls crush rankings, but since they called No Doubt "classic rock" it might just be one of those zeitgeist series that required being a certain age at a certain time (e.g. My So Called Life; Gossip Girl) unrelated to orientation.
posted by klangklangston at 8:20 PM on March 25, 2015


Gilmore Girls has almost no queer text or subtext. Oh, except for when Paris and Rory smooch at Spring Break to try to attract the attention of guys. And then wind up watching a Joseph Campbell documentary. Oh, I guess Bruce McCulloch from Kids In The Hall makes an appearance in a couple of episodes and is suitably camp. Not sure why it was so much The Thing amongst those young LGBTs; all the romances (and there are many) are unrelentingly heterosexual. I love it for the rapid-fire dialogue, witty smack-downs and tortured family dynamics, but it's straight as.

Back to the topic at hand: I did actually watch all of The L-Word. I can't remember what possessed me. I think I wound up hating all of them, including other people's beloveds (Shane, Alice, Bette of the beautiful sleeves) as well as the ones everyone hated (Jenny, Jenny, Tina, Jenny). The only one I had any time for at all was Tasha, and she kind of confused me by totally digging Alice. WTF? It was definitely an exercise in hate-watching by the end. It definitely seemed more like a straight man's idea of what lesbians would be all about rather than, you know, actual lesbians. I, too, wondered if any of the actors was lesbian.
posted by Athanassiel at 10:01 PM on March 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


I watched this show when I was 16 and the only other lesbian I knew was my on-again, off-again girlfriend. I loved this show and fantasized about having a group of lesbian friends to do lesbian shenanigans with. 8 years later, I can at least say that that is one youthful dream I have fulfilled, and only sometimes do we act like characters from the L word.
posted by alon at 5:37 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Not being a woman, I'm actually curious about this? It's probably my favorite Askewniverse movie thanks to a) Hooper X, and b) the romance fails.

Well, from upthread: queerness has sort of been crystallized into this ultra-skinny mysteriously-ultra-straight-feminine-appearing-yet "kickass" characterization. That's not unlike Alyssa as I recall her from a distance of many years. While those descriptors are not mutually exclusive IRL, it's kinda awkward that that was far and away the highest-profile representation of a queer lady on a movie screen at that time.
posted by clavicle at 7:08 AM on March 26, 2015


Are there other kinds of women on TV and movies, though? It's always struck me that super skinny, super conventionally attractive (and femme and white), possibly unrealistically young women are.... pretty much the only kinds I ever see on television, unless they're popping up as someone's mom. I mean, there are always a few exceptions, but they're just that: exceptions.

I may be somewhat bitter about this, but I don't think this is an issue specific to depictions of queer women. I think it's a general problem that mainstream media has about depicting all women.
posted by sciatrix at 7:13 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Gilmore Girls is about a parallel universe much like our own, only people talk to each other at Kalishnikov speed with no pauses in between exchanges of dialogue.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 7:49 AM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


So--I've never seen Gilmore Girls--it's basically if Tarantino had more women starring?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:57 AM on March 26, 2015


What I was trying to get at with the "kick-ass" characterization thing was that in some ways I almost preferred it when there weren't queer characters rather than having shitty, depressing, reified, palatable-to-straight-and-male-audiences queer characters. That's not actually a position I would defend, because it's probably better for kids to see the mere fact of being queer as normal and acceptable, but it feels that way sometimes.
posted by Frowner at 8:26 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


So--I've never seen Gilmore Girls--it's basically if Tarantino had more women starring?

Less violence and a lot more mother/daughter arguments.
posted by edbles at 9:58 AM on March 26, 2015


I can't believe how bad this show was. How I watched it at the time because it was so... incredibly amazing that there could be an entire TV show with just 'my people' in it. I cannot watch it anymore but it was a fun run while it lastest.

As a queer woman in Singapore and in college at the time, I have to say that this show was the best wing-woman I had (even though their lives as lipstick lesbians in LA were so far-removed from mine in Asia). Mostly, it was straight women in college who had downloaded the episodes on BitTorrent, second-guessed their sexual orientation and then wanted to do something about it to find out. More Shane, less Jenny.
posted by popagandhi at 10:54 PM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


So--I've never seen Gilmore Girls--it's basically if Tarantino had more women starring?

Yes, exactly this.

Never watch it, fffm. Let's not spoil this beautiful dream.
posted by heatherann at 5:31 AM on March 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


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