L word premiere highlights

And by “highlights,” I mean “really awful moments of a two-thirds awful show that I’ll nevertheless keep watching.”

We (me, AK, Meehan and three nice dykes I met for the first time last night) gathered at Nicole’s apartment, which was so much better than Falcon for a variety of reasons:

1) You can hear the dialogue—this isn’t always a good thing, but it’s harder to make fun when you don’t know what’s going on.
2) Not being at Falcon means I’m not single and trying to blend in with a group of friends who are nice enough but whom I barely know and whose jeans and haircuts are leagues more amazing than mine will ever be.
3) You can smoke pot at Nicole’s. I’m not saying anyone did, just that it was an option.

After pizza and salad and wine and truffles (all of which collectively cost the same amount as one martini at Falcon), we crowded onto Nicole’s couch and air mattress (which were so much more comfortable than bar stools—yes, okay, I’m an old, old, let’s-stay-in-tonight lesbian), we turned on the TV, and saw:

1) Alice shamelessly plug the show’s new online spin-off, OurChart.com, which I will not even dignify with a hyperlink. But did I visit it first thing this morning like a sheep in Showtime’s flock? Yes, I did. And it makes Friendster look cool.
2) Alice pronounce the name of Papi, OurChart’s reigning player, as “Pappy.” Papi is apparently the stud who can give Shane a run for her money, but, as AK said, “I just picture an old guy who makes moonshine.”
3) Shane stumble around the city wet and bloody and sad.
4) Helena learn to live without her parents’ money. This might be more interesting if it hadn’t been done better by Rachel on the first season of Friends.
5) Jenny’s book get compared to work by Dorothy Allison, Mary Gaitskill and Truman Capote. Fuck off, Jenny.
6) Shane stumble around some more.
7) Pregnant Kit get ambushed by pro-lifers in a building set up to look like a free women’s health clinic. This strikes me as a lot of work—you have to pay rent, put up a fake sign, hire fake staff and set up a fake examining room, all to trick a handful of women who will immediately warn all their friends to stay away.
8) Jenny tell Max, “I can’t be with you because you are a straight-identified man who wants to date a straight-identified woman, and I am a lesbian-identified woman who wants to date women.” For someone who supposedly weaves words like Truman Capote, Jenny talks a lot like the world’s first transgender-themed after school special.
9) Shane stumble around and…curtain. Tune in next week.

The L Word has recently tackled trans issues, breast cancer and—for about two seconds last night—anti-Semitism. They’ve added more women of color to the cast and will soon be adding a disabled woman and a 50-something dyke. All of these things are good ideas individually and theoretically, but taken together they add up to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman—a Very Special show in which the 19th century heroine campaigned for freedom of speech, feminism, and Native American and African American rights in the Wild West. I think she even fought AIDS.

In other words, I’m starting to suspect that every time The L Word gets a letter from someone who says, “I want to see more _____,” the well-meaning writers write that person or group or issue into the next episode, to the ultimate disservice of all persons and groups and issues involved.

The night ended with the TV off, and Nicole and Emily taking turns playing the mandolin in front of the fire, an activity I think Dr. Quinn would have enjoyed if she hadn’t been so busy saving the kids at the one-room schoolhouse from Internet predators.