The L Word, Season One
The theme for this month at Mosaic Minds is Relativity, and you can't get much more relative than relationships. Which leads us to The L Word Season One DVD. This series is sleek, sexy, and dysfunctionally real in its portrayal of LA lesbians trying to find and keep love in one place. I was hesitant about this show at first because of my experiences with its precursor on the Showtime network, Queer as Folk. At first I enjoyed QAF, but over time, I felt it was reinforcing the negative gay stereotypes instead of widening the tolerance lens. After watching the first episode of The L Word, my fears were washed away because The L Word is like experiencing a fifty-minute independent film. While it certainly deals with lesbian issues, the show manages to push to a deeper, often darker place. It's that place where gender and sexuality blur out to reveal the connections, some broken, of relationships between people. This is metaphorically expressed in journalist Alice's web of LA lesbianism. She creates a seven degrees of separation with the lesbian community, all connected by who slept with who. It's a sub-theme that is constantly in the background throughout the first season.
The show centers on an ensemble cast of eight. There is the long-term-relationship couple, Bette and Tina, who are trying to have a baby. Next door lives the straight boy Tim, who's excited because his long term girlfriend, Jenny, has finished her M.F.A., and is moving in with him. These couples are the foundation that cements the viewers into the show. You go through miscarriage with Bette and Tina, and infidelity with Tim and Jenny. The side characters consist of Dana, the closeted tennis player; Alice, the quirky journalist; Shane, the Lothario-esque hair stylist; Morena, the owner of The Planet (a club they all hang out in); and Kit, Bette's recovering alcoholic sister.
The episodes work in a framed format. Something will occur in the first five minutes that will somehow relate to the theme of the episode. Sometimes it's an obvious story line, and other times it's more vague until the whole episode has unfolded. The episode that opens with the photography session of the naked woman had me scratching my head until the last ten minutes. Another episode begins with random girl knocking on her friend's door, asking if her friend has seen her girlfriend. The friend says no and goes back to bed -- where the "missing" girlfriend is. That one was obviously going to be about cheating and lying; something we all experience in this relative human condition.
Another aspect I enjoy about The L Word can be found in the cinematography. A majority of the creators came out of the independent film world, so they shoot it as such. There are scenes were the sun is blaring and reflective off of glass, exposing the sharpness of the scene's emotional content.
The L Word has another aspect that makes it an easy show to plug into. It has capitalized on the viewer's personally identifying with the characters. Back in the heyday of Friends and Sex and the City, we were all asking ourselves if we were a Carrie, a Samantha, a Rachel, or a Monica. I'm a Carrie/Rachel combination, by the way. The L Word works the same way with, "Are you a Bette or a Shane?" Or you'd date a Shane, but you really want an Alice to come home to at the end of the day. The first season of The L Word runs long enough that each character gets his or her own story line, and we get to see each character develop. For instance, I'm a Jenny Schecter. At first I really hated Jenny. Then I realized I hated her because of prior bad relationship decisions I'd made myself. So I started to like her even more, and it doesn't hurt that they really channel into the writing side of her life. Words will fly up on the screen, and often the viewer gets to be in Jenny's head with her. I started to wonder if Jenny realized this was her life she was living and not a short story she was creating. She has a great line after her infidelity is discovered -- that she knew it was wrong, but it felt like someone else was making the decisions. This is a show about good people making very bad decisions.
As far as extras go on the discs, I wasn't overly impressed. The best feature, of course, is the commentary by Jennifer Beals (who plays Bette) and creator Ilene Chaiken on the first episode. Unfortunately, that is the only episode that has commentary, which is quite a shame, because I really would have liked commentary on the last episode. It would have also been better if more of the actresses had pitched in on it. I find it interesting that a majority of the actresses are straight, and I feel that makes for some interesting anecdotes. There are some minor interviews that are nice, and a fashion extra that is spiffy.
The L Word gets four out of five hell yeahs. While a visually spectacular piece of work, the extras on the DVD discs weren't all that and a bag of chips. Maybe on Season Two they'll throw us something with more meat in the commentary. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this series, to the point where I've been tracking down the new episodes. This four-disc set is definitely worth viewing, no matter what your sexual preference. The L Word will have you laughing and crying at the same time.