By Curt Schleier

This begins the fifth season of THE L WORD.  While there are new elements to the show, most things remain unchanged.   Once again we discover that television lesbians are really hot.  In fact, I’m thinking of switching sides – and I’m a guy.  The other thing is that they have a great sex life, far better than the average person.  Okay, let me not speak for you.  It’s certainly far better than mine – hence my desire to switch.

But when it comes to the changes, most are not for the good.  This season there seems to be a tendency for farce, to go for an often cheap laugh just for the sake of a laugh.  For example, the show opens with Tina and Bette trying to convince the admissions officer at a presumably prestigious pre-school to accept their child.  On the way out, they run into a gay couple they know and get into a discussion about which is more diverse, which will contribute more to the school’s rainbow.  Apparently admission has nothing to do with intellectual quality.

Will it be the lesbian couple with the bi-racial child or the gay guys (one Christian, one Moslem) whose son is half Jewish and one-quarter each Hispanic and Chinese?  It’s funny, but in silly Saturday Night Live way.  It’s hardly what you’d expect from a show that claims “provocative, sexy storylines (and) engaging, nuanced performances of its principal cast.”


And it gets worse.  Helena (Rachel Shelley) is in prison because of a robbery she committed at the end of last season.  No one can get a hold of her wealthy mother to post the sizable bail, so she’s stuck in a cell all day with another woman, Dusty.  At first she’s afraid of Dusty, but fear soon turns to…  Does anyone want to hazard a guess about what will happen?  Yup, you’re right – but you’ll have to wait an episode.

(And just as an aside, in what U.S. prison do visitors have to walk through a cell block to get to the visiting area?  Is it so that the girls can be ogled by the prisoners when they come to see how Helena’s doing?  Nah couldn’t be.  Not in a show that has “provocative, sexy storylines (and) nuanced performances of its principal cast.”)

Shane (Katherine Moennig) is just a girl who can’t say no.  She made a commitment to Paige (Kristana Loken) and the two go looking for an apartment they can share with Paige’s young son. But could it be?  The real estate agent is a hot young blond, and I’m wondering if anyone can hazard a guess about what will happen.  Yup, you’re right – and guess who catches them?  But Paige will not go quietly into the night, and she sets off a firestorm.  Literally.

Perhaps most disappointing is the new Jenny (Mia Kirshner).  Just a few years ago, she was this sweet straight girl who came out to California to accompany her boyfriend who took a job coaching a women’s college swim team.  Then she discovered that she preferred the swimmers to the coach and quickly became part of THE L WORD gang.  She wrote a novel, Lez Girls, of a roman a clef about her experiences coming out with her new friends. Now, with it success, she’s become something of a bitch.


On a Mexican vacation she meets an hedge fund billionaire, William Halsey (Wallace Shawn), who agrees to finance her picture at the studio where it had been placed in turn around.  And he also insists she direct.  All this goes further to her head, and she becomes abusive to Tina, who is the studio’s director of development, and even more so to her new assistant. In effect: she becomes the Hollywood diva cliché.

So what have we here: unbecoming farce, predictability, cliché.  Not a good way to begin I fear.  The good news is that I’ve seen the next episode and it is better and much, much hotter.