The L Word recap: Lacuna (season 2, episode 13, season finale)
(Original airdate: 15 May 2005)

THIS WEEK'S L WORD VOCABULARY:

• Predispositions: Something to embrace and celebrate. Sorta.
• Help: What Jenny needs.
• Scourge: Helena's middle name. That and "petulant."
• Fucking: Dreary when it's without art (i.e., when it's with Helena).
• Sisterhood: If you're the Wilsons, it's powerful. If you're the Ziffs, it's... um, yeah.

THIS WEEK'S GUEST-BIANS: Holland Taylor reminds us that this show can still be good; Gloria Steinem does a group therapy session; Heart rocks.

Finally, the finale. — Yay! The title is "Lacuna," which could be a lot of things. Webster's tells me it's "a blank space or a missing part," a "gap, hole, flaw, or defect." It can also be "one of the follicles in the mucous membrane of the urethra" or "one of the minute cavities in bone or cartilage occupied by the cells." Good then. Let's watch and learn, shall we? Or watch and wonder, probably.

Sunset Strip, present day — Jenny's stripping again. We see the crowd, but we don't hear them; instead we hear sinister noises, like the lash of a whip or the swoosh of a sword, and we get to see little bits of those carnival scenes/fantasy sequences we've been enjoying all year. Oh, all that mysterious misery of Jenny's past. When will it ever end? Oh that's right: with this episode! At least for a while.

Outside the strip club, Shane sits on a bench and smokes a cigarette and wears a cute hat. Nice work if you can get it.

Jenny comes out of the strip club — it was more fun when she was just coming out of the closet — and says hello to Shane. They stroll and chat and smoke. Jenny's hair (sort of a fauxhawk, but not quite) makes her look a bit like Sal Mineo.

Jenny: "What did you think?"
Shane: "You were good."
Jenny: "No, I wasn't, I sucked. It doesn't matter if I'm good."
Shane: "Why are you doing this?"
Jenny: "Because when I'm in there, it's my fucking choice when I take off my top, when I wanna show my breasts, and it's my fucking choice when I take off my pants and I show my pussy, and then I stop when I wanna stop and it makes me feel good because I'm in charge. And it helps me remember all this childhood shit that happens to me."

What? It helps you remember? Oh no. Ouch. Interesting that you said "happens," not "happened." Interesting and sad.

Jenny: "Do you remember what happened to you as a child that makes you not wanna —"
Shane: "Wait wait wait, whaddya mean?"
Jenny: "No, seriously, just hear me out. Do you remember the shit that happened to you as a child that makes you not want to trust people as an adult?"
Shane: "Yeah, I probably do."
Jenny: "Well, then you're fuckin' lucky."
Shane: "I don't know how that makes me so lucky."
Jenny: "Because you're lucky... because you can get on with your fuckin' life and you're not dogged down by these horrible, oppressive childhood memories, and you know, you stand a chance of being a normal, productive person."

So Shane asks the obvious — whether Jenny remembers what happened to her. Jenny says the memories are blurry and she doesn't know what's real and what she's made up. Shane says "that" (stripping) is not the only way to get to the truth.

Shane: "You have me, you have other people. You don't have to do this alone."

But Jenny wants to do it that way. And whatever Jenny wants, Jenny gets — and we get to watch it. Try to keep up, Shane.

Also, I get what Jenny's saying.

Shane tries to take Jenny home, but Jenny wants to take the bus.

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