For the past three months every Sunday night, my friends and I gathered together in my living room to watch The L Word. Like many other lesbian and bisexual viewers, we were thrilled to finally have a television show that spoke to us about our lives and relationships with other women. Our expectations were high because there has never before been a television show like The L Word, and we were both eager to watch and concerned that it would not be representative of the diversity within the lesbian community--or worse, just not any good.

After thirteen episodes of The L Word, viewers across the country and those who joined me in my living room can agree on at least one thing: The L Word has titillated, frustrated, thrilled, and provoked us. We may be critical of the way the show has handled race, gender, class, and hairstyles, but we criticize because we want the show to succeed--and we are delighted to finally have something of our own to criticize in the first place.

One of the main critiques leveled at The L Word has been that it occasionally appears to be apologizing for lesbianism. This apologetic attitude has been exhibited most often throughout the season through the character of Jenny (Mia Kirshner), whose insistence that she still likes men seems a bit overemphasized. Although Jenny is still coming to terms with being bisexual—and bisexual women obviously are still attracted to men—her insistence about this attraction to men can come across disturbingly like reassurance, as if to placate straight viewers and demonstrate that lesbians are all not man-hating, bra-burning feminists.

In addition, Jenny’s bisexuality provides an easy way for The L Word to continue to include straight sex scenes, which is does with bizarre frequency--even outnumbering the lesbian sex scenes in many episodes. If The L Word is about lesbians, why is there so much focus on this messed-up bisexual writer chick who, through her thoughtless promiscuity, ends up giving bisexuality a bad rap?

It’s clear from a visit to any L Word discussion forum online that Jenny is the least-liked character on the show, and not in a good, love-to-hate-you kind of way like Marina (Karina Lombard). Jenny just doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of this show: she is not a part of “the group” that includes Bette (Jennifer Beals), Tina (Laurel Holloman), Shane (Katherine Moennig), Alice (Leisha Hailey), and Dana (Erin Daniels), and she is not really a lesbian. She only appears to be useful to the writers as vehicle for including straight male characters on the show and for serving as almost an apology to straight male viewers.

Another problematic issue arises with the portrayal of lesbian sexuality on the show. Most of the characters on the show get horizontal at some point, and many of the sex scenes are provocative and titillating. The most sexually titillating scenes, however, are those involving couples who are having affairs. The love scenes between Jenny and Marina, Shane and Sherry (Rosanna Arquette), and Bette and Candace (Ion Overman) contained a power and raw hunger that was absent from the scenes with non-cheating couples.

While these scenes were genuinely thrilling to watch because of their frank portrayals of lesbian sex, we cannot avoid the fact that these sex scenes occurred in the context of deceitful relationships, which automatically shifts the lesbian sex in these scenes into morally ambiguous territory.

This is disturbing because it is easy to slip into the unconscious conclusion that cheating is wrong, and these are lesbians cheating; therefore, lesbian sex is wrong. Let’s hope that in the next season, there can be more hot lesbian sex experienced in the context of a loving and trusting relationship.

But one of the most powerful scenes in the entire season—the violent love scene between Bette and Tina in the season finale—was clearly unapologetic in its moral ambiguity, fierce emotion, and awkward honesty. This scene is controversial because of its engagement with sexual violence, but it also successfully peels away the rose-tinted soft focus that often accompanies images of lesbian sexuality.

Although it would be nice to see more happy lesbians next season so the show doesn't reinforce the still-popular myth that lesbianism always leads to heartbreak, it was refreshing to see the show's finale deliver such a stark portrayal of the darker side of lesbian relationships, as well.

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