|
When I sat down to watch the first
five episodes of The L Word
last week, it was not without some trepidation: would the
show live up to its potential? By the time I was halfway
through, however, it was clear that when it comes to lesbian
visibility on TV, The L Word is going to change
everything. Just
as the lesbian and bisexual women across the country who
gathered around their TV sets on April 30, 1997, to watch
Ellen Degeneres' coming-out episode witnessed a historic
moment in lesbian visibility, those who tune into Showtime's
premiere of The L Word on January 18, 2004 will
see the beginning of a new era for lesbian and bisexual
visibility.
This
series about a group of lesbian and bisexual friends in
L.A. will be the first U.S. television series to revolve
around lesbians. Instead of having to settle for one
or two lesbian characters among a cast of several heterosexual
characters who usually get all the best storylines, on The
L Word lesbians finally get to see their lives and
relationships front-and-center, with the heterosexual characters
and relationships on the periphery for a change.
This
kind of paradigm shift is not just evolutionary, it's revolutionary.
Of
course, none of this would matter much if the show wasn't
any good. Fortunately, while there is still
room for improvement, overall The L Word consistently
meets expectations, and frequently exceeds them.
In
short: I loved it, even when I didn't.
The
hour-and-a-half pilot sets the stage for the season,
introducing us to five lesbians, a bisexual woman, one of
the lesbian's heterosexual older half-sister, and a woman
who is about to discover to her dismay (and her boyfriend's)
that she's not so heterosexual after all.
Straight
couple Jenny (Mia
Kirshner) and Tim (Eric Mabius) are introduced to the
group via their next door neighbors, long-time couple Bette
(Jennifer Beals)
and Tina (Laurel
Holloman), at the local cafe The Planet where they all
hang out. Jenny hits it off a little too well with cafe
owner Marina (Karina
Lombard), and the two women begin a slow dance of seduction
involving secret back-room trysts that ultimately causes
a crisis in Jenny's relationship with Tim.
Bette
and Tina, meanwhile, are trying to have a child through
artificial insemination; professional tennis player Dana
(Erin Daniels)
is trying to find a girlfriend while staying closeted; bisexual
Alice (Leisha Hailey)
is trying to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend,
commitment-phobic Shane (Katherine
Moennig) is trying to sleep with a different woman each
night; and Bette's alcoholic straight half-sister Kit (Pam
Grier) is trying to stay off the sauce and improve her relationship
with Bette.
The
pilot does a good job laying the groundwork for the series
and making you care about the characters,
even if it is primarily focused around Bette and Tina's
relationship and the Marina-Jenny-Tim triangle.
Tina
and Bette are the older, wiser couple wrapped up in the
daily dramas of their relationship, but also happy to dispense
advice (especially Bette) to their friends. Bette's
mixed racial heritage adds some much-needed diversity
to the group, and Beals brings a sense of harried ambition
to her role as the classic type-A overachiever. Bette's
strained relationship with her sister Kit adds even more
complexity to her character, but Bette and Kit's scenes
always seem to end too abruptly, usually just when they're
getting interesting.
Holloman
and Beals exhibit a comfortable rapport in their scenes
together and provide a realistic representation of women
who have been in a relationship together for several years,
but since Tina recently quit her job to focus full-time
on getting pregnant, it's difficult to get a sense of who
Tina is outside of her quest for motherhood.
Page
1 / 2 / 3
- Next
|
