Best. Lesbian. Week. Ever. (January 16, 2009)

Note: There are NO spoilers for the final season of The L Word revealed below except who is killed (which has already been revealed in Showtime's promos). But if you want to skip this section, click here to go directly to the next section.

THE L WORD AT THE TCA WINTER PRESS TOUR
Ilene and co. talked about the sixth season of The L Word on a panel at the TCA Winter Press Tour earlier this week, which featured Jennifer Beals, Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Katherine Moennig, Pam Grier, and Ilene Chaiken, and AfterElton.com's Michael Jensen gave us the run-down.

Much of the information imparted during the panel confirmed information we already knew — that Lucy Lawless is guest-starring, for example — but Chaiken and the actors offered some interesting opinions about various aspects of the series, and provided some details around the decisions made on the show.

Here are some of the interesting excerpts from the panel:

On whether the murdery-mystery subplot of the final season reflects will be too different for viewers

Ilene Chaiken: I wouldn't call it an overarching plot. It's one story among many, and by far not the dominant storyline. It's a story that gives us a framework for the whole season, but the season is about these lives, these characters, their relationships, life goes on.

And the tone of the show actually hasn't changed. It's very much as it always has been, a drama with some humor about life and love and career and everything in between. And the so-called murder mystery storyline, I think, will finally put a few things into place. More than anything it gave us just another metaphor for our storytelling.

On choosing which character to kill off in the sixth season

Ilene Chaiken: ... we didn't say, "We're going to kill someone. Who should we kill?" We said, "What's the story that we're going to tell this year?" And the decision to tell that story came out of a lot of things, but in part it was the stories that we've been telling, and the trouble that Jenny's gotten into over the years, the fact that she's just provoked everyone to that point at one time or another, and there's no question.

And I couldn't deny that all of the dialogues that go on around the show, the passionate viewer reactions, the online conversations, the things that journalists and fans say to me in the course of all of the events that we do were probably resonating in there somewhere.

Jenny has a lot of the very devoted fans, people who love her and think that she's the best thing that ever was, and she is the character people loved to hate, and she provoked rage among lots and lots of people, and it made it interesting to tell that story.

On Showtime's decision to give away the identity of the murder victim in the promos

Ilene Chaiken: ...the way that the season is framed, we open the first episode with flash forward and then we go back and begin seamlessly telling our stories from where we left off at the end of Season 5. And so I would venture that the folks at Showtime who do the incredible job of promoting our show felt that they weren't giving anything away. They were taking the opportunity to build interest off of something that happens in the first 20 seconds of the show.

Jennifer Beals: Also I have to say that people tend to find out online. The show has such an incredible audience online that they all talk to one another and somehow they know more than I do usually. A guy would go to the boards to find out information from them because they get footage in advance. They know so many of the storylines in advance. It's very hard to keep things from them I think too.

On why The L Word has straight male viewers

Jennifer Beals: Well, it's pretty obvious. (Laughter.) God bless them. Hope they're learning something.

Pam Grier: A lot of straight women have been watching it, and it's enhanced their libidos, you know. I've been getting great comments about that.

On shooting most of the series in Vancouver, B.C.

Ilene Chaiken: I think when we first started the show, we went to Canada because that's what was done. That was how Showtime made television back then, and many other people did, as well. I think that it was a blessing for us because it was a rarefied situation. We were all up there together. It's like working in a laboratory. You focus. You concentrate. You become closer. You become collaborative in a way that you wouldn't if you were lost in the big city and leading your lives.

Leisha Hailey: I think the fact that we relocated up there — we really only had each other. We didn't know anyone else. So I think that bonded us very quickly, and if we had shot down here, we would have maybe never gotten to know each other so well. I'm just going to miss these guys (indicating the rest of the cast).

Kate Moennig: [Vancouver] is so accessible in a way that [L.A.] isn't. You can ride your bike ... you're able to run your errands by foot. It's like, a small town sensibility in a big city essentially. I'm going to miss that because there's a really cozy element to that town that you don't see everywhere.

Pam Grier: I live in Colorado. So coming to Los Angeles and Hollywood and sharing the lives with my colleagues was always exciting and being in Vancouver is like a shore, an ocean — it's very much like Denver in Colorado except for it has the sea, and we have the mountains. I just thought that we could focus on other things ... I would write, and on the end here (indicating Ilene), she's a conspirator. She talked me into writing my memoirs — yeah. Don't even start — I'm going to need therapy because of it.

CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE: fans, favorite seasons, and that "fin" cast photo.