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“The L Word” Season 2 Review

Those eagerly awaiting the second season debut of Showtime’s The L Word this Sunday, February 20th, will not be disappointed: the show is just as sexy and engaging this time around, but with new characters, new drama, and new romantic entanglements to complicate the lives of our favorite group of L.A. lesbians.

There are also a few new disappointments, starting with the new title sequence. Perhaps responding to complaints they received last year about the lack of one, the L Word editors have introduced a kitschy, fun collage of the L Word cast in various poses to open the episodes. The sequence is entertaining; unfortunately, the theme song by Betty that goes along with it is, well, cheesy and cringe-inducing (both the lyrics and the music). It actually makes you long for last season’s electronic dots.

Fortunately Betty’s other songs in the series (they perform on stage in one episode) are actually pretty good, as are most of the other artists chosen to provide the backdrop to the drama served up this season (you can check out many of them when Showtime releases the Season Two soundtrack next week).

Although some of the episodes are funnier or more dramatic than others, there are few “stand out” ones this season–not because they’re all poor, but because they’re almost all equally good. Unlike last season, where the episode tone and quality tended to be very uneven, this season seems to flow together well, as if the writers have finally found their groove.

The L Word has also lined up several interesting guest stars this season, and unlike shows like Will and Grace, The L Word uses its guest stars to support the primary storylines, not hijack them. Jane Lynch plays Tina’s smarmy lawyer to perfection, Camryn Manheim is an excellent bitchy movie studio exec, and Sandra Bernhard does a good job as Jenny’s caustic new writing teacher (Arianna Huffington’s role in the first episode, however, seems a little forced).

Most of this season’s L Word primary storylines pick up where they left off at the end of last season: Shane (Katherine Moennig) is still trying to get over being dumped by married socialite Sherry (Rosanna Arquette); Alice (Leisha Hailey) and Dana (Erin Daniels) are grappling with the aftermath of their kiss; Jenny (Mia Kirshner) is still writing bad fiction and trying to make sense of her relationships, including the dissolution of her relationship with ex-fiance Tim (Eric Mabius); Kit (Pam Grier) and Ivan (Kelly Lynch) are growing closer; and Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman) are trying to pick up the pieces after Bette’s affair with Candace (Ion Overman).

The only obvious disconnect from last season is the departure of Marina (Karina Lombard), who was not made a part of the second season cast. Marina’s absence is addressed in the first episode when the remaining characters learn that Marina has been taken back to Italy by her family after trying to commit suicide.

If the Jenny-Marina relationship was last season’s dark, intense storyline, that dubious honor goes to Bette and Tina’s relationship this season.

Bette’s guilt over her infidelity and her struggle to win Tina back is realistically messy and well-paced: every time Bette seems to make some progress with Tina, she loses ground again, frequently through her own missteps, but just as often through events that are beyond her control. This is Bette’s primary task for the second season: to accept the fact that she can’t control everything and everyone, including Tina.

Beals plays Bette with just the right amount of edginess and despair, as a woman constantly on the verge of losing control while trying to process a jumble of emotions: guilt, confusion, longing, anger, and humility. Although Beals delivered a strong performance last season, her performance this season combined with excellent character development by the writers, make Bette a far more complicated and nuanced character.

Tina experiences a similar roller-coaster of emotions, and Holloman infuses Tina with a believable mix of confusion, longing, and bursts of strength (although it strains credibility that a very obviously pregnant Tina makes it through several episodes without anyone guessing she might be pregnant, even if it is later revealed that her friends chalked up the weight gain to depression). Tina’s journey from a quiet wife who often submitted to her partner’s more dominant personality to a woman determined to be independent is also one of this season’s highlights.

The series also does a good job of exploring the lack of legal protections given to lesbian relationships through Bette and Tina’s storyline, without being too preachy about it.

Complicating Bette and Tina’s relationship is new character Helena Peabody (Rachel Shelley), the confidant, attractive British daughter of wealthy art patron Helena Peabody (Holland Taylor). Unlike Dana’s girlfriend Tonya (Meredith McGeachie), Helena is a villain you can dislike but at least respect, and a worthy opponent to Bette. On the surface, in fact, the characters of Bette and Helena are very similar, but Helena possesses a ruthlessness that stands in sharp relief to Bette’s good intentions.

Helena’s open pursuit of Tina knocks both Bette and Tina off-balance in a way that adds dimension to the Bette and Tina storyline, and even those rooting for Bette and Tina can’t help but admire Helena’s boldness and willingness to go after what she wants.

The strain Bette and Tina’s separation puts on their friendships with the rest of the characters is an interesting subplot, and one to which many viewers are likely to relate. Bette’s friendship with Alice is particularly effected, as Alice becomes increasingly torn between her sympathy for Tina and her longer-standing friendship with Bette (whom she dated in a former life).

An unexpectedly pleasant development is the tentative friendship that forms between Bette and Jenny, who reaches out to Bette when the others shun her like the school outcast taking pity on the dethroned head cheerleader. When Bette comments to Jenny that she doesn’t know why Jenny is even talking to her, since she wasn’t very nice to Jenny when she cheated on Tim with Marina, Jenny responds “I don’t know. I guess because I know how that feels.” Their friendship brings out a different side to both women, making them each more likeable.

The character of Jenny is considerably more entertaining and less annoying this season in general, although she still has her moments (which include pretty much any scene about her writing). In addition to her friendship with Bette, Jenny’s friendship with Shane–which develops when the two become roommates after Tim moves away–is sweet and lightens her character up considerably, and Kirshner brings her trademark intensity to the role, to good effect.

This is also the season Jenny finally begins to stand on her own two feet. “I’ve never really been on my own before, and I think that I need to just feel scared” she says at one point, before adding (to the “amen!” of viewers everywhere), “I can’t distract myself by creating all this fucking labyrinth-like drama that I’m so good at creating.” While Jenny continues to be just as dysfunctional as ever, it’s a little easier to put up with since at least we finally see her moving in the right direction.

Shane’s no-commitment rule is tested this season by the show’s other new character, Carmen (Sarah Shahi). Carmen’s sincerity and non-calculated directness is refreshing; her hair, however, is not. It looks as if her hairdresser wanted to pay tribute to the mullet, but stopped halfway through, with the result that she appears to have different hairstyles depending on the angle of her head.

But multiple-hair-personality disorder aside, Carmen fits in well with the other characters, and the actress is a nice addition to the cast (not to mention easy on the eyes). Carmen’s on-again, off-again relationship with both Shane and Jenny contributes to the second season’s dramatic tension, and adds an interesting layer of complexity to Shane and Jenny’s relationship, as they both struggle to determine their feelings for Carmen in the context of their friendship.

With the addition of Shahi, who is of Spanish and Persian descent, The L Word continues to offer a representation of lesbians that is far more racially diverse than any other show on television.

The Dana-Alice-Tonya triangle offers a study in how television shows manipulate you into responding differently to what is essentially the same behavior. Through anguished, emotional, and often darkly-lit scenes, the audience is invited to witness the devastating consequences of Bette’s infidelity. Meanwhile, quirky music, comic lines, and brightly-lit scenes play Dana’s infidelity for laughs and invite the audience to excuse her for essentially the same behavior.

The only real difference–besides the fact that Bette and Tina have built a life together while Dana and Tonya have only known each other a short while–is that the audience likes Tina, and doesn’t like Tonya.

It doesn’t help that, unlike Bette’s lover Candace, the writers have given Tonya virtually no redeeming qualities besides excelling in public relations, so the relationship between Dana and Tonya never really makes sense. While The Character You Love to Hate is a television staple, and Tonya fulfills that need nicely, it would be a little more interesting and believable if Tonya wasn’t quite so one-dimensional.

Don’t get me wrong–Daniels and Hailey are very funny, they have great chemistry, and they make their characters as loveable as they did in the first season. Plus, a lighter storyline is definitely needed to balance out the intensity of the Bette-Tina-Helena storyline.

But in playing their relationship for comic relief, Alice and Dana are rendered somewhat cartoon-ish, at least in the first half of the season. Even Dana’s reconciliation with her previously unaccepting family happens a little too easily; at times, it feels as if Dana’s storyline is perpetually on fast-forward.

Fortunately, we get more seriousness and depth from Alice and Dana in the second half of the season–helped in part by the return of one Miss Lara Perkins (aka the Soup Chef)–so all is not lost for viewers who want to see more character development for Alice and Dana this season. You just have to wait awhile.

The biggest problem with Season Two can be summed up in one word: Mark. Introduced in the fourth episode, amateur filmmaker Mark (Eric Lively) moves in with Jenny and Shane and proceeds to begin secretly taping them–ostensibly to make a documentary, but it fairly quickly devolves into an amateur porn flick, as he secretly tapes his roommates in compromising positions. At one point, he even pays a girl to seduce Shane in her living room so he can capture it on film.

Showtime President Robert Greenblatt acknowledged to Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview that the network requested Chaiken add a straight man to the cast in Season Two, because “it would be good for the male audience to have a guy they could relate to…and the straight female audience to see somebody they find attractive on this show.” Creator Ilene Chaiken told Entertainment Weekly that she was fine with including a straight man, but drew the line at Showtime’s suggestion that Mark have an affair with one of the women. It would appear that Chaiken thought this storyline was less offensive than that. If it is, it’s not by much.

The hidden-camera storyline stretches over most of the season, and even though Mark gets his in the end, it doesn’t make up for viewers having to sit through episode after episode of a storyline that panders to voyeurism and reinforces the worst sort of stereotypes of straight men. I’m not offended easily, but even I found this storyline disturbing, so I’m guessing the reaction from the broader lesbian audience is going to make last season’s complaints about the cast being too pretty look like a walk in the park.

It’s also hard to understand how this helps Showtime achieve their goal of attracting more straight viewers, since offering up nonconsensual voyeurism and privacy violation as entertainment is no way to attract straight (or gay) women, and on a show where attractive women make out with each other on a regular basis, you don’t need another sex-oriented hook to attract straight men.

Adding a straight man to the cast is an interesting idea, and I agree with Chaiken’s statement to EW that “It would be absurd to say that a group of women don’t interact with men on a daily basis.” But there are many ways to include a straight man that doesn’t offend your core audience. How about incorporating Tina’s sperm donor Marcus into the show, or simply having the women adopt Mark, a straight male friend, into their group? Almost anything would be better than this storyline, which cheapens the show and ads a sleazy aspect that The L Word has so far managed to avoid.

If they truly want to push the envelope, the writers could devote more time to exploring bisexuality, an area in which they now appear to be playing it extremely safe. Both of the show’s bisexual characters, Alice and Jenny, are increasingly bisexual in name only as they drift more and more towards the lesbian side of the scale. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, as there are plenty of bisexual women who are more attracted to one gender than the other, but if The L Word truly wants to be different and thought-provoking, they could introduce a likeable, well-adjusted straight guy who complicates Alice’s feelings for Dana.

The L Word continues to challenge assumptions about gender, however, by exploring the relationship between Ivan and Kit. Dialogue around who is allowed to define one’s gender and sexual orientation, and what exactly determines gender in the first place, make for a thought-provoking subplot, and one you truly never see on television. The storyline does get back-burnered for several episodes, however, and never feels quite resolved–but then, this is television, after all.

Kit’s other storyline this season involves buying The Planet from Marina’s family, and turning it into The L Word‘s version of The Peach Pit After Dark. Fortunately, the writers don’t overdo the musical performances, and The Planet continues to serve primarily as a backdrop against which the drama unfolds.

Those wondering about the lesbian sex scenes this season–in light of last season’s equal or greater emphasis on heterosexual sex–can relax: the balance has definitely tipped towards more lesbian sex this season, although the camera still tends to cut away too early. A scene involving Tina, Helena and a swimming pool, however, is actually one of the best sex scenes in the first half of the season, even though it’s actually one of the least explicit.

Overall, the second season of The L Word mostly lives up to its potential, offering storylines that are alternately controversial, humorous, challenging, emotional, and frustrating, even if they’re also occasionally disappointing.

For lesbian and bisexual women used to seeing only tiny slivers (and usually stereotypical ones) of our lives on television, The L Word offers a welcome respite–where for 50 minutes a week, the world, however flawed, looks something like our own.

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