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R.I.P., Jenny Schecter, and other things on her tombstone

You know that feeling you get when you have a cluster of judgments in your mind that are so similar they could practically be having Opinion Church, but are just different enough that they’re stumbling all over each other to try to be the first one out of your mouth? That’s what happened to me yesterday when I read the press release from Showtime asking us to participate in the Jenny Schecter Memorial Sweepstakes.

Basically, the contest, which is currently in its sixth week, is an opportunity for you to celebrate the demise of your once-beloved show, and win the clothes Jenny Schecter dies in. Yes, you read that correctly: you could be the proud owner of the actual outfit Cynthia Ann Summers designed before someone stuffed Mia Kirshner in a body bag and called it storytelling. (I do hope they had the foresight to put the stuff in the dryer.)

What you’ve missed if you haven’t been participating in the Jenny Schecter Memorial Sweepstakes is the chance to write a poem for Jenny, inscribe words on her tombstone, title her biography and ask her questions she might answer from beyond the grave. If you decide to participate in this week’s contest — and if you do, hurry! It ends on March 1 — you will create the ultimate Jenny Schecter fan art. Next week you can write her OBitchuary. (Get it, o-BITCH-uary? Because Jenny is so totally evil that even her closest friends threatened to kill her.) The final week is Things Left Unsaid, in which you get to say one last thing to Jenny Schecter.

I will be participating in the final contest now.

Hi Jenny,

You and I have had a tumultuous relationship over the years, haven’t we? My heart broke for you in Season One, because we’ve all been there, right? I mean, we haven’t all been there, but if we’re honest we get it — that choosing between the person who fills your soul with song and the person who gave your soul a home, and rest, in the first place. I could’ve done without the manatees, but you were just out of college, I think, and were there even Moleskines back then anyway?

In Season Two, we found out you’d been seriously effed up as a little kid, and how could we expect you to act normally after that? Unfortunately, no one ever explored that particularly huge part of your life beyond setting it up as a reason for you to start cutting on yourself, so now your abandonment issues and misguided moral compass and complete social ineptitude play like you’re just a jerk.

Now we’re in our final chapter of your story, and rather than responding authentically to the character you have become, the writers decided to work backward from a contrived conflict, and cram you in a coffin. Then they broke a bunch of other characters and taped them back together so they’d fit inside the “mystery.” They call it “the stories we’re going to tell this season.” I call it the kind of puppet show where you can see the strings and the puppet master, and even my 2-year-old nephew feels manipulated.

The one last thing I want to say to you is, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to die; you deserved some therapy. Sadly, there is only one therapist in your city, and his name is Dan Foxworthy, and honestly, he kind of sucks both as a person and a counselor.

The insult to your injury — well, death, actually — is that now they’re auctioning off your clothes in exchange for a guess at the title of your autobiography. (Mine is “Magical Me,” but that’s neither here nor there.)

If it helps, you aren’t dead to me. The first time I read Little Women, I rewrote the ending, such was my dissatisfaction with the way things played out. I’ll do the same for you. You’ll go on living in my imagination, and while I can’t promise rainbows and kittens and unicorns and such, I promise not to lie and call it a script. You can hang out with Dana, who also lives, and Alice, who will not be going to jail. You could hang out with Bette and Tina, but they’re being naughty, and that’s an entirely different story altogether.

Affectionately,

StuntDouble

If you want to take a turn at winning Jenny’s death suit, check out the Jenny Schecter Memorial Sweepstakes at Sho.com.

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