'The L Word' recap: It's a wrap
Mar 24, 2008, 12:07 PM | by Nicholas Fonseca
Categories: 'The L Word', Mini TV Watch
It's so appropriate that The L Word's fifth-season finale took place on Easter Sunday, because right around the 55-minute mark of the
show, I chirped up with a joyous little "She is risen!" as Jenny piped up
from the back of the Les Girls wrap party and barged onstage. It was a night filled with game-changing, long-in-coming confrontations — Jenny
and Adele, Dawn Bimbo and her lover Cindi, Helena and Peggy, Phyllis and Shane,
Jodi and Bette... ooof, it was a rough night in West Hollywood, wasn't it?
We'll start with the returns of a few old friends: Crazy Jenny appears to have returned from a stint in Boringtown, Peggy Peabody reentered the scene via helicopter and gurney (so fussy!), and her daughter Helena came back from wandering around like a fool with Dusty to basically buy back The Planet and bag Lover Cindi. Never mind that she's a criminal on the lam. Random aside No. 1: The supreme awesomeness of Peggy Peabody (and, by extension, Holland Taylor) was reconfirmed last night when she used the words "peccadilloes" and "willy-nilly" and answered a question of Helena's with the phrase, "As is your wont." What is not to love about this woman? Random aside No. 2: The unbearable tedium of Kit Porter was reconfirmed last night when she greeted Helena's return with, "Girl! Girrrrrrrl! Girl... Girl!" I'm not lying. Those were the first four words out of her mouth. But wasn't that a predictable plot development, having Peggy give Helena the money to buy back the Planet? I'm hoping that's not the last we've seen of Dawn Bimbo and her Lover Cindi. (We all must simply refuse to call her by her actual name, even if she did finally reveal it during one of last night's more inspired moments.) Do you sense that the show's final season will draw out the enmity between Dawn and "the skanks"? And how silly is it that the girls are now BFFs with Lover Cindi?
Do you ever wonder if Daniela Sea, the actress who plays Max/Moira, actually films more than the five or six lines she typically says in any given episode? I'm curious to know if she stuck around to say more than the "Hey guys!" that made it in last night. Max/Moira has achieved quite a dubious honor on a show that's populated entirely by divisive characters; there may be no more roundly hated member of the canvas than the little half-tranny that could. If anybody out there thinks that Max/Moira still has a reason for being on this show, could you please share your insight with me? Otherwise, can we drop this character and make room for more scenes with Alice? That is, if she can have her old personality back? Because NOTHING she's done this season has resonated — The Look plot never felt fleshed out, the spark with Tasha is completely gone, and Alice herself has behaved more like a judgmental shrew than the free-spirited lover she once was. I welcomed the growth that happened after Dana's death, but I worry that Alice grew… bland. And Alice should never, ever be bland.
Which brings me to SHANE OH MY GOD SHANE HOW COULD SHE?! NO NO NO! UNACCEPTABLE AND HYPOCRITICAL AND SELF-SABOTAGING AND ROTTEN! Whyyyyyyy, why? Why? I can't believe Shane (Katherine Moennig, pictured) did it again. And with Niki, of all people! Oy, who's kept count? How many times does this make? Once again, reality and authority got up in Shane's face, and because Shane didn't like it, Shane made a mess. I don't know where to start with this one. If I wanted to fight a losing battle, I'd go with the compulsive need for wanton outdoor sex (woo! Cheri Jaffe's pool!). But all we can do is remember that Shane has been Shane since the very first episode of The L Word. We all knew exactly who she was from minute one, and no amount of personal happiness or trauma — self-inflicted or otherwise — is going to change much. That became astoundingly clear when she told Alice that Tasha's military trial "never had anything to do with you." Uh, yes it did. It kind of had everything to do with Alice, and to insist otherwise is crazy talk. (I'm not arguing that Alice owes Tasha anything, but Shane's claim is preposterous and not all that helpful.) Phyllis really did say it best a few weeks ago: "She's a lothario and a cad, and the kind of boy you used to fall for in high school before you knew better."
And then there was Jodi. The less I say about Jodi, probably the better. She's irritated me from the start, and last night's final f-you to Bette — which lost a lot of its dramatic power with me when I started to realize that the accompanying music sounded like this (link contains NSFW language) — just gave me more reason to wish her good riddance already. We discussed her manic behavior last week, and she was up to all the old tricks again this week. First she walked away from the entire group when Bette dared to address her, and then she played nice, though for all I know that was just her way of getting Bette to finally stop hovering and making puppy-dog eyes. Seriously, that was annoying. I suppose I should have expected something insanely provocative from a Jodi scorned, but beyond the fact that her big installation seemed to have been thrown together in record time, the whole thing was simply too over-the-top, unimaginative, and desperate to be taken seriously.
So here's where we stand as The L Word heads toward its final season: Bette's humiliated for awhile, which is fun since I always like it when somebody pricks her bubble of pretension but not fun because now she'll just be more of a Debbie Downer than usual. At least she's back with Tina (YAY!). Alice is stuck in a holding pattern with Tasha and flirting with that dippy Aussie girl who annoys me almost as violently as Tattoo McGillicuddy over on American Idol. Helena is presumably back, Shane just blasted a hole in her friendship with Jenny, Dawn Bimbo lost her ongoing war with Kit, Les Girls awaits its newly heterosexual, studio-ordained ending, and Max/Moira awaits the day when his so-called closest circle of friends engages him/her beyond "Hey, guys!"
What about you? What did you and your Lover Cindi think about last night's season finale?
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