Spoilers for The L Word and Generation Q
On Sunday, December 8th, 2019 at 8:45pm, the second-oldest lesbian bar in the country was packed with bodies and completely silent. One of the women who had moments ago led a round of The L Word trivia (affectionately deemed by our table as The Trivia Lesbian) had popped a disc into a DVD player. Lizzo came on over the speakers; from the hanging projector appeared an image that took up at least a third of the bar’s east wall. SHOWTIME PRESENTS, the wall suddenly read. THE L WORD: GENERATION Q.
The premiere opened on two young lesbians having passionate period sex. For a brief moment, we allowed ourselves a flash of hysterical screaming. Then we all went silent again.
The Wildrose was not the only place in Seattle to watch The L Word reboot premiere. Queer/Bar had a showing that started at 10pm, but it cost to get in and had a “red carpet” theme none of my clique wanted to dress for. Saint John’s promised to host a free viewing the next night. A couple friends of mine hosted viewing parties in their homes, but I had to decline their generous offers. The group of dykes, enbies and queers I’d committed to going with were set on the Rose, in all its history, cheap liquor and potential. We did not expect to be able to hear the episode at all. Before going in we joked about this, resolved ourselves to the chaos of free public experience.
My partner came, and our roommate, and my sibling, and my sibling’s partner, and my sibling’s partner’s coworker, and my sibling partner’s coworker’s partner, and three other friends. A line to get in the bar curled down 11th Ave. The bouncer let queers with every haircut imaginable trickle in as Bette appeared onscreen for the first time in ten years— a brief scream, and then silence. Our collective reverence shocked me. This was nothing like the other queer television events I’d attended. At any given moment during a Seattle Drag Race premiere, some gay in a beanie was screaming. But for a solid hour at the Rose that night, you could’ve heard an earring drop.
I CAN HEAR SOMEONE HAVING SEX, my friend Anna texted the group chat from the bathroom. For a moment my heart soared: public sex at the Rose during the L Word reboot premiere? I think she was referring to the sex happening onscreen, extravagant moans blasted through the bar sound system, but I elected not to ask for confirmation, just in case.
In preparation for the reboot, I’ve spent the last two weeks watching the original The L Word around the clock. It had been many years since my last dedicated re-watch, but my memory served correctly: The L Word was not just wildly ignorant and offensive but a genuinely bad show. The writing is clunky and heavy-handed, important characters vanish without acknowledgment, the sex looks good about once out of every ten times. None of this mattered, because back then, we weren’t looking for quality (though, like, we would have preferred it). We were looking for us.
It was an ugly search. Scraping and clawing through six seasons of racist, transphobic, classist, and generally oppressive story-lines left us angry, annoyed, apathetic. Ilene Chaiken and her team’s imagination had put us through a lot. For years, when we talked about The L Word, our talk escalated to screaming. In spite of all this, I found myself silent during the reboot, too, wondering if the franchise responsible for all my suffering would come back, like a bad girlfriend, and apologize for all she’d done. In true bad girlfriend fashion, Generation Q kind of apologized sort of.
Language-wise, the show has evolved. For one, nobody referred to anyone else as “the transgender”— a friend of mine cheered when Bette’s assistant used the term “Latinx.” Without much context, we’re now dealing with the richest lesbians in Los Angeles. Alice is the new Ellen, Bette is running for mayor, and Shane travels via private jet to her minimalist mansion with an indoor pool (did she get all this money from cutting hair??) There’s an awkward Kamala plug early in the episode. At this the room stayed silent but grew visibly tense.
Generation Q has the throwback Easter eggs you want, old Shane mentoring the new Shane, two trans men of color playing trans men of color, Stephanie Allyne, Bette saying, “It makes her husband feel like less of a man, whatever that means.” But the good stuff felt washed out by the absences, looming large and poorly accounted for. We see Bette talking to Tina on her cell in a distant but respectful tone, as if to tell the viewer, “Look elsewhere, for Drama will not happen here.” Far worse is the slow unraveling of Bette’s private motivation for running for mayor, as well as her uncompromising stance on the opioid crisis. My partner whispered to me, incredulous, “Is Kit fucking DEAD??”
Reader, Kit is probably dead. This feels embarrassing, painful and unnecessary to even speak aloud, not unlike Dana’s death before her. At least Jenny’s death happened in Season 6, long after The L Word had (rightfully!) committed to parodying itself. But Generation Q knows Kit’s death isn’t funny. When Bette starts listing the many hats she wears— mother, ex-wife, etc— she stutters over “sister.”
Another thing I’ve rarely wanted to accept about The L Word: at the root, it’s a soap opera. “Do you remember fucking my wife?” a reporter yells at Bette during a public Q&A. Jennifer Beals, who has somehow aged in reverse, turns elaborately toward the camera. The shot is gorgeous, ludicrous, hyperbolic. Any other soap opera and the crowd is shouting at this scene, cackling and groaning with similar flair. But we remained silent with our eyes fixed, some of us breathless. In 2019, we don’t need The L Word anymore, except for the ways we kind of sort of do.