“Life after ‘The L Word’” at Times Talks

Kim Severson, Ilene Chaiken, and Jennifer Beals

I admit that my unshakable fan status prompted me to bite on the Times offer to see Ilene Chaiken and “members of The L Word cast” talk about life after the series (Their lives? Our lives? Life in the world? Didn’t know). I dutifully paid my $30 and traveled into the city April 20th, a miserable rainy night, and stood in line with hundreds of other lesbians and other folks (I did see one or two men in the crowd), and poured into the very comfortable Times auditorium, and opened my program to see with pleasure that Jennifer Beals would be that “member of the cast.” And all my old and vaguely silly but extremely pleasurable L Word fascination was fanned back into high flame.

After watching the series for six years with at most six or eight friends at a time, and more frequently just with my partner, first on video tapes that started fading with over-viewing and eventually on DVR and then “on demand,” as all our technology changed over those years, it was a revelation to sit in a live audience of hundreds of fans. The demographics surprised me—my unscientific assessment suggests that a third of the audience were squarely middle-aged white women; a third, women in their 20s and 30s; around a quarter women of color of various ages; and the rest illegible to me. When many of these spectators lined up at the open mike during the last segment of the evening, it also became clear they’d come from various parts of the tri-state area and even around the country to hear Chaiken and Beals speak. (I learned only later that various on-line sources, including www.afterellen.com, had revealed earlier that Beals would be Chaiken’s dialogue companion. Here's a YouTube clip--taken against the wishes of the ushers and security, no doubt, of Chaiken and Beals' entrance at the event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkIZrJK7rpk.)

Kim Severson, a Times food writer and out lesbian, moderated the evening with casual wit, channeling a fan’s desire for dirt with a journalist’s sense of the well put, productive question. Chaiken and Beals answered graciously and seemed entirely forthcoming, especially Beals, whose obvious intelligence, fair-mindedness, and generosity lent the evening a great deal of dignity. Beals’ dedication to the larger project of the show was palpable in each of her remarks, and her overtly articulated feminist politics a real pleasure to hear. She described how much her work on the show changed her awareness of gender and sexuality issues in American (and Canadian, since the show was shot in Vancouver) culture, and the new-found confidence working on the series has brought to her own work as an actor on film sets she said are “usually monolithic, patriarchal structures.” She now feels comfortable challenging film and television directors and producers on casual (or explicit) sexism, refusing demeaning dialogue and character set ups.

Beals also related that her connection to her body was strengthened by her L Word work. She told a story about a recent film shoot for The Book of Eli, a movie she just wrapped with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, written and directed by the Hughes brothers (whom she noted with pleasure were terrific to work with because they’re biracial and were raised by a lesbian). The director of photography on the shoot explained apologetically that a shot that started at her feet and moved up her body wouldn’t “linger”; she reassured him that she’d just spent six years on The L Word, and wasn’t at all worried about how he’d film her body. Hearing her pride and pleasure in her own sexuality, and the obvious feminism through which she sees her work, was striking throughout the evening.

Apparently, the rumored spin-off starring Leisha Hailey (to be called The Farm) was put on indefinite hold, but Chaiken is pursuing plans for an L Word film. The Beals and Chaiken also have a new project they’re working on together that, they protested, is still germinating and too soon to reveal. But the pleasure they take in their own professional partnership was palpable. They told stories they’ve rehearsed many times elsewhere about how they started working together. Beals was the first person cast on the show; at the time, she was contemplating an offer to play a prostitute, and said she happily chose to play a lesbian instead.

Given the choice to play Bette or Tina, she choose Bette, and asked that Chaiken write her character as biracial, since in addition to the progressive work she knew the show would do for representations of lesbians, she said she also wanted to see her own identity on screen. Beals said she also loved Rose Troche, one of the show’s first directors, when they met. Since most of the episodes were directed by artists who, like Troche, were associated with independent film, Beals said shooting each episode was like doing a “little movie.”

Chaiken admitted that the most autobiographical characters on the show were Bette and Jenny (until, that is, Jenny “went crazy,” in Chaiken’s description). Bette connected to Chaiken’s life as a high powered professional woman trying to balance a relationship with someone slightly less socially visible, and the complications of being a woman in the arts and media. Chaiken didn’t say much about how Jenny reflected her own life, but one can surmise. She said that the two characters channeled “a lot of my issues” until they “became themselves.”

Severson asked how Chaiken secured so many terrific, high-profile female guest artists for the show. Chaiken explained that many women were taken enough with the series that they had their agents call to express their interest. Although she insists she didn’t write for any particular actors, she was pleased with the pool of people available from whom to cast. She and Beals agreed there are so few parts for women that are “interesting and different and not in the service of a man’s story,” that especially women actors into their 30s and beyond were eager to join the cast. Beals emphasized how different it was to perform a character whose life doesn’t revolve around a man.

Severson referred to the controversy that surrounded the show since its premiere, with some spectators complaining that the characters (and the actors who played them) were too beautiful, too thin, or too unrealistic. Chaiken responded that if no one were inflamed about the series, it wouldn’t have lasted for six years. She admitted that she got attacked because Jenny was Jewish, even though, Chaiken said, “I happen to be Jewish, too.” Beals seemed more distressed by some of the harsh, on-line responses to the twists and turns in Bette’s portrayal, and decided she needed to steer clear of fan site discussion boards.

Severson joked about the peculiar plot twists of the final season (referring casually to “the guy with the beard,” who killed Jenny, and the various other “what’s up with that?” moments of the season), and Beals quipped that Chaiken “went over to the dark side” for the show’s last episodes. Chaiken protested that the show reflected “life” and couldn’t always be sunny; likewise, when Severson, to the glee of much of the audience, accused her of “killing” Dana, Chaiken defended herself by saying that she thought it was a true, important depiction of lesbians with cancer.

Chaiken and Beals stressed throughout the evening that the show’s goal was to tell stories that hadn’t been told before. Beals, in particular, underlined that her work on the show always had a political quotient, while Chaiken side-stepped the politics, demurring that you can’t begin with the intent to make a political point and wind up with “good art.” I was more impressed by Beals’ attention to what it meant to American culture for a series about lesbians to persist for six good years.

She said as she was doing press, she remembered that the “personal is political,” using good old fashioned feminist language to mark the intersection of life and ideology. She said she was excited about the possibility of helping a “young girl in the middle of nowhere find herself represented,” and about “giving someone safety and the room to be authentic. Everyone needs to be heard,” she said.

Questions from the audience were sometimes sweet and moving, and sometimes astute. One middle-aged African American woman responded to Beals’ remark about the isolated young would-be lesbian, saying that even those of us who live and work in places like New York are empowered by seeing representations of ourselves on screen. The woman related how her co-workers, to whom she was already out, seemed to have a new appreciation for her life and her lesbian family, and that the show gave her an opportunity for a “second coming out” that obviously filled her with surprised pride.

A surprising number of straight women took the microphone to attest to how The L Word affected their own lives, prompting the audience to murmur with a rather affronted impatience. But Chaiken and Beals responded magnanimously, especially Beals, who took each question seriously, looked directly at the speaker, and answered precisely and carefully. Beals has the same gravitas she brought to Bette; I could feel the audience responding with a great deal of respect (and no small amount of pleasure and desire. She was clearly the icon of the moment).

Chaiken and Beals struck a mutually wistful tone through much of the evening, considering the show’s six year life-span and its recent end. Beals said she’s in frequent touch with Kate Moennig, who played Shane; she texted her recently to ask what she wouldn’t give for one more scene at the Planet, chatting over a cup of coffee. The nostalgia and longing was sweet, and reminded me that those scenes in the restaurant always seemed among the most authentic, full of real connections among the actors and the characters. Beals recalled how much she learned from doing the show. “My eyes were also opened,” she said. “I learned how connected we all are. All women are connected. Homophobia is a form of misogyny.”

Chaiken said she thought The L Word happened at a moment of “receptivity for gay characters on tv,” when “the culture was ready.” Now, she believes that if she were to pitch the series, producers would tell her that lesbians have “been done.” The pair said they thought they’d be “passing a baton,” but instead, they said, “there’s nothing” on television that will continue to till the ground The L Word broke.

At the end of the evening, Beals made a point of thanking the fans for their dedicated support of the show. She said she’s realized, by attending various fundraisers, that there’s a market for the photographs she took on set during the series (Beals has a solid reputation as a photographer, as well as an actor). She’s thinking of making an L Word photo book, for which she’d give the royalties to various charities.

I have to say I was proud to be among those fans that night, proud of Chaiken and Beals and Severson and how smart they all were, how feminist, how progressive, how positive and articulate about the need for the kind of work The L Word accomplished in the cultural imagination. A couple days later, I watched a clip online of Laurel Holloman accepting an award for “sexiest scene on television” at the Bravo A-List Awards show. She paraded her lovely self up to the mike, looking sexy and gorgeous, took hold of the vaguely phallic globe that served as the trophy, and joked, “This looks a prop from my show.” She went on to remark that she was accepting the award for a scene in which she “sat on Jennifer’s face.” She applauded how remarkable it is (“How cool is that?”) that such a scene could be televised, let alone awarded, and said, “I don’t know what’s with this Prop 8 business,” before she left the stage.

Maybe it’s politics lite, but it’s politics, just the same. The L Word girls are out there getting it said, getting it done, chipping away at those “patriarchal structures” and homophobia and misogyny, not just in the film and television industries, but in many of our lives.

How cool is that?

The Feminist Spectator

The L Word: Good Night and Good-Bye

From the Showtime web site

And so they go, the girls of The L Word, off into the LA lesbian sunset . . . or wait, are they going into the police station to give their testimonies about Jenny’s mysterious death to the hot sheriff who came to investigate her drowning? An overhead shot at the show’s end lets us watch as a number of very large cars pull into a nearly empty parking lot in some ambiguous LA location, from which the city, glittering at dusk, looms in the background. One after another, our heroines leave their vehicles and walk—each in her idiosyncratic way, but each looking remarkably like a model, with that showy swagger, that lithe, winsome affect, and that hair blowing in a breeze that comes from nowhere—toward a destination ultimately unknown.

At first, their faces are serious. Perhaps they’re thinking toward their fateful meetings with Lucy Lawless (in an amusing piece of intertextual casting) as the sheriff, Sergeant Duffy. But wait, moments into their individual saunters, they begin to smile, almost slyly. Gradually, the women meet up and acknowledge one another, in twos and threes, ending up in a long row of L Word women, their arms wound gleefully around each others’ waists in a final kick-line to send off their six-season show.

Bette and Tina smile particularly widely—after all, they began the end by deciding to decamp to New York, where perhaps this time, Tina really will pull her weight and Bette really will let her be the family’s Uber-mom. Or maybe Kit’s new erstwhile drag queen lover—whom Angie sweetly calls “Daddy” when he and Kit bring the little one home after a trip to the zoo—will join them and create a transgendered as well as biracial nuclear family. Maybe Max, despite his sudden aw-shucks reaction to his baby’s first kicks, will move to New York, too, and ask Bette and Tina to help him raise his child (or maybe they’ll adopt his kid after all, and Max will grow his beard back).

Hard to say. But in those final moments of winsome walking, everything seems both possible and forgiven. Even the wretched Jenny Schecter is resurrected from the recently-dead to join the long march toward The L Word’s ending, wearing some sort of gold lamé dress and, eventually, smiling, too, as Bette and Tina and then Shane reach out their hands to bring her back into the fold. But hey—are they still acting? Or are they Jennifer Beals, Laurel Holloman, Kate Moenning, and Mia Kirschner, just taking their curtain call?

Since the producers held the valedictory credits until the very end, I was surprised to see that Ilene Chaiken wrote and directed the finale. The episode was shot with a sense of style and written with a kind of restraint that I haven’t associated with Chaiken’s work in recent seasons. A lot of final exposition had to be set up and moved along, but the dialogue that accomplished the girls’ propulsion into their futures was crisp and true to character.

Even the camera work got a bit arty, especially in the interspersed, flashed-ahead scenes of the women’s interrogation at the police station, where high, stark lighting, dramatic angles, and extreme close-ups gave them a cool film noir style. Chaiken lent scenes set in “West Hollywood” some equally varied angles, shooting a number of them from high above the action. (Maybe she was just giving us a god’s-eye view on the characters she created.) The filmic choices gave the episode a richer texture. And happily, Betty’s grating theme song was absent, replaced by a music collection ranging from female pop artists to melancholic cello work, all of which heightened the emotions of the moment.

After all, this was the swan song for history’s first more or less mainstream lesbian soap opera/“dramedy.” That it lasted six seasons (for which spectators were thanked in a producer’s note after the credits) seems remarkable and notable, regardless of whether you watched avidly and with pleasure or watched not at all, unable to stomach the whole proceedings. During a visit I made recently to the University of Maryland, more than one lesbian apologized for not being a fan; one even said with dismay, “Do I have to watch it?”

Of course, I said no, since I’m hardly the arbiter of these things. But why not, I wondered? Isn’t it even fun to hate? Is it just that my nearly 52-year-old self is still amazed to be watching Lez Girls cavort, between the sheets, at the Planet, at Helena’s palatial ocean-side abode, at Bette and Tina’s newly renovated house, with its pool-side cabana and its conveniently, fatefully unsteady deck railing? While I, too, got impatient or bored with the show more than once through its run, I watched every episode and I’m sad that it’s over.

It’s not that I won’t have other things to do with my Sunday nights. But a story has ended in which I felt implicated and cathected, emotionally and psychologically connected to characters that had little to do with my life, but everything to do with a cultural moment I needed to mark and enjoy on a weekly basis. The availability of television by and about lesbians required me to witness it as a new wrinkle in the American cultural zeitgeist. I don’t want to see the space The L Word created in public consciousness close over without a ripple.

Gossip has it that Chaiken is developing a spin-off for Leisha Haley. Another lesbian-focused series would be terrific, but Alice Pieszecki became one of the least interesting characters on The L Word. Why couldn’t she let go of Tasha, even after it was Alice who seemed attracted elsewhere at the end of season five? Haley and Rose Rollins are capable performers, but their chemistry as a couple was never convincing. In their brighter moments, their banter and teasing and flirting were fun, but their sex scenes always lacked conviction. Haley and Rollins just couldn’t manufacture on-screen magic. Mei Melancon, playing the last season’s third wheel interloper, Jamie, and Rollins, although they never consummated their attraction, gave their longing gazes more zing.

In fact, Tasha’s return to Alice at the last episode’s 11th hour seemed unrealistic, a forced happy ending rather than a choice the character actually might have made. Alice and Tasha were never right together; why not choose the biracial girl who seemed to “get” Tasha instead of Alice, who always blundered through their relationship, disrespecting Tasha’s difference on numerous levels. Alice became shrewish and grasping by the end.

When she confronted Jamie and Tasha about their feelings for one another at the Planet in the last episode, and Jamie finally confirmed her love for Tasha, Alice acted like a teenager, saying, “Thank you. And fuck you,” and later, “Shut up,” as Jamie tried to talk to her. The old Alice might have been tougher, her response more complicated. For someone who began the series as the keeper of the Chart—that genealogical web of dyke relationships, that cartographic image of incestuous lesbian lives—Alice became strangely attached to a very conventional notion of monogamy.

Still, much of the humor in the last episode came from Alice’s drunken day waiting for Tasha to choose her or Jamie. Alice wiles away the tense time talking on the phone to Shane and Helena, fantasizing about what Tasha and Jamie are doing together. Haley got the one-liners right; it made me miss Alice’s video blog, when she served as the voice of a community, commenting on its mores and foibles. Too bad Chaiken reduced Alice to just another needy lesbian by the finale.

Shane, on the other hand, seems to be the character who grew the most. The final show spends a lot of time resolving her narrative thread. She conveniently bumps into her most recent ex, Molly (Clementine Ford), in a gift store. When Molly refers to dropping off Shane’s coat and the letter that (of course) Jenny never passed on to Shane, poor Shane blanches visibly, as the shoe drops and the various pieces of Jenny’s deception and its consequences fall into place.

Ford makes a crisp, wistful cameo appearance. With a new girl looking soulfully into her eyes, Molly’s able to tell Shane that she’s over her and that it’s okay. Shane initiated her, and like so many other girls, Molly fell for her hard. But she’s okay, Molly says, and trots off to put her new arm candy back on. The devastated Shane watches her past and her preferred future walk out the door and races home to find Molly’s letter in the jacket Jenny stuffed in the attic of their house. In the process, she comes across the stolen negatives of Lez Girls that Jenny had stashed away the whole time.

The last episode confirmed that Jenny truly was pathological. She stole the negatives; she kept Shane from Molly; she meddled outrageously in Helena and Dylan’s relationship, as well as Bette and Tina’s. Thanks to Jenny, Helena rejects Dylan (Alexandra Hedison), forever unable to trust that Dylan loves her for herself and not her money. (“It’s a cliché,” Rachel Shelley says into the camera, during her scene with Sergeant Duffy, eyes batting, “But it’s hard to be rich.”) It’s a shame Helena has to dump Dylan, since their rekindled relationship was one of The L Word’s more mature, their sex the best Rachel Shelley ever performed on the show. In one of the several reminiscence reels available from Showtime On Demand, Shelley remarks that she and Hedison “clicked”—it shows.

Jenny’s plan to tell Tina about what she mistakenly believes is Bette’s infidelity proves the final straw. In my oh-so-close examination of the last episode, I think Chaiken intimates that Bette killed Jenny. Their last scene together on the deck leaves the two women in a face off, with Bette practically snarling that she won’t let Jenny hurt her family. As the scene cuts away, Jenny’s lower lip trembles with defiance. After Bette returns to the house, Jenny is never seen again.

And is Jennifer Beals smiling just a bit too knowingly in that final bow? And why is her interrogation scene with Sergeant Duffy repeated twice, shot at a different, even closer angle, but with the same dialogue, as Bette repeatedly rolls up the sleeves on her crisp white blouse? “Jenny is complicated, complex,” Bette says thoughtfully, “talented, sometimes generous, but complicated, complex.” What’s that supposed to mean? And how could Bette, with the walls of her home adorned with smart, contemporary feminist art, think that Jenny’s execrable novel and trashy film indicates talent?

Setting Bette up to take the fall for Jenny’s murder—even if only implicitly—continues the demonizing of Bette for her season one original sin of her affair with the carpenter. Bette’s vilification is one of The L Word’s most conservative ploys. In the end, Bette tells Kit that she’s sick of everyone being in her business. I don’t blame her, given how eager they all became to vilify Bette and how easily her friends and her sister believed that she’d stepped out on Tina with the horrible gallery owner Kelly Wentworth (Elizabeth Berkeley, not at all redeeming her Showgirls debacle). Surely Bette has more taste than to be attracted to the manipulative, voracious Kelly, when she’s got earnest, exasperated but lovely Laurel Holloman at home.

Bette and Tina have always been the show’s leading couple; they were destined to be together at its end. Shane, in fact, gives them a nice nod, stumbling upon them after one of her nights out carousing as Bette and Tina sit on their house steps, drinking coffee and beginning their day after a night of loud sex and quiet intimacy. (Scenes of them sleeping intertwined are all shot from above, too; the goddess is watching, don’t you know.) Quoting the threesome’s exchange from the first season, Shane teases them about having sex—she can always sense when they’ve been at it, and her envy is rueful and sweet. Using the same moment to bookend the series is a lovely acknowledgment of the couple’s longevity.

Jenny’s farewell video for Bette and Tina brings all the women together for a nostalgia fest. The intercut clips of testimonials from friends near and far serve as a benediction for the show as well as the characters. Karina Lombard appears in a silly clip as the long forgotten Marina, speaking now with a French accent since she’s apparently moved to the south of France. She’s probably sorry she missed those six seasons of steady work. Tim (Eric Mabius) pops on to wish them well, cracking jokes about “crazy” Jenny. (Mabius generously sets aside his Ugly Betty character to resurrect Tim.) Ivan (Kelly Lynch), in his rather Goth trans regalia, sends regards staged in front of a placard that says “Vote No on 8,” bringing the show into the political present.

The soigné Peggy Peabody, played by the inimitable Holland Taylor, gives Bette and Tina her blessing, making me nostalgic for the good old days when Bette was mounting the “Provocations” show at the LA museum. Angus (Dallas Roberts), who betrayed Kit with Angie’s babysitter, says he’s got his heart open and waiting for Bette and Tina in New York. Jodi (Marlee Matlin) signs to the camera how much they’ve changed her life, surprisingly setting aside her ugly break-up with Bette (or maybe she’s just being ironic). Even the jilted Carmen (Sarah Shahi) appears, looking self-serious (and not at all like “herself” or like a lesbian) to wish the couple well.

Kit jokes that the video is a catalogue of her ex-lovers, but the clips recall many of the women’s former romantic entanglements. (At least Jenny/Chaiken steered clear of including clips of the long dead and gone Dana, which would have been really cloying.) That these old characters appear in Jenny’s video brings the show full circle and gestures toward a truism of many lesbians’ lives—ex-lovers do eventually become friends, because we need and value the extended circle of people who once were intimates. Watching the women watch what amounts to a home movie underlines their intimacy and their kinship. (Max calls them “framily”—more than friends, not quite family.)

As they watch her (three hour) video, the gang finally realizes that Jenny isn’t there to see their reactions. Alice, who’s valiantly decided to be friends with Jenny again, goes to search her out. Max quips, rather uncharacteristically, “Maybe someone threw water on her and she melted,” which turns out to be not far from the truth. They should have noticed Jenny’s Pomeranian frantically sniffing and whining around the pool while they were eating popcorn and watching the video.

Some viewers are disappointed that Jenny’s murder, so touted in previews and so anticipated in the script, was so anticlimactic. Did Jenny fall in the pool? Did she jump? Was she pushed? By Bette? Who cares? We’ll never know and it hardly matters. Perhaps Chaiken was just trying to fulfill fans’ wishes, many of whom have wanted Jenny dead since the first season. Like so many others over the show’s run, the plot point was contrived and unnecessary; Bette and Tina’s move from LA would have been enough to wrap up the story.

But Jenny’s death keeps The L Word true to its roots. The show was always a fantasy, a fairy tale about beautiful, sexy lesbians who never seemed to worry about money, despite how often they changed precarious jobs. The clothes, the bodies, the situations—few of them were authentic to most people’s idea of what it’s like to be a lesbian, or a dyke, or queer in early 21st century America.

But The L Word’s flashes of humorous insight, and complicated desire, and hard fought relationships, and fraught friendship networks, and love and commitment among a group of women who helped one another survive really did hit a vein of something true. For those moments, I’ll miss it.

Mourning an era’s end,
The Feminist Spectator