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• Sunday, January 14, 2007 01:04 PM

  Sort of "Claire of the Moon" meets "Girls Gone Wild"

  There are a million and one shows about straight people, so any shows at all about gay people stand out. And, unfortunately, they command loyalty for the same reason. Even when they suck, in the grand tradition of 99.999% of all gay-themed literature.

  The L Word's first show of the new season was spine-tinglingly, hair-rendingly, AWFUL. It's been going downhill anyway, but last Sunday managed to reach new levels of making the characters into cardboard cutouts. My willing suspension of disbelief works only so well.

  Bette's sister manages to track her down at this hotel precisely how?

  Marina shows up out of the blue and Jennie and her new gf suddenly end up in an almost-threesome with her? (Somehow, I think we're supposed to feel sorry for Jenny. Somehow, I'm failing.)

  We dispose of Lara with two lines of dialogue?

  Carla abandons her sleeping stepchild to the tender mercies of her unstable other-stepchild?

  ...and so forth.

  Before the show, my partner observed to me that every gay woman we know was settling down to watch. After the show, I observed to her that that collective shriek was the sound of every gay woman we know yelling, "WTF was that crap?!" at the TV.

  There are good storylines that the show could pursue, but it's ignoring them. Even the sex scenes were wooden and awful. If we're going to watch this dreck, can we have some good sex scenes?

  But the shameful part is that we're watching the damn show tonight. This is the only show with gay female main characters on it and we want to see ourselves, even though it's seeing ourselves in a funhouse mirror with pink light. And because we keep watching, it can continue to suck.

  —name changed to protect the guilty
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