The l word tapes

Following the series finale of The L Word, Showtime released a series of seven short videos depicting Bette, Alice, Tina, Shane, Helena, Niki and Max being questioned by the LAPD (guest starring Lucy Lawless as Sergeant Marybeth Duffy) over Jenny’s death. The episodes were posted weekly on Showtime’s website and served as an epilogue to season 6.

Episodes[]

Bette[]

Bette’s tape reveals more about her feelings towards her relationship with Tina.

• Bette Porter/Interrogation Tapes

Alice[]

Alice’s tape reveals how she first met Bette and her feelings towards her bisexuality.

• Alice Pieszecki/Interrogation Tapes

Tina[]

Tina’s tape reveals more about her family background. It also reveals that she and Jenny became very close while filming Lez Girls, and Tina had opened up about her family to Jenny, helping explain why Jenny refused to back down when she thought that Bette had cheated on Tina with Kelly Wentworth.

• Tina Kennard/Interrogation Tapes

Shane[]

Shane’s tape reveals how she first met Alice and who really burned down Wax.

• Shane McCutcheon/Interrogation Tapes

Helena[]

Helena’s tape reveals what she did with Catherine Rothberg‘s money.

• Helena Peabody/Interrogation Tapes

Niki[]

Niki’s tape reveals who really stole the Lez Girls negatives.

• Niki Stevens/Interrogation Tapes

Max[]

• Max Sweeney/Interrogation Tapes

Notes[]

• The tapes confirm the date of Jenny’s death to be January 18, 2009.

The L Word
Genre	Drama
Created by	Ilene Chaiken Michele Abbot Kathy Greenberg
Starring	Jennifer Beals Mia Kirshner Pam Grier Laurel Holloman Katherine Moennig Leisha Hailey Erin Daniels Karina Lombard Eric Mabius Sarah Shahi Rachel Shelley Eric Lively Daniel Sea Dallas Roberts Janina Gavankar Rose Rollins Marlee Matlin
Opening theme	«The L Word» performed by Betty (seasons 2–6)
Composer	Elizabeth Ziff
Country of origin	United States Canada
Original language	English
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	70 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Ilene Chaiken Rose Lam Steve Golin Larry Kennar
Producers	Rose Lam Kim Steer Elizabeth Ziff Angela Robinson Elizabeth Hunter A.M. Homes
Production locations	Vancouver, British Columbia Los Angeles, California
Running time	50 minutes
Production companies	Anonymous Content Dufferin Gate Productions Coast Mountain Films Posse Showtime Networks
Release
Original network	Showtime
Original release	January 18, 2004 – March 8, 2009
Related
The L Word: Generation Q

The L Word is a television drama that aired on Showtime in the US from 2004 to 2009. The series follows the lives of a group of lesbian and bisexual women who live in West Hollywood, California.^[1][2] The premise originated with Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbot and Kathy Greenberg; Chaiken is credited as the primary creator of the series and also served as its executive producer.

The L Word featured television’s first ensemble cast of lesbian and bisexual female characters,^[3][4] and its portrayal of lesbianism was groundbreaking at the time.^[2][5][6][7] One of the series’ pioneering hallmarks was its explicit depiction of lesbian sex from the female gaze,^[8] at a time when lesbian sex was «virtually invisible elsewhere on television.»^[9] It was also the first television series written and directed by predominantly queer women.^[10]

The L Word franchise led to the spin-off reality show The Real L Word (2010–2012) as well as the documentary film L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin (2014), both of which aired on Showtime. A sequel television series, The L Word: Generation Q, debuted in December 2019, and a spin-off, The L Word: New York, is in development.

Production[edit]

The L Word was co-created by Ilene Chaiken, Michele Abbot, and Kathy Greenberg; Chaiken served as the primary creator and executive director of the series, as well as a writer and director.^[11] Steve Golin and Larry Kennar served as additional executive producers, while Guinevere Turner, Susan Miller, Cherien Dabis, and Rose Troche were among the series’ writers.

The series premiered on Showtime on January 18, 2004 and ran for a total of six seasons, airing its finale on March 8, 2009. The L Word was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia at Coast Mountain Films Studio, as well as on location in Los Angeles, California.

Series overview[edit]

Cast and characters[edit]

Actor/Actress	Character	Appearances
Season 1	Season 2	Season 3	Season 4	Season 5	Season 6
Jennifer Beals	Bette Porter	Main
Mia Kirshner	Jenny Schecter	Main
Pam Grier	Kit Porter	Main
Laurel Holloman	Tina Kennard	Main
Katherine Moennig	Shane McCutcheon	Main
Leisha Hailey	Alice Pieszecki	Main
Erin Daniels	Dana Fairbanks	Main	Guest
Karina Lombard	Marina Ferrer	Main		Guest		Guest
Eric Mabius	Tim Haspel	Main	Guest		Guest
Sarah Shahi	Carmen de la Pica Morales		Main		Guest
Rachel Shelley	Helena Peabody		Main
Eric Lively	Mark Wayland		Main
Daniel Sea	Max Sweeney		Main
Dallas Roberts	Angus Partridge		Main		Guest
Janina Gavankar	Eva «Papi» Torres		Main		Guest
Rose Rollins	Tasha Williams		Main
Marlee Matlin	Jodi Lerner		Main

Title[edit]

Contemporary use of the phrase «the L word» as an alias for lesbian dates to at least the 1981 play My Blue Heaven by Jane Chambers, in which a character stammers out: «You’re really…? The L-word? Lord God, I never met one before.»^[12]

The original code-name for The L Word was Earthlings, a rarely used slang term for lesbians.^[13]

«The Chart»[edit]

«The Chart», an undirected labeled graph in which nodes represent individuals and lines represent affairs or hookups, is a recurring plot element throughout the series.^[14] Originally, The L Word was to be based around a gay woman, Kit Porter, and «The Chart» was tattooed on her back.

The idea for the chart was formed in the L word’s writers room. The creators of the show were discussing their own mutual friends and who had had romantic entanglements with whom. This led to them creating a beta version of what the chart comes to be on a piece of paper. The writers eventually decide to incorporate this chart into the show.

In season 4, Alice launches The Chart as a social networking service. Concurrently, a real-world parallel project OurChart.com was created.^[15] The website, which allowed registered members to create their own profiles and hosted several blogs on the show, operated from the beginning of season four until the end of season six, after which the site was discontinued and redirected to Showtime’s official website.^[16]

Plot[edit]

Season 1[edit]

The first season of The L Word premiered on January 18, 2004 and ended on April 11, 2004. The season introduces Bette Porter and Tina Kennard, a couple in a seven-year relationship attempting to have a child; Marina Ferrer, owner of the local cafe The Planet; Jenny Schecter, who has recently moved to Los Angeles to live with her boyfriend Tim Haspell; Shane McCutcheon, an androgynous, highly sexual hairstylist; Alice Pieszecki, a bisexual journalist who maintains The Chart; Dana Fairbanks, a closeted professional tennis player; and Kit Porter, Bette’s straight half-sister.

Season 2[edit]

The second season of The L Word premiered on February 20, 2005 and ended on May 15, 2005. The season introduces Carmen de la Pica Morales, a DJ who becomes part of a love triangle with Shane and Jenny; Helena Peabody, a wealthy art patron who becomes a rival to Bette and love interest to Tina (while she and Bette are separated).

Major storylines in the season include Tina’s pregnancy following a second insemination, culminating in Tina and Bette’s reconciliation at the end of the season; the introduction of Mark Wayland, a documentary filmmaker who moves in with Shane and Jenny and Kit’s acquisition of The Planet following Marina’s departure from Los Angeles;^[17] Shane and Jenny becoming the unknowing subjects of Mark’s documentary after he places hidden cameras in their home; a developing relationship between Alice and Dana; and insights into Jenny’s past as an abused child.

Season 3[edit]

The third season of The L Word premiered on January 8, 2006 and ended on March 26, 2006. The season introduces Max Sweeney, a working-class trans man initially introduced presenting as a butch; and Angus Partridge, a male nanny who becomes Kit’s lover.^[18]

The season is set six months after the birth of Tina and Bette’s daughter Angelica. Major storylines include Bette and Tina’s relationship deteriorating once again, which leads Tina to start a fake relationship with a man in order to win a possible custody battle with Bette; Max coming out as a trans man; Dana’s diagnosis with and ultimate death from breast cancer;^[19] and Shane and Carmen’s engagement and wedding, which ends when Shane abandons Carmen at the altar. Helena is integrated into the primary group of characters as a friend rather than a rival; she acquires a movie studio, where she is entangled in a sexual harassment lawsuit that leads her mother to cut her off financially.

In the lead-up to the third season, the fan fiction website FanLib.com launched a contest where individuals could submit a piece of L Word fanfiction, with the winner’s story incorporated into a scene in third-season episode.^[20][21]

Season 4[edit]

The L Word was renewed for a fourth season on February 2, 2006,^[22] and began filming on May 29, 2006.^[23] The season aired from January 7, 2007 to March 25, 2007,^[24] and introduces Jodi Lerner, a love interest for Bette;^[25] Phyllis Kroll, Bette’s closeted new boss at California Art College;^[26] Paige Sobel, a love interest for Shane;^[27] Tasha Williams, a former Captain in the Army National Guard and love interest for Alice; and Papi, who has slept with the most women on The Chart.^[26] Karina Lombard reprises her role for two episodes.^[28]

Major storylines in the season include the adaptation of Lez Girls, an article written by Jenny for The New Yorker, into a film; Bette taking a job as a dean at California Art College; and Tasha’s struggle to reconcile her military service with her sexuality under don’t ask, don’t tell.

Season 5[edit]

The L Word was renewed for a fifth season on March 8, 2007, and began filming in summer 2007.^[29] The season aired from January 6, 2008 to March 23, 2008 and introduces Nikki Stevens, a closeted gay actress who portrays the lead role in Lez Girls. ^[30] Adele Channing is also introduced, potentially by chance meeting Jenny at the Planet, and soon becoming her personal assistant. Papi and Angus were written out of the series.^[31]

Major storylines in the season include Bette and Tina reconciling their relationship, Jenny being ousted from the production of Lez Girls, and Tasha’s dishonorable discharge from the military.

Season 6[edit]

The sixth and final season of The L Word aired from January 18, 2009 to March 8, 2009.^[32] The season introduces Kelly Wentworth, Bette’s college roommate, who attempts to open a gallery with her; Jamie Chen, a social worker who becomes involved in a love triangle with Alice and Tasha; and Marybeth Duffy and Sean Holden, detectives with the LAPD.^[33]

The season is a whodunit storyline focused on the murder of Jenny. The events of the season are depicted as a flashback leading up to the night of the crime, with each episode focused around what could have potentially motivated each character to have killed Jenny. The series concludes without revealing the identity of her murderer.

Interrogation tapes[edit]

Following the series finale of The L Word, Showtime released a series of seven short videos depicting Bette, Alice, Tina, Nikki Shane being questioned by the police over Jenny’s murder. The episodes were posted weekly on Showtime’s website. Showtime additionally released an interview with L Word series creator Ilene Chaiken, released in two weekly installments. In the interview, Chaiken stated that Alice went to jail for Jenny’s murder, but was not necessarily guilty of the crime.^[34][35]

Generation Q[edit]

On July 11, 2017, it was announced a sequel series was in the works with Showtime.^[36] Marja-Lewis Ryan has been selected to serve as executive producer and showrunner.^[36][37][38] On January 31, 2019, Entertainment Weekly reported Showtime had picked up the sequel series for a premiere later in the year, in which Jennifer Beals, Katherine Moennig, and Leisha Hailey would reprise their roles.^[39] Other sources, such as TVLine,^[40] call the eight-episode order a revival, so the nature of the follow-up is unclear. The new series, titled The L Word: Generation Q, premiered in the fall of 2019.^[41]

[edit]

The Farm[edit]

In July 2008, Showtime CEO Matthew Blank announced that the network would shoot a pilot for The Farm, an L Word spin-off series based on a pitch from L Word series creator Ilene Chaiken. Set in a women’s prison, the series was slated to star Famke Janssen, Melissa Leo, Laurie Metcalf, and Leisha Hailey, the lattermost of whom would reprise her role as Alice Pieszecki. The pilot was shot in December 2008.^[42] In April 2009, Showtime declined to pick up The Farm for a full series order.^[43]

The Real L Word[edit]

The Real L Word, a reality television series produced by Chaiken, aired on Showtime from June 20, 2010 to September 6, 2012. The series, initially set in Los Angeles and later in Brooklyn, New York City, followed a group of real-life gay women.^[44]

L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin[edit]

L Word Mississippi: Hate the Sin, a documentary directed by Lauren Lazin and produced by Chaiken, premiered on Showtime on August 8, 2014.^[45] The documentary, which follows a group of LGBT women in rural Mississippi, won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary in 2015.^[46]

Music[edit]

EZgirl served as The L Word’s music composer, while Natasha Duprey served as music supervisor. A total of five soundtracks were produced.

All three of Leisha Hailey’s bands were referenced in the series: a song by The Murmurs was used in the first season, Shane wears a shirt for Gush in the second season. Songs by Uh Huh Her were featured in the show’s fifth and sixth seasons; Tasha is seen wearing an Uh Huh Her t-shirt during the sixth season.

The band Betty wrote and performed the theme song, which is first introduced in season two. Betty makes numerous appearances in the show, and their music is featured throughout the series from season two

Reception[edit]

The show’s first season was «broadcast to critical acclaim and instant popularity»; as an article from The New York Times pointed out:^[47]

Before The L Word, female gay characters barely existed in television. Interested viewers had to search and second-guess, playing parlor games to suss out a character’s sexuality. Cagney and Lacey? Jo on Facts of Life? Xena and Gabrielle? Showtime’s decision in January 2004 to air The L Word, which follows the lives of a group of fashionable Los Angeles gays, was akin to ending a drought with a monsoon. Women who had rarely seen themselves on the small screen were suddenly able to watch gay characters not only living complex, exciting lives, but also making love in restaurant bathrooms and in swimming pools. There was no tentative audience courtship. Instead there was sex, raw and unbridled in that my-goodness way that only cable allows.

Co-creator and executive producer Ilene Chaiken had some issues with the reaction:^[47]

I do want to move people on some deep level. But I won’t take on the mantle of social responsibility. That’s not compatible with entertainment. I rail against the idea that pop television is a political medium. I am political in my life. But I am making serialized melodrama. I’m not a cultural missionary.

While the show was seen as fulfilling gay characters’ «obvious and modest representational need»^[48] or even the «ferocious desire not only to be seen in some literal sense… but to be seen with all the blood and angst and magic that you possess»,^[49] the show was criticized for various scenes which served to «reify heteronormativity».^[50] The show was also praised for its nuanced consideration (in the first season) of how and in what ways gay women should stand up to the religious right, with the «Provocations» art show storyline being «a fictionalized version of what happened when Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center booked a controversial exhibition of Mapplethorpe photographs in 1990».^[51]

As the series progressed, however, reviews became far more negative. By the time the sixth and final season began, The New York Times called the show a «Sapphic Playboy fantasia» that has «shown little interest in variegating portrayals of gay experience. Instead it has seemed to work almost single-mindedly to counter the notion of «lesbian bed death» and repeatedly remind the viewer of the «limits and tortures of monogamy» while «never align[ing] itself with the traditionalist ambitions [for same-sex marriage] of a large faction of the gay rights movement».^[52] The decision to make the final season into a murder mystery which was ultimately left unresolved was also met with negative response.^[53]

The series currently holds a 57% «Rotten» rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[54]

Cultural impact and legacy[edit]

The L Word broke new ground as the first television series to feature an ensemble cast made up of lesbian and bisexual female characters.^[3][4] Similarly, it was also the first television series to be written and directed predominantly by queer women.^[10] The series has been lauded for revolutionizing the depiction of queer women on television,^[2][5][6][7] particularly for its portrayal of a queer community at a time when lesbian representation was often relegated to a single lesbian character amid an otherwise heterosexual cast.^[10] One of the pioneering hallmarks of the series was its graphic lesbian sex scenes from the female gaze,^[8] at a time when lesbian sex was «virtually invisible elsewhere on television.»^[9][55]

Several shows have referenced The L Word, including South of Nowhere’s first season episode «Girls Guide to Dating»; According to Jim; the medical drama House; the first season finale of Weeds, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (July 24, 2006); Chappelle’s Show: The «Lost Episodes»; The Sopranos episode «Live Free or Die»; the US version of The Office; Gilmore Girls fourth season episode «Scene in a Mall»; The Big Gay Sketch Show; The Simpsons episode «You Kent Always Say What You Want»; and Family Guy episode «Brian Sings and Swings». Also, movies such as Puccini for Beginners, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and I Can’t Think Straight have made mention of The L Word as to reference lesbians but considers the term is sometimes used as slander.

Awards and honors[edit]

In 2004, Laurel Holloman won a Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. The show was also for a Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Drama in the same year. In the second season, Ossie Davis received a posthumous Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in recognition of his portrayal of Bette and Kit Porter’s father, Melvin. The show received multiple nominations for GLAAD Media Awards, and both Pam Grier and Jennifer Beals were repeatedly nominated for NAACP Image Awards.

In 2006, The L Word won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. It was consequently honored with a Special Recognition Award in 2009 from the same organization.

In 2008, The L Word’s companion website was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of Commercial Advertising on Personal Computers.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Because I can’t comment on this every time, I’m going to ignore the fact that everyone seems to be okay emotionally. I mean, they’re mildly upset, but no one’s crying (and no one looks like they have been crying), no one seems to be in shock from the trauma of finding someone they knew well (I don’t care if they didn’t like her, they knew her for years) suddenly dead. Hell, it’s weird that they all went to the police station in separate cars. They should have minimized the drivers, because they should all be too shaken to drive. Actually, come to think of it, shouldn’t they have been driven there in police cars?
• I’m also going to make the blanket statement (because I don’t want to mention it every time) that most of these questions have nothing to do with Jenny’s death, and when that topic does come up, a lot of the characters are being unrealistically honest, instead of being careful about saying things that could implicate them.
• Also, I know I said I don’t have a theory on Jenny’s death, but I do. It had to be an accident (due to that faulty and dangerous railing they kept mentioning) or suicide, because in the scene where they’re all watching the video and wondering where Jenny is, no one looks frazzled. No one looks like they’ve just been in a physical struggle. I suppose it could have been Niki, but if she’d killed Jenny she’d have fled the scene of the crime, not hung around in the bushes until the cops showed up. Also, no one at the party seems to have heard any signs of struggle. But again, even the writers don’t know, so there’s no correct, author-intended answer. That makes it a pretty pointless murder mystery.
• Also, I don’t know why there’s no interrogation tape for Kit.

Shane

• Apparently she’s known Alice longer than she’s known the rest of the main cast. She met her because she washed Alice’s hair back when she had a job (seriously, did anyone notice she didn’t have a job for all of season 6?). That would have been mildly interesting to know during the show itself.
• “I make a great friend, I do. But I do not make a good girlfriend, or lover, or life partner or whatever it is you want to call it.” I certainly can’t dispute that. She should probably have taken that money she was going to use to go surfing with Molly, and got some therapy instead.
• Shane says she thinks she knew everything about Jenny. I don’t know if that’s quite true, but they did have a deep and wonderful connection. And it got broken because they tried to be romantic partners, and they’re both very, very bad at being romantic partners.
• Then Shane, for no reason at all, admits that it was her, not Paige, who burned down WAX. She does at least ask first what the statute of limitations on arson is, and doesn’t admit it until she knows she can’t get in trouble anymore. I still don’t know why she mentioned it at all.

Tina

• Tina says her mom died when she graduated from college. That is more backstory than we’ve ever had on Tina. Here are the things we know about Tina’s life before the show: she was raised in the suburbs, she exclusively dated men, she had a couple of abortions in her early twenties, and one time she dated a guy who took her to an art gallery opening where she met Bette. She’s the only main cast member whose family we know nothing about.
• Her father had an affair with a pretty young law student, but her mom was never threatened because they didn’t read poetry together, and reading poetry together is the ultimate betrayal. I kind of doubt Bette read poetry with Candice, but Tina seemed to consider that a pretty significant betrayal anyway.
• “My father, during his first election campaign, had this old workhorse of a campaign manager.” What? First election campaign? This is so much information on her family. She had a father who ran in multiple elections. Did Tina kill Jenny just so she could finally get the chance to talk about her backstory?
• Apparently her dad was a three-term mayor of some place in Arizona, and a rabid right-wing Republican. How did this never come up on the show? I can think of so many things that are less interesting than exploring this. How come in season 3, we didn’t get Tina going to her father to see if he’ll accept her because she’s with a man now? And if she couldn’t do that because they’ve lost touch or something, why didn’t she at least talk about how her father would feel? Also, knowing her dad’s a right-winger, I wonder how Tina felt when Bette didn’t want to expose Angelica to a baby with homophobic grandparents. Presumably Tina’s at least talked to Bette about her family, so she should know that Angelica herself has at least one homophobic grandfather. It’s almost like genetics aren’t destiny or something.
• More backstory: when her mom discovered her dad reading poetry over the phone with the workhorse, she considered it the ultimate betrayal, and moved Tina and her two siblings to Atlanta, Georgia. This isn’t what was implied that one time when Tina made a comment about how she was raised in the suburbs. She didn’t have that perfect, cookie-cutter family that we picture when we hear “suburbs”, and that should have been explored. Not in an interrogation about Jenny’s death, of course, because it has nothing to do with that.
• Apparently Jenny and Tina regularly drank wine in Jenny’s trailer, and talked about Tina’s personal life. I’d like to have seen that friendship develop. Did Jenny know about Tina’s affair with Bette before it got revealed? Why is this all only coming out now? Actually, to give the writers a small amount of credit, that means it makes even more sense that Jenny would refuse to keep quiet about what she thought she saw between Bette and Kelly. If she and Tina became good friends, she’d want to make sure Tina didn’t get fucked over by Bette any more than she already had.
• …Okay, that took a very sharp turn even further away from the cookie-cutter happy family life. Apparently her older sister sexually molested her for three years, starting when she was eleven or twelve. What the fuck? How did that never come up? It actually makes a certain amount of sense, in that people who are abused as kids are more likely to accept abusive relationships as adults, and it explains why she put up with so much shit from Bette. But seriously, there are so many storylines that could have been cut from the show in favour of some Tina backstory.
• Her sister’s now a born-again Christian who thinks Tina’s going to hell. All this new information sheds interesting light on Tina’s character, and maybe even explains why we never heard much about her backstory. It’s clearly fucked up and traumatic, and maybe she’s now working hard to move on and pretend it didn’t happen. Apparently even Bette never knew about the thing with her sister. You know who would have been a good person for Tina to talk to about recovery from childhood sexual abuse? Jenny. Maybe she did, in all those wine and trailer sessions that we never knew about or saw.

Alice

• Alice tells us how she met Bette: Alice worked for some magazine, and Bette wanted her to help invite important people to a gallery party she was hosting. Apparently, one of the people Alice invited was some lawyer who brought his date, and his date was Tina. They mentioned a few times that Alice and Bette dated for about six weeks, and Bette cheated on her. I was never clear about whether the person she cheated with was Tina, but apparently it was. And Alice was the one who inadvertently introduced her to Tina. Alice has had some really shitty romantic luck.
• Well nobody else remembers that Alice is bisexual, but apparently Sargent Duffy does. And she thinks it’s a relevant thing to ask about while interrogating Alice about Jenny’s death. Alice explains that she’s far more attracted to women, she falls in love with women, but she looks at men. Only hairless ones, though. “In some arbitrary parallel universe, if I wasn’t in love and in a relationship with the girl of my dreams, if I wanted to have a fling with some, you know, non-smelly guy, I don’t want to have to tell myself, ‘Hey, Alice you’re a lesbian, you’re not allowed.’ You know, I don’t live like that, I don’t want to box myself in.” First of all, people can identify any way they want, and I’ll be last person to claim someone isn’t “bisexual enough” for the label. But they can’t have someone who’s almost exclusively attracted to women, but would maybe be open to a fling with a guy someday, and call it sufficient bisexual representation. Secondly, does Alice really not live like that? Did she live like that when Tina found a non-smelly guy (I mean, we saw Henry clip his toenails, so we know he’s hygienic) to have a fling with? As I recall, Alice had more venom than almost anybody for Tina’s refusal to remain boxed into lesbianism.
• Alice at least has the sense to ask what any of this has to do with who killed Jenny, and Sargent Duffy says, “So you think somebody killed Jenny?” Well, they’re all being investigated about a potential murder. Obviously it’s crossed her mind that someone might have done it.

Helena

• She says Alice was the first real friend she ever had. Those two were awesome together; those Helena/Alice vibes I saw in early season 3 should come to fruition after Tasha leaves Alice for Jamie.
• Apparently Helena never hid Catherine’s money; she donated it to progressive organizations to piss Catherine off, because Catherine was a hardcore Republican. Didn’t she use that money to bail out Dusty and go off to that island? If not, how did she manage to do that? Also, why didn’t she admit it earlier? Donating money to charity makes her look better than hiding it for herself. It’s still illegal, but it wouldn’t hurt her case.
• What the fuck? Sargent Duffy hits on Helena during the investigation. I haven’t seen Xena, but I know Diane from Parks and Rec would be way too professional for that shit.

Max

• He talks about that dinner in early season 3. The ask him what he ordered, even though they’d have no way of knowing that what he ordered is significant. It is significant, of course; he ordered a salad because he didn’t recognize any of the fancy items on the menu and he only had about thirteen dollars in his pocket.
• “She saw me for who I am, and she helped me come to terms with it.” And then, several seasons and a major personality upheaval later, she threw me an unwanted baby shower and called me a pregnant lady.
• Max says he doesn’t think Tom would have left if it hadn’t been for Jenny. What? I think Tom left because Max was falling apart while going through a rough time, and it sucked all the life out of their relationship.
• Max starts crying about how upset he was when Jenny left him for that French girl in Vancouver. Apparently he scrubbed the bathroom floor with her toothbrush as revenge. Jenny and Max’s romantic relationship was weird; I’d like to have known more about what went on in Max’s head at the time.

Bette

• Bette says her definition of a perfect relationship is being with someone who tolerates you best. Well that explains a lot. She seemed to like it when Tina tolerated her bullshit.
• Bette’s apparently really, really upset that Tina never asked her if she wanted to give birth to their second child. In fact, she describes it as a way in which Tina failed her as a girlfriend. Bette never seemed like someone who’d want to be pregnant; it would interfere with her career for a while. If she did want to give birth to a kid, why didn’t she talk to Tina about it? Why were they going through the whole adoption thing without Bette ever bringing that up? I take back what I said about them seeming to have better communication in season 6. Bette’s still doing that passive-aggressive thing where she turns herself into the victim, claiming Tina failed her by not asking if she wanted to give birth. Apparently, if you’re going to be Bette’s girlfriend, inability to read minds makes you a failure.

Niki

• It’s very silly for Sargent Duffy to say none of them need lawyers because they all know they’re looking out for each other. Lawyers are still helpful to have.
• …Oh, well that’s something I completely forgot. Niki stole the negatives, and hid them in Jenny’s attic. She did it to avoid dealing with the press and and the bad reviews when the movie came out, and as a bonus, Jenny would get in trouble if anyone found them in her house. That actually changes a lot; I’ve been watching that whole storyline while assuming Jenny did it. I feel like I owe Jenny an apology, but I can’t apologize to her because she’s both fictional and dead. Apparently she didn’t horribly fuck over Tina, Niki did (and it was Niki, not Jenny, who thought a ransom note signed with Tina’s name would actually make it look like Tina did it). That’s nice, I’m glad Jenny didn’t actually do something so horrible to the friendship she and Tina apparently cultivated on the movie set (but that we never actually saw).

A Showtime series running for six seasons, from 2004 to 2009. It followed a group of lesbian (and bisexual and transgender) friends who hang out together at a queer-friendly coffee shop in Los Angeles.

It can best be described as a Distaff Counterpart to Queer as Folk.

In 2019, the show received a Sequel Series entitled The L Word: Generation Q.

The Other Wiki has extensive and detailed lists about the main and minor characters of the series and summaries for all episodes.

Unmarked spoilers, ahoy!

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This series provides examples of:

• Affectionate Nickname: Angelica is mostly nicknamed as «Angie» by her mothers and friends.
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • Kit is at least twenty years older than her boyfriend Angus.
  • The same goes for Phyllis with Alice, who inspired her to come out as a lesbian.
• The Alcoholic: Kit. Played for Drama. Kit’s kid sister Bette slips into this during Season 2, after Tina dumps her over her infidelity.
• All Gays are Promiscuous: Most of the cast tends to avert this, but Shane is this trope distilled into human form. Most of Bette’s problems over the course of the series are caused by her poor judgement and self-control when it comes to sex. Sooner or later, she cheats on every partner she ever has, and Alice even calls her out on it at one point.
• All Girls Like Ponies: The characters lampshade this trope at a party, specifically the fact that almost all of them avert it.
• All Lesbians Want Kids: Bette & Tina’s decision to procreate, and all the resulting drama which ensues, is one of the major plot threads throughout the entire run of the series. Averted with pretty much all other characters who frankly have enough problems as it is.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: «Virgin Cat» by Anna Tsuchiya is the theme song in the Japanese version.
• Ambiguously Bi: In Season 6 a female contractor works on Bette and Tina’s house who has a stereotypical Butch Lesbian style, while flirting playfully with her male employees. Both are confused about what her sexuality is (the «ambiguous» part being possibly all in their minds, as she could just be a butch straight woman).
• Amicable Exes: Alice and Bette, Tina and Helena, Jenny and Carmen, Jenny and Max, Alice and Phyllis and for a season or so — Bette and Tina.
• Armoured Closet Gay:
  • Burr Connor is a famous actor who’s shown making homophobic remarks toward another actor who’s a closeted gay man in the past and then Jenny, an open lesbian. It soon turns out that he’s a closeted gay man himself, and regrets doing this.
  • Alice and Tasha meet an NBA star at a closet party. A few days later, said player makes homophobic comments about a fellow player, and Alice outs him in public.
• As Himself:
  • Gloria Steinem appears as herself in «Lacuna» for Melvin’s memorial service, as an old friend of his. There is a lot of Reality Subtext here, as not only was Steinem really friends with Melvin’s actor Ossie Davis (the two are shown in a real together) but Davis actually died shortly before it aired.
  • Former tennis player Billie Jean King later appears interviewing Dana about her career and being (like King) an openly lesbian athlete. Dana gushes that King is her hero and had paved the way for later lesbian athletes like her with her own coming out.
  • Tegan & Sara appear as themselves in one flashback performing their song «Love Type Thing» while Dana and Shane listen. Dana hallucinates due to being on LSD at the time that they tell her she’s a lesbian, urging her to come out of the closet, which she hadn’t yet at the time.
  • In Generation Q lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe and later bisexual feminist writer Roxane Gay show up too as themselves.

• The Atoner: Mark, in the last few episodes of Season 2. Judging from his absence from the series from Season 3 onward, it doesn’t seem to have worked.
• Author Avatar:
  • Jenny and Dana were based loosely on two of the creators of the show, Michele Abbott and Kathy Greenberg. The subsequent treatment of both characters over the course of the show’s run could be interpreted as a Take That! (see Evil Former Friend below).
  • «Jessie» from the Show Within a Show Lez Girls is Jenny’s.
• Auto Erotica: More than once a couple has sex in a car, Papi and Alice then Shane with Paige for instance.
• Bad Boss: Jenny was such a giant pain up her personal assistant’s ass, that she quit.
• Bastard Understudy: Adele, Jenny’s personal assistant, displaced her as the producer of LezGirls through blackmail.
• Batman Gambit: It probably would have been more difficult for Adele to get her Magnificent Bastardry on if she couldn’t count on S5 Jenny acting selfish, irresponsible, and just plain terrible at every opportunity.
• The Beard:
  • In Season 1, Dana and her tennis partner Harrison act as beards for each other, since neither one is out of the closet.
  • In Season 5, Niki’s agents insist that she use her male costar as a beard, as damage control after Alice outs her on national television. She caves under the pressure, which drives a wedge between her and Jenny.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Averted. Some of the most attractive characters (in-universe) are the most mean, spiteful and intolerable. Yeah, we mean Jenny.
• Bifauxnen: Shane has very short, loose hair, wearing boyish clothes with a masculine attitude and husky tone of voice. When she worked as a prostitute, her clients were gay men (Shane didn’t engage in anal sex or undress, so they wouldn’t notice). Even in the present she’s mistaken for male and seen as a hot young man by some gay guys while visiting a gay bar along with a friend (she has to correct them because they can’t tell).
• Bilingual Dialogue: Bette and Jodi, who’s deaf, often speak in a mix of ASL with English during their relationship.
• Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Tina gives birth very shortly after Melvin dies of his cancer.
• Blackmail: Adele, Jenny’s assistant, steals a sex tape Jenny made with Niki, her girlfriend (the lead actress who’s closeted). She then threatens releasing it if she’s not made director, replacing Jenny, and the executives cave in because Niki is the pull the film needs.
• Broken Aesop: The show constantly defended itself from being just a cash cow pandering to the straight male demographic, while featuring extensive sex scenes between women and restricting gay guys to extras. Let’s just say most of the so-called PSAs in the show never really got much impact.
• Brother�Sister Incest: During the after-show «Interrogation Tapes», Tina revealed that Bette was not her first lesbian experience, but that it was her own sister, whom she had that kind of relationship (judging by Tina’s words, it was less about romance than about «experimenting»), when she was from about 11/12 until 15 years old.
• Butch Lesbian:
  • Candace, Dusty, Jamie, Robin, Tasha all have short hair and more masculine attitudes/attire.
  • Moira appeared to be one until he came out as Max.
  • Shane arguably qualifies as butch. She doesn’t think of herself as one, as evidenced by her bemused but slightly puzzled reaction in an episode where she and Max help carry some luggage for the others, and Max refers to both himself and Shane as «butches.» Overall Shane’s look is more bifauxnen.
  • Tasha is a soft butch, and definitely a tomboy. She starts out as a tough, tacturn soldier suffering from PTSD who wears tanktops often or sleeveless shirts in civilian garb, with long hair but having it pulled back in a bun mostly.
• But I Can’t Be Pregnant!:
  • Kit, who’s going through menopause, got pregnant by accident anyway. She’s incredulous and used multiple tests to be sure.
  • Max gets pregnant with Tom the interpreter’s baby, and didn’t think this could be possible after taking so many male hormones.
• But I Would Really Enjoy It: Phyllis says this to Bette after coming out as a lesbian and leaving her husband thanks largely to Bette’s influence. She realizes nothing is ever going to happen between them, though.
• But Not Too Black: One episode focuses on Bette and her white wife at a group therapy session being accosted by a radical black lesbian poet. The latter accused her of embracing her lesbian lifestyle but ignoring her own blackness. Previously, she requested her wife accept a black donor’s sperm for their child so s/he could racially reflect both parents, so she argued the poet down, but was very hurt.

• Call-Back: Alice gets flack in Season 3 of Generation Q when her outing a homophobic NBA player who had been at a closet party from the original series is dredged up.
• The Cameo: The series was brimming with them, from a surprisingly wide variety of actors, usually playing themselves or thinly-veiled versions thereof. Notable examples include Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Arianna Huffington, Guinevere Turner, Ossie Davis, Eric Roberts, Dana Delany, Margot Kidder, Michael Hogan, Snoop Dogg. Between Tigh, Cally, Helo, Leoben and D’Anna, half the cast of Battlestar Galactica showed up at one point or another. Cobie Smulders had a 4-episode run in Season 2, before her big break.
• The Casanova: Shane and Papi both easily pick up many women, with each listing over a thousand conquests. Neither of them shows much interest in anything longer term (Shane tries once, but it falls apart). In one notable case, Shane seduces three different women all at one wedding, two sisters and their mother.
• Cast Full of Gay: The show focuses on a group of mostly lesbian friends, with a couple bisexuals and a trans man too, plus many lesbian supporting characters. Only a couple regular straight characters appear.
• Catapult Nightmare: Dusty, the cellmate of Helena, has one and attacks her, when she tried to wake her up from the nightmare. Coitus ensues.

• Child of Two Worlds:
  • Bette is biracial, having a black father and white mother. She always identifies this way to honor them both, although white people often don’t realize she’s biracial, thinking her olive skin tone and dark slightly curly hair just means Bette’s of Italian descent or something. Bette resists the demand to identify solely as black by a black woman she meets too, remarking how that’s based on the racist One-Drop Rule, but points out she never tries to pass as white either, as noted above. Further, she requests that her wife Tina conceive their daughter with a black donor, which is agreed to, thus continuing her mixed heritage.
  • Dani Nùñez in Generation Q, who’s of half Latino and half Iranian heritage. Although she has a Latin American name, she’s fluent in Farsi along with Spanish and knowledgeable about Iranian culture, bonding due to this with Gigi, an Iranian-American.

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Lisa, the male-identified lesbian, vanishes without a trace after Alice dumps him. He is never mentioned again.
  • Mark probably got Chucked the worst of all on this series. In season two, he’s part of the main cast, gets a decent amount of character development, and reaches an almost familial level with the girls. The last time we see him is in the season two finale at Bette’s dad’s funeral. He is absent the following season and is never mentioned again, despite having been Shane and Jenny’s roommate.

• Closet Gay:
  • Tasha is partly closeted due to being in the military, when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still in place. She’s cautious about PDA with her girlfriend, and when found out gets warned by her CO not to let it ever happen again or he’ll report her. Later she’s prosecuted by the Army for homosexual conduct (which she’s guilty of), but the military prosecutor is herself a closeted lesbian afraid Tasha’s lover Alice will out her so she allows Tasha a way off to stay in the Army. Tasha though refuses to take it and admits she does love Alice on the stand, coming out in the courtroom.
  • Alice discovers a major basketball player is really gay when she sees him at a closet party. She outs him publicly after he makes homophobic remarks.
  • Niki Stevens, an actress whom Jenny gets involved with while she’s directing her on Lez Girls, is in the closet as she fears coming out would ruin her career.
• Closet Key: Marina to Jenny and Alice to Phyllis.
• Club Kid: Shane. Particularly in the first season, where another character actually mistakes her for a (male) club kid.

• Coming and Going: Shane and Carmen are having sex at the same time Dana’s dying.
• Coming-Out Story: Several of them, most notably Jenny’s, which is her main character arc in Season 1. In «Looking Back» several other characters relate theirs as well.

• Costume Porn: There’s as much of this as there is any actual Fanservice.

• Cure Your Gays:
  • When Jenny and Shane are interviewing potential roommates in Season 2, one of them makes this offer, and she is shown the door.
  • In Season 3 an «ex-gay» ministry is introduced by flashbacks from the 1980s, showing this drives people into mass hypocrisy as the supposed «former» gays or lesbians just have sex on the side.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Jenny was always a bit off, but it doesn’t get explained in detail until season 2. She was gang raped by boys as a kid, and her parents chose to ignore it instead of helping her, allowing it to «fester into this psychosis» as she puts it. She makes the best of it later though-her autobiographical book about it puts her into the spotlight that allows her to write a serialized novel, Lez Girls, and make it into a movie.
  • Shane’s dark past is not focused on as much, but is still mentioned. In Seasons 1-2, we learn that she was once forced to work as a (pretending-to-be-male) prostitute, that she was essentially abandoned by her parents, has various drug addictions, etc. These events are strongly implied to be the reason she is such a loyal friend, but terrible with relationships/commitment — she feels the need to please others, is satisfied with very little for herself, but is afraid to commit to anyone or anything. The later seasons continue to add other heartbreaking details — Shane is thrilled to simply have her own, tiny little room because she’s apparently never had her own before. (In Season 6, Jenny, of course, promptly converts Shane’s room into a study one day when Shane is out, assuming that since they’re now sleeping together, she’ll just move into Jenny’s room with her!)

• Demoted to Extra: In Seasons 1-5, Kit was one of the main characters. In Season 6, she existed primarily to say «Girl!» about once per scene. After two seasons of being a core member of the cast, Jodi also fell into the background during Season 6.
• Disappeared Dad: In Generation Q Angelica decides to meet her birth father Marcus Allenwood who conceived her via sperm donation and had no part of her upbringing (originally he’d agreed on this only after she’d reached 18). Tragically, it turns out he’s dying, expiring the day before their meeting. She still gets a painting he’d made for her at least.
• Divorce Is Temporary: By Season 3 of Generation Q, Bette and Tina are back together, seemingly for good.

• Drag Queen: Sunset Boulevard in Season 6, a rare straight example.

• Drugs Are Good: Most of the cast is shown using some form of marijuana at various points, and Shane even dabbles in harder drugs, to no ill effect. However, this trope was played straight in a Season 1 subplot involving a friend of Shane’s who wound up consumed by his addictions. Unlike Shane, he couldn’t handle his drugs. Niki using drugs is alluded to.
• Due to the Dead: Her friends are all very upset when at Dana‘s funeral they’re not only ignored with her sexual orientation erased by the minister while giving his eulogy, but her ashes aren’t scattered how she’d liked, so Alice grabs them after storming out previously, and they scatter them later at the site she wanted.

• Dysfunction Junction: Just try to find one character on this show that isn’t massively screwed up, even the successful and wealthy ones.
• Easy Sex Change: Averted with trans man Max (Moira formerly). The characterization was generally pretty awful, and much of the actual science was off — being on testosterone for as long as he’d been, it would be damn near impossible to get pregnant, even with no birth control methods being used; also, «roid rage» is a myth, and as such couldn’t possibly be exacerbated by having testosterone obtained illegally. Non-prescribed testosterone’s risks are vastly associated with the substance either being doctored or effectively «overdosing» — after a certain point, testosterone reaches maximum saturation in the body and the remainder is converted into estrogen, which is why non-trans bodybuilders using it can experience shrinking of testicles and breast growth. But he did hold a benefit to pay for his chest surgery (breast reduction/chest masculinization), which meant he couldn’t afford even the more basic and less expensive of the «sex change» surgeries. Just FTM chest surgery ranges run about $8k in reality, not including travel, time off work, etc.
• Ensemble Cast: Bette, Shane, Alice Jenny and Tina all get significant amounts of screentime.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Shane. But kind of a moot point in a Cast Full of Gay, but even the straight girls go gay for Shane. Interestingly, Shane’s based off a real woman named Sally Hershberger, also a hairstylist for celebrities- though her clients include far more ‘big names’ than Shane’s, including multiple Presidents. She’s also known for making even straight celebrities feel the urge to experiment a little, so perhaps the portrayal isn’t that unrealistic.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: The reason Alice created The Chart. It connects everyone they’re connected with by who had sex, and is very extensive. All of the main cast have multiple sex scenes and relationships across the series, along with a number of minor characters too, all traced by this. Each episode shows at least one sex scene, and often more.

• Everyone Can See It: Despite Jenny being in denial of her sexuality at the start of the show, her crush on Marina is visible from space. Alice watches one conversation between the two and says «I’m just gonna leave you two alone to get married.»
• Evil Former Friend: Ilene Chaiken convinced Showtime to boot her two co-creators off the show after the second episode. Over the course of the series, the two characters based on them were the only characters to die.
• Face�Heel Turn: Jenny makes one somewhere between the end of Season 3 and the beginning of Season 4, with no real explanation given. Arguably, her coming out in Season 1 overlaps with this — Jenny seems like the perfect girlfriend at first, so it’s a surprise when she turns out to be so willing to immediately cheat on Tim when she realizes her attraction to girls. Don’t forget all the times she lied to and manipulated both Tim and Marina over the course of the affair and the aftermath, alternating between trying to convince them that it was their fault and playing the victim while she bounced back and forth between the two of them like a rubber ball.
• The Fashionista:
  • The show doesn’t spare any expense for any character’s wardrobe, but Alice and Helena are the only ones who regularly talk about it.
  • Bette doesn’t have the fashionista attitude, but she certainly dresses the part, even relative to her castmates. And the one holiday gift we see her purchase for her father is a $500 necktie.
  • Niki has a hissy fit because she doesn’t think her character’s clothes in Lez Girls are fashionable.
• Female Gaze: Since most of the cast are lesbian, their gaze mostly falls on other women.

• Fille Fatale: Nadia was legally an adult, but her position as Bette’s student and employee made their affair professionally and socially inappropriate. Despite (or because of) this, Nadia pursued Bette relentlessly (and sexual self-control wasn’t exactly one of Bette’s defining traits).
• Fish out of Water:
  • Jenny in Season 1, when she first arrives in L.A.
  • Max in Season 3, when Jenny picks him up in her hometown and brings him back to L.A. with her.
• Flanderization: Much of the cast, but especially Shane. Bette went from «classy yuppie who knows how to cut loose every now and then» to «stick in the mud so uptight it’s a wonder any of her friends bother with her at all.»
• Food Slap: In Generation Q Shane gets Tess’ drink in her face after she finds out she’s cheated on her.
• Forced Out of the Closet:
  • After her ex-boyfriend Tim is introduced with her boyfriend Max, Jenny outs the latter as transgender to him and undergoing medical transition. Max is pissed, since she didn’t ask if this was okay first.
  • Alice outs a homophobic NBA player after seeing him at a closet party, angered by the guy’s blatant hypocrisy.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the pilot, they mention that having a longer ring finger than index finger is a hint that someone may be a lesbian (which is Truth in Television). On Jenny, they are exactly the same size. Alice mentions that this might mean she’s bisexual. Just a few minutes later…
  • Jenny wears a necklace with the Hebrew letters «חי», meaning «life» in Hebrew. But she is always wearing it in backwards (Hebrew is read and written from right to left). This is most likely a foreshadowing for the opposite of live, death (her death later in the series).
• Gayborhood: The show is set in LA’s real one, West Hollywood, justifying how the vast majority of characters seem to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender — at least the people the cast interact with. Not to mention the fact that the café they all hang out at caters to LGBT+ people.
• Gaydar: On several occasions people pick up that someone is queer. Jenny gets pegged as attracted to women before she’s even realized or accepted this for instance. Not all of the queer characters are able to though.
• Gayngst: Dana during most of Season 1, when she was still in the closet, mostly on account of her conservative parents and Smug Snake manager. As it turned out, said closet was even more transparent than she realized.
• Genre Shift: Apparently what this primetime lesbian soap opera really needed to do in its final season was introduce a murder mystery. Which never got solved.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Exploited. Due to featuring a lot of sex scenes between women, the show has a very large male fanbase whose primary motivation for watching it is… yeah. The show got often accused of Pandering to the Base because of said Misaimed Fandom. Writers eventually performed a Take That, Audience! with Mark’s attitude towards Shane and Jenny to a mitigated reaction from the audience. Multiple times later straight men would also comment on two women together with approval, which they found creepy at best.
• Girls Behind Bars: Season 5 sees Helena incarcerated in the La County Jail. The scenes include a strip search and shower, where she’s hit on/threatened (however all other naked prisoners are unattractive). Also sex with her cellmate, who is very butch. So it’s played absolutely straight.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Kit gets unexpectedly pregnant, and soon decides to have an abortion. Her boyfriend Angus, the father, is wholly supportive along with her friends. They all sympathize after she’s tricked by a crisis pregnancy center who try to shame her into choosing against abortion (one nurse even blocking her path out of the exam room), which infuriates Kit. She goes on to get the abortion, and feels slightly sad afterward though comfortable with her decision.
• Hand Signals: Jodi is deaf and speaks using ASL. Bette learned this language, too, so she could communicate with Jodi, after they become a couple. We are also treated to a silent shouting match between Jodi and her ex which culminated in a sign that required no proficiency in a sign language to understand, and a little bit of actual shouting which included dual f-bombs.
• Hand Wave:
  • In Season 3, Bette’s inexplicable conversion to Buddhism (reportedly to get pregnant actress Jennifer Beals out of Bette’s wardrobe of snappy power suits and into bump-concealing kaftans and shawls for the duration of the season).
  • The Alice/Dana/Tonya love triangle was an important (and well-executed) subplot from the latter half of Season 1 through the first half of Season 2. The conclusion was a poorly-written anticlimax that came way out of left field. A superb performance by Erin Daniels only served to highlight the awful writing.
• Has Two Mommies:
  • Bette and Tina’s daughter Angelica.
  • Helena is a mother of two children with her ex-wife.
  • Later in Generation Q Alice is dating Nat, who has two children with her ex-wife Gigi as well.
  • Also in Generation Q Shane agrees to co-parent her ex-wife Quiara’s baby. This ends tragically as Quiara miscarries later.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Phyllis, after she broke up with Alice, her Closet Key.

• Heel Realization: By the end of Season 2, Mark finally has some understanding of the depths to which he has sunk.
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: In the first season, pretentious, weird Jenny Schecter wrote a series of implausibly well-received stories about pretentious, weird Sara Schuster. Yes, the Author Avatar had an Author Avatar.
• Hereditary Homosexuality: This turns out to be the case a number of times.
  • Cherie Jaffe is a lesbian (she’s married to a man, but later confirms her orientation) like her daughter Clea.
  • Helena Peabody is a lesbian, while her mother Peggy’s a bisexual woman.
  • Dana’s a lesbian and her brother Howie turns out to be gay.
  • Molly, like her mother Phyllis, it turns out is a lesbian.
  • In Generation Q Alice interviews Megan Rapinoe, a lesbian soccer player who tells an anecdote about outing her twin sister.
  • Bette and Tina’s daughter Angelica turns out to be queer, coming out to them and dating her friend, Jordi.
• Hero Antagonist: Helena Peabody in Season 2. She was a villain from Bette’s point of view. But giving money to charity isn’t evil just because you’re not giving it specifically to the PoV character’s company. And it’s not «stealing your girlfriend» if your girlfriend already broke up with you, because you cheated on her. In Season 3, Helena quickly makes the transition to full-fledged protagonist, a status she maintains for the rest of the series.

• Heteronormative Crusader: A number of homophobes appear over the series, perhaps most notably Fae Buckley, who leads the charge against the art display at the museum Better runs and then becomes even more hostile on learning Bette’s a lesbian, horribly insulting her over it during their live TV debate.
• Homophobic Hate Crime:
  • Max, while he was going by Moira and with Jenny on a road trip, gets assaulted by a man when he’s presenting as a Butch Lesbian. Jenny rescues him by tasing the guy.
  • Maria, a homeless teenage girl, reveals to Alice in a letter she reads on TV that her gay brother was killed by a man he hit on.
• Hot Teacher:
  • Jenny’s creative writing instructor in Season 2 (played by real-life bisexual Sandra Bernhard) is pretty much the opposite of this.
  • Bette becomes this trope in Season 4, when she joins the university faculty. It does not end well for her.
• How We Got Here: Season 6 opens with the reveal that Jenny’s dead. Over the rest of the season it’s shown what led up to this, starting three months before.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: A truly staggering number of euphemisms for the vagina are listed by the regulars at the end of the first episode of season three, featuring such terms as «bikini biscuit», «breakfast of champions», «munch box» and probably 30 or so more.
• The Hyena: Weezie, the contractor who does the extensions on Bette and Tina’s house, so they have enough space for their child, who’s gonna be adopted. Bette and Tina’s Gaydar doesn’t work on her and leaves them extremely confused.
• I Don’t Pay You to Think: In «LGB Tease,» Jenny delivers this line rather awesomely after Marissa brings back her dog wearing the wrong color ribbons:

  Jenny: [regarding her dog] What’s this on his head? This is mauve. This is not orange.
  Marissa: Well, the groomer ran out of orange, so we thought we would…
  Jenny: No. No, no. I don’t pay you to think. [to the dog] Do I, Sounder? Do I pay her to think? [to Marissa] He hates you. So take him back to the groomers now and get orange ribbons so that he can like you again. That’s it.

• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every single episode title in the entire run of the series begins with the letter «L.»
• If It’s You, It’s Okay: Shane tends to bring this out in straight women.
• The Immodest Orgasm: A lot of women show great enthusiasm during sex scenes. Female Casanovas and Sex Goddesses Papi and Shane especially tend to elicit highly vocal pleasure from their partners.
• Important Haircut: Shane gives two of them in Season 2. Jenny asks for the first one, since she’s tired of being read as «straight.» Shane offers Mark the second one, as a symbolic gesture of friendship and inclusion (which, as she finds out later, he totally didn’t deserve).
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • Kit, a straight woman, is pursued by Ivan, a transmasculine person, and she’s somewhat amenable. It’s discussed by her and Bette (who feel’s Ivan’s a Butch Lesbian). Kit says Ivan’s said they’re «more of a man» so she’s willing to explore a relationship. It doesn’t work out though.
  • Mark’s fascination with Shane obviously includes lust. His friend notes that it’s hopeless since she’s a lesbian.
  • Helena’s affection for Dylan in Season 3 appeared to be unrequited because of this, but as the season progressed the situation proved to be a lot more complicated than that.
  • Season 5 introduced Molly, the one straight girl on the planet who won’t go gay for Shane…until she does.
  • A rare variant with Jenny and Max, who is unable to accept him being a trans man since she’s a lesbian and Max is technically a straight man.
• I Never: Used in «Lifecycle.» The question of whether anyone playing has ever cheated on anyone ends up causing a serious mess.
• In the Blood: Shane’s father is also a womanizer, but unlike Shane, he’s consciously and actively malicious. Yet he still manages to convince her that they’re the same, which winds up ruining her relationship with Carmen and Paige.
• Intrepid Reporter: Alice. Gets her in trouble when she inadvertently outs a celebrity athlete.

• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • Tonya relates to Dana’s parents that she was once engaged to a very nice man named Bayard who deeply lover her, though she was secretly unhappy as a closeted lesbian. He finally realized this and broke off their engagement, wanting Tonya to be happy by embracing her true self. It’s this which gets Dana’s parents to accept their relationship.
  • Tina helping Bette get (and stay) back together with Jodi in Seasons 4-5. She wins in the end, though.
  • Shane chasing Molly away at the end of Season 5. A particularly tragic example, since she was one of only two women Shane had ever really loved. Also, unlike Carmen Molly actually accepted Shane for who she was.
  • Alice recognizes her girlfriend Tasha is attracted to Jamie. She doesn’t want to keep Tasha with her if she’d prefer Jamie, though it’s unresolved during the series. Later she is with someone else in Generation Q, the Sequel Series, thus clearly they broke up at some point though (whether or not Tasha went with Jamie).
  • Alice then goes even further in Generation Q, becoming a throuple briefly with her girlfriend Nat and Nat’s ex-wife as they have a lingering attraction, but doesn’t like it. Nat realizes this, and goes back to having their old relationship, moved by how much Alice would do for her.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Mark. When he’s rooming with Jenny and Shane, they find out he’s hidden cameras all over the house and has been secretly recording every aspect of their lives. Somehow, he avoids being stabbed or thrown in jail. They do tell him to leave, but within the same episode, Jenny changes her mind and dares him to stay and atone. Because, y’know, a real woman would do that.
  • In the last two seasons, Adelle gets away with identity fraud, blackmailing an entire studio, and turning an original pro-gay film into an easy-sell Chick Flick against the wishes of the original creative team. The only plausible reason she gets away with her crimes was because the ultimate victim was Jenny.
• Lampshade Hanging: The Lez Girls subplot of Season 5 was a lampshade cannon on full-auto, aimed primarily at Season 1.
• Large Ham: Alan Cumming as Billy in Season 3 bounces back and forth between this and a Deadpan Snarker. He easily steals every scene he’s in.
• Last-Name Basis: In Generation Q Sarah Finley is almost always called just «Finley».
• Late Coming Out: Phyllis is in her fifties when she admits to being a lesbian and comes out.

• Lez Bro:
  • Mark to Shane in Season 2, before his betrayal was revealed.
  • Lisa the male-identified lesbian is introduced as Shane’s Lez Bro before he starts dating Alice.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Most of the cast, quite deliberately. Ilene Chaiken publicly claimed that the show would never have been made if it hadn’t pandered to the Male Gaze (and unfortunately, she’s probably right). However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The show seemed to have a well-rounded group of lesbians who were feminine, butch, or somewhere in between. The fact that the show had so many overtly feminine lesbians was fairly groundbreaking, in having so many non-stereotypical lesbians. And it seemed even less about «lipstick lesbians» than it was simply «women who have different styles of dress.» Shane dresses in an androgynous and punk rock way, Bette is fond of prim suits and button-down shirts, Alice is girly with a tomboyish streak, Jenny is overtly girly most of the time, Dana seems to be somewhere between tomboy and girly, and Tina seems to have a bit of a boho thing going on.

• Lock-and-Load Montage: A rather hilarious parody of one in season 1 when Dana and her friends go to the restaurant where Lara works to scope her out and see if she’s right for Dana (ie. a lesbian). Before getting to work, there’s an Overly-Long Gag where they pull out notebooks, turn on their phones, and put on sunglasses for no reason. They even do a Power Walk on the way in.
• Locked in a Room:
  • After Bette and Candace are locked in a jail cell, they have an extremely hard time not to jump each other’s bones (they still do it, after they’re out of jail and that breaks up Bette and Tina’s relationship).
  • During a heat wave, accompanied by power outages, Bette and Tina got stuck in an elevator. They eventually got back together during this time.
• Long-Lost Relative:
  • After reconnecting with her estranged dad, Shane finds out she has a brother, Shay, from his second wife. Eventually she has to care for him as his mom leaves him with Shane.
  • In Generation Q Angelica does a DNA search and finds she’s got a half-sister as they share the same birth father (who had been her mother’s sperm donor).
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: While Shane and Papi both appear at first glance to be The Casanova, they’ve both revealed themselves over time to be incredibly caring and empathic people, who feel almost obligated to please everyone around them. And they’ve both genuinely fallen in love, and had their hearts broken, without turning bitter or predatory.
• Love Triangle: Alice is dating Tasha when the latter becomes attracted to Jamie. Tasha resists the urge to cheat, but they break up anyway.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: There are many sex scenes in locations outside characters’ beds, such as in workplaces, bathrooms etc.
• Masculine�Feminine Gay Couple:
  • Shane is bifauxnen and always dates more feminine women.
  • Jenny is pretty girly and thus had this dynamic with the very butch Moira (before his transition to Max anyway).
  • Mostly girlish Alice has a relationship with tough soldier Tasha.
  • Elegant, high class femme Helena hooks up with her intimidating butch cellmate Dusty while in jail.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • For a few episodes, Alice dates professor and vampirologist Uta Refson. Alice believes that she is actually a vampire due to her unwillingness to go out during the day, love for only red wine, sharp teeth, and ability to lift her two feet in the air with no visible exertion.
  • After scattering Dana‘s ashes at the waterfall that she wanted along with her other friends, Alice, sees what looks like an image of Dana in the water briefly afterward. She’s clearly unsure if this was really her spirit, a trick of the light or something else.
• Meat-O-Vision: Shane experiences Sex-O Vision; when she swears off sex, she starts to hallucinate every women in her field of view as naked and willing.
• Mister Seahorse: Max gets pregnant while transitioning to male (and looks quite masculine due to the hormones he’s been taking).
• Money Fetish: Helena and Catherine play with their winnings from gambling, which leads to fetishistic sex with it.
• More Diverse Sequel: While both series feature a Cast Full of Gay, The L Word had a majority-white cast while Generation Q is more racially diverse; of the main characters, two are Latina, one is an Asian trans man, and one is an Iranian-American woman. Angelica, Bette and Tina’s teenage daughter (who’s biracial) turns out to be queer too. Supporting characters include a Black trans man and a lesbian woman of color (she’s played by a Swedish-American actress with Iranian parents)

• Mr. Fanservice: Most of the prominent male characters are conventionally handsome, and have many shirtless scenes.
• Ms. Fanservice: A lot of the main cast and many supporting characters are attractive women who frequently get it on pretty explicitly, with nearly everyone (except Bette) shown topless too. In Jenny’s case, she even shows full-frontal nudity during her work as a stripper.
• My Secret Pregnancy: In season 2, Tina tries to hide her second pregnancy from Bette, afraid of the pain it would cause if Tina experiences another miscarriage.
• Negated Moment of Awesome: When Jenny and Shane find out about Mark secretly filming them, he tries to tell them how much he’s «grown» since he set up those cameras. Jenny retorts, «You think that’s what I’m here for? For some fucking man to chew up and spit out so he can ‘grow’?!» She decided at the end of the episode to fold and give him another chance.
• Nice Guy: Surprisingly, most of the male characters.
  • In Season 1, Tim seemed like the perfect boyfriend at first. After walking in on his so-called friend fucking his fiancée, he acted like a huge jerk. But most people would consider that a reasonable response. And even at his worst, while standing next to Jenny, the woman who spent half a season deceiving, manipulating, humiliating and cuckolding him during her journey of sexual self-discovery, he looked like a saint.
  • In Seasons 3-4, Angus played this trope ridiculously straight. But when he finally did fall off his pedestal, he fell hard.
  • Sunset Boulevard is not only a straight guy, but he’s also probably the only genuinely decent man Kit has ever dated.
• No Bisexuals:
  • At the end of season 1 Jenny (who earlier in the season was torn between her long-time male partner and the first woman she was attracted to) is involved at the same time with both a man and a woman. Both of them are aware of the other and it seems to be shaping up into an interesting poly relationship. However the writers seem to have decided not to pursue the the possibilities of this storyline and Season 2 begins with the guy breaking up with her because she’s clearly more interested in women (later on, Jenny’s sexuality gets complex again when she is dating a transgender man in the process of transitioning).
  • Alice identified as bisexual and dated both men and women up through season 2. After that the writers quietly dropped this and by the end of the series she was identifying as a lesbian.
  • Tina gets attracted to men in Season 3 and begins a relationship with one, which is mostly treated as her «changing sides» or «going straight» rather than bisexual.
  • In regards to them and other characters, lesbians show skepticism that bisexuality exists on more than one occasion.
  • Alice’s bisexuality comes back into focus during Generation Q, when she’s attracted to Tom and starts a relationship with him. This is after years of identifying as a lesbian with only same-sex-relationships. She’s unhappy at knowing she’ll have to essentially come out again, complaining about lesbians disbelieving that bisexuals even exist and afraid of the reaction her many fans will have (Alice heads up a lesbian-oriented talk show). It’s implied that she’s largely attracted to women and just found it easier identifying as a lesbian.
• No Pregger Sex: Averted with Tina in the second series, where her pregnancy doesn’t deter her from having sex with Helena and Bette.

• Not What It Looks Like: In Season 6 Jenny spots Bette and Kelly, who are apparently having sex from the angle that she sees. This turns out to be a mistake though, and Bette is helping clean Kelly’s dress after she spilled wine on it.
• One-Drop Rule: Mixed race Bette and fully black Yolanda discuss racial politics in one episode, and at one point Yolanda brings this up to tell Bette why Bette is still considered ‘black’. Bette retaliates by asking if she’s going to let White America define her identity. Bette notes that she could pass, but never does, consciously embracing having black heritage and always calling herself biracial rather than to deny either of her parents implicitly.

• Opposites Attract: Alice and Tasha are very different people, yet become a couple nonetheless. On the one hand, Alice is a bubbly girly effusive woman who’s staunchly opposed to the Iraq War. Tasha is a butch, taciturn soldier (starting out), who’s very defensive of it given her service there.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Shane’s absentee junkie parents screwed up her ability to form and maintain functional romantic attachments in a big way. And when Dad finally did come back into her life, he only managed to mess with her head even more.
  • Played literally with Shane’s half-brother Shay, whose mother leaves him on Shane’s porch never to return.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Angelica walks in on her moms (who divorced years earlier) making out, which appals her as she doesn’t like to think of them being sexual.
• The Peeping Tom: Mark, Shane and Jenny’s housemate in Season 2, is allowed to make a documentary on lesbian life but then places hidden cameras throughout the house. He records Shane having sex with multiple women (one of which Mark hired to seduce her) and intimate private conversations. Jenny finds out and is coldly furious, saying it was «rapey», asking him to speak with his sisters about how they’d react to this. He initially planned to sell the film as a «lesbians gone wild» porn flick to a sleazy company, though Mark later breaks the contract after he’s gotten close with them, removing the cameras and apologizing to Jenny. Shane reacts by slapping him, but is more forgiving, though Jenny flatly rejects Mark’s attempted apology.
• Polyamory: In Generation Q Alice, Nat and Nat’s ex-wife Gigi become a «throuple» briefly, though this doesn’t work out for them.
• Post-Coital Collapse: The camera cuts to Alice collapsing on her back, breathless and exhausted after she just finished having sex with Papi. Only for Papi to state that they’re far from finished and the sex resumes.
• Prison Rape: After Helena goes to jail for stealing her girlfriend Catherine‘s money, Shane, Tina and Alice have the following advice for Helena: «Don’t drop the soap!» She does, and is threatened with it by other inmates before her cellmate stops them.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: All characters get this to some degree, but Bette is easily the worst. Helena would rather donate money to a shelter for single mothers and their children rather than give Bette an art grant? Guess who the romantic antagonist is for the same season.
• Psycho Lesbian: Bette skates into this at her worst. Chronic cheating aside, she did not take Tina’s bisexuality crisis well. Getting mad at your ex for leaving you for a man is one thing. Trying to get sole custody of your child behind the birth mother’s back is another thing entirely. As is kidnapping said daughter when Tina found out and called her out on it.
• Put on a Bus:

• Carmen was a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. Sarah Shahi was cast in a starring role on the network TV cop drama Life.

• Dylan was Put on a Bus after Season 3, but then returned to become a major character of Season 6.

• Race Lift: In-Universe, Bette’s annoyed that the actress to play the character who’s based on her in Lez Girls is white, not biracial like her.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: In Generation Q Gigi, Dani and some other characters speak in completely untranslated Farsi (though a little can be discerned from context or shared words).
• Really Gets Around:
  • Shane in Season 2 estimates she’s had sex with between 900 and 1200 people.
  • Later on Papi reveals she’d had over 1000 conquests.
• «The Reason You Suck» Speech:
  • Bette gives an epic one to a conservative Senator who’s on the subcommittee controlling NEA arts funding after he’s denounced a lesbian-themed painting in her museum and then publicly set the copy she brought on fire, telling him that he’s really the unpatriotic one for this (after he called her work that) with this whole thing just a distraction from the real issues in the US which legislators won’t deal with.
  • Alice gives a long (and funny) one to Gabby where she strings together all the serious things her friends told her to say … and then concludes it by saying «Step off, bitch!»
• Reckless Gun Usage: Kit leaves her gun in her coat, and her little niece Angelica gets ahold of it. Kit gets it safely away from her but is distraught over what could have happened.

• Scenery Censor: Unlike most of the characters, Joyce is covered by nearby objects when she’s naked in her office.
• Self-Harm: In one episode Jenny is found cutting her legs by her roommate, Shane.
• Sequel Series: The L Word: Generation Q began in 2019, ten years after the original ended, picking up with Bette, Alice, Shane and Angelica, Bette’s daughter (Tina is not seen at first, but later appears). Four new main characters were also introduced, along with several supporting.
• Sex for Solace: While mourning the death of Dana, Alice and Lara try to find comfort in each other�s arms, with Alice pleading for Lara to scratch her back hard because she just wants to feel something.
• Sex with the Ex: After they’d broken up, moving on into relationships with other people, Bette and Tina began an affair together again in Season 5.
• Shared Family Quirks: Shane’s dad it turns out is promiscuous like her and easily picks up women.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Variant; Tasha is very closed off and defensive about her experiences in Iraq.
• Shout-Out: A hilariously hammy one to Charlie’s Angels, using seventies-style laser-weapon-looking gaydars (it found out Alice’s orientation (bisexual, but not Jenny’s)).
• Show Within a Show: Lez Girls, Jenny’s movie based on her life along with the other main characters. Many of them are very annoyed by their unflattering fictional counterparts.
• Sleeping with the Boss: Jodi ends up in this situation when she’s hired by the university as a professor, with her grilfriend Bette as the dean who’s her superior. This gets awkward when they break up over Bette’s cheating.

• Strip Poker: In «Lesson Number One,» Helena plays strip gin against Catherine in an attempt to clear her gambling debts.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: People repeatedly comment on how different Alice and Tasha are, with even their couples counselor telling them it won’t work. In a subversion of how this would usually be handled-it doesn’t. They ultimately do break up.
• Take That, Audience!: Unsuccessful. Despite trying to dodge the virulent accusations of pandering to a straight male demographic by featuring an in-show betrayal from Mark towards Shane and Jenny who only got with them because he thought Girl on Girl Is Hot, the true lesbian audience remained unconvinced.
• The Talk: In Generation Q Bette starts giving her daughter Angelica one after she’s started dating. Angelica is embarrassed and begs her to stop.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: In Season 6 Alice must talk down Marie, a homeless girl who sent a heartrending letter about her brother’s homophobic letter. Alice read it on her show, and Marie is threatening to jump off a roof, feeling depressed over her loss. Tasha points out Alice is not a psychologist and really shouldn’t be handling this. Alice manages to talk her down anyway though.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Bette’s brief affair with her assistant Nadia in Season 4. Phyllis fires Bette over it at the beginning of Season 6.
• Thoughtcrime: Tasha believes even thinking of cheating is cheating. Later it comes back on her when she’s attracted to Jamie, as her girlfriend Alice notes.
• A Threesome Is Hot: In Generation Q Alice and her girlfriend Nat have a three-way with Nat’s ex-wife Gigi as they still have an attraction for each other.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The series had multiple romantic examples.
  • Dana the Tennis player, and flirty Alice. Later on, Alice was in a relationship with a military officer, Butch Lesbian Tasha.
  • Lipstick Lesbian Jenny also dated Shane, who’s a more bifauxnen tomboy.
• Tomboyish Name: Shane, the resident bifauxnen lesbian tomboy of the cast, has this.
• Token Religious Teammate: Jenny was Jewish and Bette is a Buddhist, but it didn’t come up a lot. The issue of religion within the LGBT+ community is raised and discussed in Generation Q, which introduced the recurring character Rebecca Dowery, who briefly sees new main character Finley who’s thrown after learning she’s a minister. Rebecca, it turns out, is with the Los Angeles MCC (Multicultural Community Church^note ), an LGBT+ affirming denomination. She notes that she’s much more closeted about being a Christian than queer as many LGBT+ people have very painful histories with Christianity (like Finley, who’d been raised Catholic and kicked out by her parents). After realizing that Finley is deeling with deep-seated issues over this and can’t see religious people (let alone clergy) without anxiety over them, Rebecca breaks things off, expressing her hope that she’ll work through them and maybe find another faith in the future.
• Tragic Stillbirth:
  • Bette and Tina lose their first baby to miscarriage, devastating them both.
  • Shane agrees to co-parent her ex-wife Quiara’s baby, but Quiara soon miscarries. In fact Shane’s more upset than she is, as Quiara just says she’ll try it again.
• Two-Person Pool Party:
  • The swimming pool in Bette and Tina’s backyard existed primarily to provide these scenes.
  • Tina and Helena had one in the second series.
  • Dani and Sophie share a bath together in Generation Q, leading toward sex very quickly.
• The Unfair Sex: Jenny as a character can be incredibly creepy at points, but apparently it’s OK because she’s a woman. Notably averted for the rest of the cast, however.
• Unfortunate Names: Stacy Merkin, whose surname is that of a pubic wig. Jenny insults her mercilessly about it.

• Unusual Euphemism: Shane and Paige were «telling stories» to each other, which meant, of course, sex.
• Vampire Episode: «Lifeline» with possibly Lesbian Vampire Uta Refson and BDSM.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Kit, cause she’s pregnant with Angus’s child and has Morning Sickness.
  • A dog that Jennifer wanted to get from an animal shelter throws up on-camera.
• Wall Bang Her: Several times two women have sex up against a wall, and Jenny also with a guy while her back is to the side of an aquarium.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Alice thinks she deserves credit as a result of wanting to cheat, though not doing it. Her girlfriend Tasha scoffs at this.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Max is last seen at the end of the original show, pregnant and single. Generation Q, the Sequel Series, explains what became of the characters who don’t reappear aside from him. It also revealed via Max’s reappearance in Season 3 that he went on to be happily married with a large family.
• Where Everybody Knows Your Flame: Several LGBT+ bars or clubs show up in the series which characters visit, such as The Planet, the SheBar and The Hit Club. In Generation Q Shane also buys a former lesbian bar that has since become a more general establishment, remaking it as such renamed Dana’s after her friend who died from breast cancer. A couple of the new supporting characters work there with her. Mostly they’re vanilla, though on special occasions they have wild music and drag performances.
• Who Murdered the Asshole: Each teaser seems to end with yet another person having a reason to hate Jenny Schecter, so there are plenty of suspects when she’s eventually murdered. It turns out that she killed herself in Generation Q though.

• Wrong Insult Offence: A group of hicks started harassing Jenny and her then-girlfriend Max by asking if Max was «[her] faggot». Jenny’s response was a taser and this bizarrely awesome Crosses the Line Twice example:

  Jenny: We’re not faggots, we’re dykes, you asshole!

• You Monster!: Bette, when Fae Buckley brings up Tina’s stillborn child in a debate and claims that God killed Tina’s unborn child, because they were lesbians and God wanted to spare it from being raised by lesbians. This is what provoked Bette into pulling out a video cassette with a porno video, where the 17-year-old Fae Buckley a.k.a. «China» starred. She ran away from an abusive home and survived as a prostitute and porn actress. Tina also states the trope name word for word right before the end.

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