The L Word ends with most unsatisfying series finale ever
Just like most Hollywood writers, “The L Word” team couldn’t write black women for shit. Kit was Bette’s straight, alcoholic, musician sister. The character, played by the legendary Pam Grier, was drawn like a cartoon. In recent seasons, Kit’s every utterance was prefaced by “Girl!”…”Honey!”…”Baby!”…or it could just be that the crappy dialogue and Grier’s delivery made it seem so. You could almost hear a director suggesting “Can you deliver that line with a little more blackitude?” With seemingly little life of her own, no friends outside of her sister’s orbit, and apparently unable to find a suitable man in all of Hollywood, Kit was reduced to the sassy handmaiden to all the pretty, white girls with problems. (Yes, I know that Jennifer Beals is biracial, but for the most part, in this show, she was portrayed with more cultural connection to the white characters than her black half-sister. Grier filled the role of the resident black chick.) The wardrobe department couldn’t even bother to give poor Pam awesome clothes like those proffered to her castmates. She was always stuffed into some ill-fitting, bootleg get up more suitable to a 20-year-old. Guess it’s too much work to properly outfit a still-pretty-damned-fine black, middle aged body. This is fricking Pam Grier people! Show some respect.
All that aside, I was still looking forward to last night’s series finale, the culmination of a peculiar
sixth season that centered around a murder mystery: Who killed the manipulative, self-absorbed, over-the-top, loony (and, yeah fabulous) Jenny Schecter.
The direction of the ultimate season seemed misguided. Rather than demonstrate the evolution of characters and the show’s story, walking them to some reasonable close, “The L Word” careened wildly in service of an Agatha Christie-like plot. Apparently, “L Word” creator Ilene Chaiken belives, like Hercule Poirot, that anyone is capable of murder, given the right impetus. And so, she set about creating a host of reasons for characters to want to kill someone who had been a friend and integral part of their circle for years–stolen movie treatments, missing film reels, videos of supposed infidelity, general obnoxiousness. It all seemed awfully silly, stretching the bounds of the imagination and requiring characters to do things that in previous seasons would seem unlikely. If Jenny’s divatude was getting too much for her “framily,” couldn’t they, just, I don’t know, de-friend her? Sure, murder seems like fun, but…
Told through real-time scenes interspersed with snippets of from police interrogation in the aftermath of Jenny’s death, last night’s season and series finale opened more doors than it closed. It is still unclear whether Jenny was murdered, committed suicide, or tripped over the anvil the writers left lying around the episode (Characters made repeated references to a broken railing on a new balcony, cautioning anyone who came near it to be careful.) We don’t know why the police think Jenny’s demise was anything but an accident. (Hell, we don’t even know what happened, since the character’s death takes place off screen and is only hinted at.) We have no idea why police interrogations in Hollywood involve endless questions unrelated to the crime in question. (Hint: It let’s characters spill information that writers weren’t able to reveal any other way.) Even the few non-dead Jenny-related storylines started in season six were left open. (Was Tasha really coming back to Alice in the end? Will Shane go after Molly and tell her that Jenny hid her letter?)
Sometimes while watching “The L Word” you could clearly see the show’s writers wanting to break convention and try something daring and never-done-before. Last night’s episode is a perfect example. Of course, wanting to innovate certainly isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes things have never been done, because they don’t work. And sometimes the conventional way is the easiest and most successful way to get a thing done; innovation just for the sake of it doesn’t work.
“The L Word” series finale didn’t work. It created an inglorious ending for what was a really fun, enjoyable show that meant something to a lot of people. I liked it for the clothes and drama, but I’ve read some really moving stories online today by lesbian women who were able to see themselves and their relationships portrayed on television for the first time. Why not honor that?
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