Malinda Lo

Last night The L Word ended its six-season run on Showtime. Sort of.

There’s a lot of anger and indignation going on all over the internet, and I don’t blame the L Word viewers and fans who feel like they were strung along only to be, um, shoved off a balcony and left floating in a pool of WTF.

(Pic via Dorothy Surrenders)

My own feelings about the show and its finale are more mixed. To be honest, I canceled Showtime after the fiasco of Max’s Willy Wonka baby shower a couple of episodes back. After reading Sarah Warn’s review/evisceration of the finale this morning, though, I have to admit I went over to YouTube and watched some clips of the finale. Well, let me just say that canceling Showtime was the right move.

I have watched every season of The L Word, though I’ve missed a few episodes. At the beginning, I kinda liked it, but I never truly loved the show. I respected it at first, because it did what no other show had done before: created a world by, about and for lesbians on television. Unprecedented, yes. Unforgettable? Unfortunately.

The show tackled a lot of controversial issues. As Entertainment Weekly put it:

TV’s first deaf lesbian, its first regularly occurring transsexual character, bisexuals of both genders, drag kings, the US military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, biracial identity, gay parenting, sex/drug/alcohol/gambling addiction, sexual abuse, midlife sexual awakenings, breast cancer…this show took on a lot.

But in my opinion, it failed extraordinarily in most of these story lines. Let me direct you to my articles on gender, race, and bisexuality.

There were, of course, parts of the show that I did really enjoy: Carmen, Bette, Tasha. Some of Alice’s story lines. Whenever Pam Grier got to utter more than one line at a time. Ultimately, I am glad that Bette and Tina got to ride off into the sunset together — sort of — but I am also relieved that the Farce of Jenny is over.

And then I thought: Yay, now that the Farce of Jenny is over, what can we look forward to? Sadly, there’s not much on TV about lesbians and bisexual women.

There was a point, a few years ago, when it was more common to see lesbians on TV. That was when both The L Word and South of Nowhere were still on the air. Now, we only have the bizarre stylings of Grey’s Anatomy when it comes to lesbian representation. Most TV shows center on the relationships among their characters, and I understand why producers might shy away from including a lesbian character. It severely limits her ability to become involved with other characters on the show, because a lesbian cannot have a relationship with a straight woman, no matter how much she might want it.

That means that in order for lesbians to be on a TV show, you have to have more than one of them on the show. For straight producers who are making shows for a predominantly straight audience, that might seem to be too much.

Even on shows like Lost, which is arguably driven by plot rather than romance, every one of those characters is involved to some degree in a romantic relationship that contributes to furthering the plot. A lesbian would have no place there, unless she had a girlfriend on the island.

Ironically, I think that part of the reason that more lesbians aren’t included on TV is because of The L Word. It made it clear that you can’t just have lesbians as asexual supporting characters anymore. If you’re going to have a lesbian on your show, she’d better have a life. That’s progress.

Now all we have to do is wait for TV producers to get over their fear of making their show “too gay” by including more than one gay person. Brothers and Sisters did it with their gay men. Joss Whedon did it with Willow and Tara. What’s the problem, Hollywood? What is so scary about lesbians that you can’t include us — like normal people — in your TV shows?

I have my own theories about why this is the case, but they are too depressing to write about on the day after the depressing end to the only show about lesbians on TV. Instead, I’m going to be thankful that this show did its part to bring lesbians together — even while griping about the show. The online and offline community that was created as a result of this show is something to be celebrated.

Cheers to that.