With Sex and the City on its last legs (see review) and the media salivating over all things queer-eyed, The L Word straddles the zeitgeist. It's perfectly timed to exploit a gap in the marketplace while also testing our tolerance. Although America has embraced the harmless homo-geniality of Carson Kressley, mainstream audiences remain squeamish about gay male intimacy. But The L Word offers something for nearly everyone: Lesbians can revel in glamorous visibility, straight women will find nuanced portraits of female relationships, and for hetero men, there's the titillation factor.
There's plenty of sex, but this isn't soft porn masquerading as drama. Careers jut in and out of the daily picture: Dana balances her agent's insistence that she stay closeted with her own aching desire to feel at home in the world, and Bette tries to push a provocative exhibition past her museum's conservative board. Meanwhile, Bette's half-sister Kit (Pam Grier), a melancholy soul singer, spends her days trying to scrape together work and atone for a lifetime of bad decisions. The sisters tenderly chafe against each other, and you get a sense of the broader family dynamics later when their demanding father (Ossie Davis) visits. Alice's family story line is more whimsical. Her mom turns out to be a needy B-movie actress (Anne Archer) who flirts with her daughter's friends, yet still finds time to admonish her, "If you took a little more time with your face, maybe you'd have a girlfriend."
