Lesbian Turkish Oil Wrestling

I apologize in advance if you arrived here and expected something …. different given the title of this post. Maybe if you click another link on your search engine results page, you’ll find what you are looking for, you perv. I shall be talking about The L Word. If that doesn’t interest you, move right along.

Five seasons ago, The L Word debuted on Showtime to wildly high expectations. We were promised a provocative drama on par with other stellar cable shows like Six Feet Under and Nip/Tuck. Something that would makes us look at the lesbian subculture in a whole new way. Back when the first season ended, I had high hopes for this show. It wasn’t perfect, but it had the building blocks to become something intriguing, something that would become a watercooler show.

The L Word might not be the best show in the world, but it is more than the sum of its nicely put together parts. Perhaps, I am a bit biased. I connected so closely with most of the characters that I am willing to overlook some of its major flaws. These tight knit group of friends remind me a lot of my tight knit group of friends…if we were all gay, all really good looking and had tons of free time to sit around drinking coffee. It was refreshing to see a show centered around women that doesn’t involve catty, bitchy fighting or the pursuit of the perfect man. Gay or straight, many women I’ve talked to appreciate this aspect of the show and for this, The L Word, I salute you!

Five seasons ago is like another lifetime and in the lifespan of this show, it was so five personalities ago. The show’s latest episode cemented it as slow morph from character driven drama to baudy, French farce, complete with ten minutes of the aforementioned lesbian Turkish oil wrestling. No real plot. No smooth character arcs. No witty banter. Just … lesbian Turkish oil wrestling. Yet, now that the show has dropped all pretense of being a pretentious, all-important drama, now that it has stopped reaching for Six Feet Under glory, settled into someplace closer to Passions and truly embraced its narcissistic, ultra Hollywood-meta, overblow drama, it has become ridiculously entertaining again.

For almost three seasons, The L Word was too caught up in trying to say something important that it wound up saying nothing at all. The show tried to do some socially conscious storylines. There was Dana’s breast cancer storyline that lead to the popular character’s demise. There was a pre-op transsexual struggling with her/his identity and place in the world. There were two separated partners sharing custody of a small child. All these plots were clumsy, plodding and ultimately either dropped or forgotten. Characters disappear into thin air, sucked into a Bermuda triangle never to be heard or mentioned again (what the hell happened to Mark? Papi? Carmen?). The characters that did remain always seemed to switch personalities whenever the mood struck them. The show hit the big “reset” button at different points during the season and that lead to many a frustrated viewer.

This season has hit a creative peak by exploring the very drudgery that this show has mired in for years. Jenny, the show’s resident writer/artist/pain in the ass, is directing a screenplay based entirely on her experiences in L.A., with very thinly veiled versions of the people she has met along the way. This new meta plot has allowed the show to critique itself and thereby almost redeem itself by point out its own flaws. It is a fairly genius move on the part writer/producer Ilene Chaiken. Jenny has become an insufferable, pretentious, bratty, pampered diva and one has to wonder if Chaiken isn’t making fun of herself here. The L Word is based heavily on her own story of moving to L.A. and falling in love with a woman. So, the meta is working on two different levels. Does this excuse the show’s poor execution of almost every storyline over the past five years? No, but it is a start.

But back to the lesbian Turkish oil wrestling. In its complete and utter debauchery, it was almost, dare I say it, genius. As Jenny and her girlfriend rolled around the ring to the sounds of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up”, I felt as if this show had finally found itself …. by making fun of itself with a sly wink to the audience. It was pointless, gratuitous and the most entertaining night of television I’ve had in a while. And that seemed exactly the point.

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