This article contains spoilers for The L Word: Generation Q. It is recommended that you watch the show before reading.

Welcome to my weekly review of Season 3 of ‘The L Word: Generation Q’. Each week, I’ll go over the characters’ narrative arcs and pick out sections that suit my agenda. I’m not sorry to say that these will all be thinly veiled pro-communist rants. You can read my thoughts on earlier episodes if you need refreshers.

Image credit: Showtime, 2022

“I will never forgive you for making me watch that.”

That is what my friend said to me as the credits rolled on this episode. 

Did you, my dear reader, even make it to the end? No, I figured you didn’t. 

Because me and my friend did watch to the end, in an act of great service to you queers, I will force myself to write this review so you don’t have to finish the ep. 

So, let’s address the elephant in the room.

This was a musical episode. There are some TV show musical episodes that have set the bar really high. I am of course referring to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, especially that scene between Willow and Tara which was some groundbreaking queer representation. 

So, all week, having known that it was going to be a musical episode (a fact I neglected to tell my friend – sorry babez), I had some naïve hope that it could be a moment of exceptional queer TV. 

It simply was not. 

The episode is pitched as the turning point for the characters in their quest to find ‘The One’. The episode starts with Shane having an orgy. Finally, an orgy in this show!!! 

But, no. The orgy is all about how Shane hates herself and therefore has lots of sex. 

This is meant to be a queer show. A QUEER SHOW. Yet the one orgy is all about Shane’s failures. 

Mates, if I was sitting back in a plush armchair while three babez in exceptional lingerie were making out, I wouldn’t be thinking I was a failure. 

So, through some arduous scene-setting dialogue, we find out that Alice is taking her staff to an ayahuasca retreat so they can team build. Once I had to do a team-building exercise where we sat in a room all day doing ‘fun’ games but it evolved into me berating the managers for making us wear different uniforms by gender and shouting that making the women’s uniform tight fitting was misogynistic as. 

I guess Alice has more money than the crumby retail shop I worked at, but yeah ok, team building by taking drugs – cool reflection of being an employee under capitalism. How about you just pay them a living wage, Alice?

They get to the retreat and yikes at how fucking white this is. What the actual fuck? For a show that likes to claim it engages with important issues, it sure isn’t bothered about cultural appropriation. This is just terrible but I guess also a true representation of how rich white people like Alice act. 

Shane, Alice and Sophie all take the ayahuasca and this is when the musical starts. 

………

………

………

Okay. I just had to walk away from my computer and make a chamomile tea to try to calm myself down. Fuck, I hope this show doesn’t get renewed for another season ’cause I can’t go on writing these reviews.

Right. 

It starts with the three of them, and all Alice’s staff, doing a group song. 

I just made a noise out of my mouth that sounded like a queef. There’s no other way to describe it. 

Shane’s storyline is her as a sailor. It literally involves her kissing Tess like that famous image in Time Square – the famous image that is held up by heteronormativity as the height of romance. Turns out, the man in the original picture had just grabbed the woman and kissed her, without consent. Why are we emulating this cooked stuff?

Shane is chased by a bunch of women who are meant to be the demons in her head? She has to jump from a building to prove her love for Tess and leave the women behind. Subtle.

Alice walks into a game show where she talks about the flaws of her exes. Eventually she has to say what her flaw is. Turns out, it is that she pushes people away. 

Because she wins the game show, she is given a prize and it is… Dana!

Through some of the most horrific songs about finding ‘Your Person’, Alice comes to realise that she can’t find her ‘The One’ because she still loves Dana. 

If you could see my face right now, it is literally the grimace emoji. 

Lastly, Sophie is in a 1950s sitcom where Finley is a piece-of-shit husband. She eventually sings a song about breaking free from Finley. I can’t bear to explain it any further. 

So then there is another group performance. Look, the fact is, I went to a performing arts high school. I was a next level theatre kid. I have some extreme ability to endure, and even enjoy, bad performance art, and I had to turn away, embarrassed, at this group song. And, seriously, this shit was worse than our year 12 ensemble performance. Worse than like 1000 games of Yes, Let’s.

They wake up from their trip and are now all healed of their issues. Sophie goes home and breaks up with Finley. Alice goes home and texts her ‘The One’, which I think is the editor? 

Shane goes home to Tess and tries to win her back. Tess starts crying, telling Shane her mum has died.

I can’t go on any more about my hatred of their obsession with monogamy. I can’t really say anything more about the bad acting and scripts. I can say a whole lot more about how sad I am that queer culture has somehow come to the point where it can’t even get a musical half right. 

Instead, I am going to go be on gay-cay and forget that I ever heard a song with the lyrics “You are my person. Some say we only get one. Now it’s all making sense because I have the worse luck with love. They can check every box but no one knows me like you do. Maybe I should give up on love and trying to fill your shoes. And nobody is you.”

Read Jess’ recap of the next episode here!

Jess Ison is an aficionado of queer media and loves every bad lesbian film ever made. In her professional life she is a researcher at La Trobe University. She lives with her dog on Wurundjeri land. Find her on Twitter.