I Like to Watch

Out to sea
But now that the little monkey in the trash can has whet your appetite for lighter, more humorous fare, we'd better move on to "The L Word," which had its worst season yet -- and that's saying a lot.

The finale was every bit as awful as the entire season, and there's no way to cover the whole, ugly mess, but here's my favorite scene: Tina (Laurel Holloman) is working on a film adaptation of Jenny's (Mia Kirshner) book, but she lies to her and tells her that a big meeting with the director and some studio execs has been canceled. Jenny crashes the meeting with her new little dog in tow, calls Tina a lying, duplicitous, scheming excuse for a friend, and warns the executives that they'd better be careful if they're going to work with her. Instead of trying to discreetly escort the lunatic and her little dog from the room, Tina calls Jenny the C word (which should really have its own dramatic series on Showtime) and accuses her of almost getting Bette, their mutual friend and Tina's former lover, fired. Just as the two bad, nasty women are almost screeching and ripping each other's clothes off, "Jerry Springer"-style, Jenny's little dog pees in the middle of the conference table.

Why am I always amazed at how bad "The L Word" is? What is so alarming about the intense awfulness of this show? Maybe because the Bette-Tina story line was once pretty interesting, and because it's a show about gay women, I want it to be good and keep hoping that it'll improve, when it just keeps getting worse and worse.

And for some reason Jenny is always at the center of the stupidest stories of all. Apparently the writers hate this character almost as much as the rest of us do. This season, they had Jenny stalking a woman who gave her book a bad review, and then, when Jenny discovers that the reviewer is dating a veterinarian, she adopts an old dog from a shelter, pretends that the dog is dying, and has the vet/girlfriend put the dog to sleep while she stands by, crying. Which makes sense, really. Which of us hasn't seduced someone by killing an old dog with them?

Fittingly, toward the end of last night's episode, Jenny had somehow drifted off to sea on a small rubber raft without anyone noticing that she was gone. It was such a stupid turn of events that I half expected her dead body to drift up onto the shore, just as Alice and her "I'm leaving for Iraq tomorrow" soldier girlfriend are lying on the beach together, locked in a globally relevant, politically weighty embrace.

And if you thought that was heavy-handed, dig this: Right before we see Alice and Soldier Girl embracing, Bette (Jennifer Beals) flies to upstate New York to make a big, flashy show of winning back her estranged girlfriend Jodi, played by Marlee Matlin. And as the two smile and embrace, what are the lyrics we hear in the background?

"Dear Mr. President, were you a lonely boy? How can you say no child is left behind? We're not dumb and we're not blind! ... What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away? What kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?"

Um, who let the protest singer onto the set right in the middle of the final scene of the season? It's tough to imagine that even Matlin or Beals could watch that scene without groaning in agony.

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