Get Yer Unreal Lesbians Here

I first saw the poster at the bus stop. "Same Sex Different City." Initial thought -- smart, clever. Upon closer look I saw some of the most gorgeously made up and Lara Flynn Boyle-skinny women. I didn’t know whether to be titillated or disgusted, I guess I was both. I realized that the first lesbian show on TV couldn’t have regular-looking lesbians on it -- everybody has to look better than 99.99 percent of the American public. That’s what TV is about nowadays.

Optimistically, I had hoped that "The L Word" would have been exempt from that rule; it’s supposed to be more than just another tawdry soap opera. The series was created, produced and the pilot was written by a credentialed lesbian, Ilene Chaiken, and directed by another, Rose Troche. And it’s supposed to be the first show that reflects the lives of lesbians in America, who have not yet had a show to call their own. But it’s not. It’s a soap opera, but it’s a lesbian soap opera. So for every negative thing I say, remember that this is the first show of its kind and hopefully the next one will be better, and the one after that will be better still.

You have to give props to Showtime for producing "Queer as Folk" and now "The L Word." They spent a lot of money promoting this show. The media hype around the show has been crazy. Magazine covers. Premiere parties. You’d think they had discovered something new. They tried to make these women seem like rock stars. I heard they even sent the stars on a lesbian cruise during premiere week. I couldn’t believe the press materials that I was sent by Showtime. So glossy. So expensive. So unlesbian. The pink materials with the actresses posed was ringed with many different L words -- lush, lashes, lyrical, lofty, looking, loose, latent. One word that was very hard to find was the word "lesbian." It seemed as though they were trying to make The L Word stand for just about everything except lesbian.

Showtime is smart. Lesbians are starting to catch up to gay guys as a market segment (even though women still make less money to the dollar than men), and the world is getting more comfortable with queer people in general. I mean if "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" can be a hit on "Must See Thursday" (though it airs after the gayest show on TV, "Will & Grace"), we must all be ready to see some dykes.

To watch the pilot I got myself invited to one of the "L Word" parties that were happening across the country to celebrate the launch of the series. My friend Esther took me along to a nice lesbian couple’s coop in Brooklyn where 20 lesbians and one gay man settled down with some fondue in anticipation of seeing lesbians on screen. It was a very cool group. There were teachers, event planners, dancers, actors and bi-sexual women in politics. Everyone was excited, to say the least. The evening did not start out well as the show kicked off with a commercial for a Brittany Spears concert. The boos died down when Marianne Faithfull’s luscious voice welcomed us to the world of "The L Word."

Jennifer Beals, the 1980s Flashdance icon, is one half of the couple at the heart of the show. As Bette Porter, the director of the California Arts Center, she is in seven-year relationship with Tina Kennard, played by Laurel Holloman. They decide that in order to save their relationship they are going to have a baby and Tina quits her job as a movie development executive in order to prepare herself to get pregnant. Really? How many lesbians can afford to do that? It get even stupider when they go to a therapist to the stars who is kind enough to tell them what they already know, that their sex life sucks.

When Tina interprets something the therapist says with the phrase, "the lesbian urge to merge," we shriek in dismay. It’s only 15 minutes into the show and the cliches are already running rampant. The first episode also focuses heavily on the straight couple who live next door to Bette and Tina. Tim, (Eric Mabius) the hot young swim coach, who wears wife-beater shirts all the time and his brooding writer girlfriend, Jenny (Mia Kirshner), who moves from the Midwest to be with him. And thanks to them, you see less girl-on-girl action than boy-on-girl action -- a directorial choice that pisses off my fellow Brooklynites. There was so much straight sex in this episode that it seemed to be made for frat boys or to make straight people feel comfortable. Inevitably. however, the straight girl falls for one of lesbians -- Marina (Karina Lombard) fondly remembered as Tom Cruise’s one night stand in The Firm. When straight girl kisses the lesbian she runs home, cries and gives her boyfriend a guilt-ridden blow job. And when she has hot lesbian sex with Marina and then crawls into bed with Tim, the boyfriend says "you smell different" and he likes the "other" smell better.