The L Word: Generation Q – Lessons learned from the season finale
We left off with Tina’s return, Alice and Nat discussing what their relationship with Gigi meant for them, Shane agreeing to have a child, Dani and Sophie being at rock bottom, and Pierce quitting Bette.
Dani and Sophie grew so much apart that Sophie ends up cheating on Dani with Finley.
We start off with Sophie’s grandmother getting into a hospital, where Sophie complains to Finley that (after she asked her not to) Dani didn’t visit the hospital. Finley reassures her that it’s okay, she even prays with Sophie. Yep, that’s right, I’m not really a fan of this Finley/Sophie idea. Why do we need an artificially created drama to end a relationship? Why couldn’t this be solved normally, without cheating? Anyway, Dani at last gets to the hospital, where Sophie is reading women’s literature to her grandma, hoping that it will make her so angry that she wakes up. After a fleeting moment of idyll, Bette’s smear video gets online, forcing Dani to take action, and she rushes to Bette. Finley comforts Sophie, who ends up kissing her in the hospital hallway. I read an article on Autostraddle.com about which plotlines they liked and disliked, and I have to agree with them that the writers of the show didn’t for a second make us believe that Dani and Sophie could work. I would have liked it, but they didn’t even try to sell it to me, so what’s the point? Why did they have to twist it around like this with a cheating narrative as if there was no other way to have them break up? I just can’t get down with the Sophie/Finley plot, especially after how Dani stood by Sophie to the end. She shouldn’t have stayed with Dani if the relationship no longer made her happy, but Sophie should’ve broken up with Dani correctly, who practically built her life on her.
Better to move on to a storyline I can better identify with: Alice’s. I just love the dynamic of this throuple. They work so well, even a simple morning preparation is so cool to watch. The finale is heartbreaking though: Nat and Gigi reconcile, wanting to continue as a throuple, but they can’t communicate this properly to Alice who obviously gets totally offended. I’m not implying that her feelings aren’t valid, but I think she is overreacting, and I have to give it to Dorka, with whom we had this conversation at the beginning of the season, that Alice can’t share. I was naively convinced that it would play out differently. Well, it didn’t.
Nat’s big romantic reconciliation attempt in the season finale is a hard one to swallow, because once I got the throuple storyline, which I think could’ve worked perfectly well, it’s hard to accept anything less, but I’m afraid I’ll have to, and surprisingly, I grew fond of Nat’s character. The future of Alice’s show is still uncertain, but it looks like Drew has been removed from the picture, because what’s a white cishetero man got to do in a crew of a queer show anyway?
Bette and Tina’s storyline is cut short, but we still get a new version of the iconic Bette and Tina scene. Watching the dinner sequence, everyone – even me, even though I knew Laurel Holloman didn’t have a contract for further episodes – was rooting for Angie to have a happy lesbian family again. Until Tina lastly reveals that her current girlfriend has proposed, and she wants to tell Angie, but she thinks it’d be best if they shared the big news with Angie together. Bette feels like she’s been kicked in the stomach, and so do I.
Leaving the events with Tina behind, Bette mostly focuses on the election. In the final race both candidates are at 49%, so Bette needs one more district to win. Dani and Bette lock eyes on the screen, and after a minute of tense updates, Milner emerges as the winner. Which truly surprised me because I thought this wasn’t a real competition. I was so convinced from the beginning that Bette would win, because I thought a losing Bette wouldn’t be interesting storywise. We’ll see what the second season brings.
VWe also get to learn that Bette’s position in the Milner municipality is only nominal, because further pharmaceutical expansion has been settled with Dani’s father. Dani also tells Bette that the Milner position was just a scam, and this is when Bette fully realizes that she lost the campaign. As for closure we get to see a very mature Angie dealing with her mother’s defeat, and we see the two of them going for a hike that involves some liberating shouting, and a possible new romance with Maya, the journalist.
As Shane and Quiara go for their first ultrasound check-up, Quiara cries when she hears the fetal heartbeat. Later we see her sitting alone in a restaurant, waiting for Shane, who finally shows up and tells Quiara that she didn’t feel anything during the ultrasound. Quiara reassures her that there’s nothing wrong with that, she for sure will feel everything when she needs to, there is nothing to be fixed. I’d like to highlight this moment because soon after we get to the lowest point of their relationship.
Following the miscarriage Shane is trying to process the situation; hoping to help Quiara she starts putting away the baby stuff, but this only makes Quiara angry, and she starts yelling at Shane that she still wants to have a child. She is basically accusing Shane that if she doesn’t want to try again immediately, it’s because she didn’t want the first baby either. Which is actually true, because Shane indeed didn’t want to have a child, she just got caught up in the situation and went on with it. However, accusing her right after the miscarriage that she must be relieved now while she was just asking for time, is a bit strong, I think. Unfortunately, this Shane/Quiara plotline isn’t very consistent and thus not authentic at all.
Micah’s story takes a back seat as per usual, but we learn that his mom regularly visits California to do party drugs, and how she struggles with her son’s transition. We get to find out that José has a husband, which again raises the question: why just now? Why the sudden big twist in such a marginalized character’s arc that we learned almost nothing about the whole season?
Not even that much is revealed about Tess, who only got a few seconds of screen time in the last two episodes, much to my chagrin.
The storylines sped up in the last couple of episodes, we got a few fine closures, and some that feel neither authentic nor consistent. Looking back, I got more than I expected from this season, but in a „grasp all, lose all” kind of way, despite trying to surpass the original series, the reboot’s representation of the LGBTQ+ community is still extremely superficial, because the separate scenes of these characters don’t add up to make a whole.
Translated by Amy Soto
