Tuesday 15 November 2016

The L Word, Season 4 (2007)



So yesterday I remarked that there was only one reason to watch Premiers Désirs, and that in this day and age you can get it from media with much better acting and writing.  It's therefore apropos that this TV show happened to cycle into my schedule right after it.

Now let's be clear up front.  The L Word is sudsy melodrama (even more this season than ever before), and it certainly has its share of writing missteps over its 70 episode run.  "Pretty much the whole of season six" being most of them (but we'll get to that).  The thing is, in the context of sudsy melodrama, the show delivers.  Scenes that aim for laughs are actually funny; those that aim to be awkward will leave you feeling uncomfortable, and so on.  And the cast is uniformly strong, delivering solid performances that make you care about their characters' fates.  Sometimes because you want them to die horribly, mind you, but you're certainly not ambivalent.

Plus I guess there's quite a lot of sexy naked ladies, if that's a thing you like.

Overall, season 4 of the show is basically more of the same shenanigans we've had before, but a bit crazier on the whole.  That's mainly because this is where the writers finally gave up on getting the audience to like Jenny Schecter and just turned her into the narcissistic nutjob that most viewers already considered to be.  Oh, and there are subplots involving Shane becoming an underwear model, and Helena becoming a professional poker player, as well, because that kind of thing happens all the time.  Plus in the season's final episode Alice either (1) hallucinates an entire conversation or (2) gets visited by a ghost.

So yeah: sudsy melodrama.

If you've enjoyed the show so far, and don't mind that it's veering more over the top, you'll probably enjoy season 4 as well.

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