The L Word: Generation Q Review: LA Times (Season 1 Episode 4)
It’s Shane’s birthday on The L Word: Generation Q Season 1 Episode 4, “LA Times,” which makes for an episode packed with nostalgia.
From the sappy birthday slideshow to Shane’s decision to name her new bar after Dana, this is an episode designed to tug at the heartstrings — but it’s also one that champions emotional honestly, as many characters find themselves confronting histories of self-destructive behavior.
No matter how badly someone wants to change, it’s hard to break old habits without first addressing the insecurities that created them — and while Bette, Shane, and Sophie seem to have made peace with that process, the rest are still largely practicing avoidance.
So far The L Word: Generation Q has done a really solid job of tying Sophie and Finley together with characters from the original series, but Dani and Micah still feel outsiders orbiting the rest of the group at a distance.
In Micah’s case, this is because his storyline thus far revolves entirely around his confusing relationship with José. Almost nothing has been revealed about his family or work life, which makes it hard to get a sense of what’s motivating him on a personal level.
He insists that he’s been clear with José about what he wants, but from an audience perspective this isn’t true at all — we really have no idea what Micah wants or what he’s thinking.
Dani, on the other hand, has been developed fairly thoroughly, but there’s still an emotional barrier between her and the rest of the characters that makes it hard to buy fully into her relationships with them.
Much of this emotional distance is a byproduct of Dani’s history as a fixer for her father’s company. She’s had to learn how to set personal feelings aside in order to do her job properly, and that training has carried over into her role as the public relations coordinator for Bette’s campaign.
The way those behaviors have permeated Dani’s various personal relationships feels authentic and reasonable but does make her a difficult character to connect with.
Dani’s struggle to overcome that habit of distancing herself from complex emotional situations is part of the episode’s broader theme, which deals with patterns of self-sabotage.
One of the episode’s best scenes features Bette and Shane passing a blunt back and forth, each of them confessing to carrying on an affair with an already-partnered woman.
It’s nice to see two of the original series’ most self-destructive characters connect in this way, bonding over a shared recognition that habits are hard to break. Both of them are aware that their actions fit within larger patterns of behavior, and that they keep making the same mistakes over and over again despite an earnest desire to change.
One very welcome development is that Bette’s messy predicaments in The L Word: Generation Q feel less like problems of her own making and more like genuine conundrums born of impossibly lofty expectations.
She’s supposed to be a good mother, a loyal friend, a public figure subject to intense scrutiny, and self-possessed individual all at once, even when those roles have conflicting personal requirements. Bette’s refusal to stop seeing Felicity, therefore, speaks to the tension between her right to seek personal happiness, her sense of duty to the public, and her complicated relationship to moral truth.
Shane’s storyline, based around her affair with Lena and Tess’s ensuing suspicion, feels a lot less potent — mostly because it doesn’t seem to push Shane’s character into new emotional territory the way Bette’s does.
Moreover, Jamie Clayton is much too talented and charismatic as a performer to be wasted on such a passive character, one who seemingly only exists to get cheated on. Hopefully, there’s more to come for Tess, who deserves way better than the treatment she’s received from both Lena and Shane thus far.
I’d like to see the show grapple a little more with what it looks like to try and steer your friends toward personal growth, rather than simply excusing their screw-ups out of a sense of loyalty.
Then again, The L Word: Generation Q feels most engrossing when it leans into its soapy origins — the franchise is famous for characters who are equally as infuriating as they are endearing, and the show is better when everyone is allowed to get a little messy.
What did you think of this episode of The L Word: Generation Q? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The L Word: Generation Q airs Sundays at 10/9c on Showtime.
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Ariel Udel
Ariel fell in love with storytelling on the night Flight 815 crashed on a mysterious island, and has been blogging about television ever since. She has an affinity for messy female anti-heroes and an enduring love of Battlestar Galactica, Xena: Warrior Princess, Lost, and Halt and Catch Fire.