Welcome my dearest friends to a fresh, pre-chilled recap of the second episode of the third season of The L Word Generation Q, brought to you by the same network that brought you the original L Word, a meditative mini-series about getting your vagina rejuvenated and the iconic exes you run into along the way. This L Word Generation Q Episode 302 recap is chock-full of high-stakes drama, great outfits, high-brow art and low-brow art!!
Every season of this program I remember anew what a delight it is to write about and consequently discuss with all of you here in the comments!!!
We open where we departed: Bette and Tina playing tonsil hockey in the living room, their innocent brokenhearted daughter Angie walking in upon them, looking for solace regarding her split with Jordi and finding instead that her Moms are looking for solace in each other’s gaping maws.
Bette and Tina attempt to play it cool but fail immediately. “Are you seriously gonna act like I just didn’t see? Just — ew—” Angie shares before turning around and going right back to school!
And then — Bette and Tina, who haven’t had sex with each other for a significant number of years and are wet as the Everglades for each other, let Angie walk right out that door, rationalizing that they’ll talk to Angie tomorrow, NBD. And then they check in that this is real and not a mistake and then they return to the beating heart of L Word Fandom: boning each other.
Sexy Moment #2: Did You Know That This is Bette & Tina’s 11th Sex Scene of The L Word Franchise
The Players: Bette and Tina
The Pick-Up: “I mean it feels so real to me.” // “Yeah it is real.”
Content: Bette leads Tina into the bedroom because that’s what Bette does, she leads, and they undress each other and Bette’s got her hands running over Tina’s body like it’s a work of art she wrote her thesis about. “It’s been a long time,” Bette says. “I’m… different.” But Tina says she’s so, so beautiful and Bette’s like NO YOU ARE. Okay you both are!! What a Feeling!!
We then move gamely forward across the river and through the woods to where Gigi and Dani are starting the morning out with a piping hot cup of Fighting.
Lesbian Squabble #2: Step by Step
In the Ring: Dani vs. Gigi
Content: Nat wants to get to know Dani a little bit before allowing her to move in with her ex-wife and potentially corrupting her children — Eli and Olive, notorious L.A. Times cover stars best known for vomiting into a crock pot. Dani is somehow insulted by the prospect of having dinner with Nat.
“You have to stop making me feel bad for having kids,” Gigi says. Dani wants Gigi to stop talking to her like she’s a child! Gigi wants Dani to stop acting like a child and so do I.
Then, Gigi’s phone buzzes because of course Nat is calling Gigi at this moment, which causes Dani to leave in a huff, filled with the righteous anger of a person who does not have children and clearly does not understand what having children entails, perhaps because her father is a monster.
Who Wins? Gigi because she’s right and Dani is wrong.
Back at the Shess Shack, Tess is trying to seduce Shane into buying the second bar! She’s whispering about how well their bar’s doing, how it’s the only lesbian bar in L.A., and just imagine… what if they had two lesbian bars… right next to each other… in the same neighborhood…
“Oh, it would be so glam,” Tess whispers, incorrectly.
“Are you manipulating me?” Shane asks, reminding Tess that she wasn’t born yesterday as she flips Tess over, returning to her rightful throne as East Hollywood’s Top Top.
Shane is very gently reminding Tess she simply needs time to think about it, but Tess is firmly opposed to calm, rational decision-making and negotiation. In fact, she subsequently takes a call regarding an inspector coming to check out the property that afternoon. I think Shane’s best next move here, in response to Tess’s accelerated action plan for an idea Shane has yet to approve, would be to buy the second bar and then sell it to Chuck E. Cheese.
Over at FiSoMiMar’s, Finley’s also making big moves: she built an easel! For game night! A beloved pastime of the sober community! I love game night, especially when everybody realizes how fun it is to follow the rules, which I know by heart. Sophie agrees with me that game nights are cute. Also Sophie hopes Finley’s good at games because she “sucks… at losing.”
Finley wants to invite Micah and Maribel which pushes Sophie to acknowledge that womp womp actually Maribel hates Finley! So maybe they could just do some one-on-one Pictionary? Finley, possessing a social confidence that is perhaps the exact opposite of my own, is certain she can fix Maribel’s loathing by simply putting in some “hang time” with her. “I’m gonna easel her into it,” Finley ker-pows before heading upstairs.
Surprise for everyone, though: Maribel heard the whole convo! And she is a soft no on game night.
Sophie quickly convinces Maribel to put her aversion to Finley aside and give herself over to the joy of sober group gaming and Maribel relents. Sisterhood is powerful!
When you want to go where everybody knows your shipper name, there’s only one place to go: The Dana Fairbanks Memorial Tavern. Bette and Tina arrive hand-in-hand, full of promises about open dialogue and taking it slow, and Alice and Shane are, once again, pretty stoked.
However, it turns out Bette and Tina’s fingers have been too far up each other’s vaginal canals to give their own daughter a ring to learn why she’d stopped by on her first night of school. Uncle Shane’s got the scoop: Jordi dumped her. Well, Bette Porter never liked that girl, not from the very beginning!
Ivy texts Shane that she’s “still waiting on [her] haircut” which is like, ok everybody calm down. Anyhow, tonight is Marcus Allenwood’s post-mortem gallery opening, and everybody’s coming including Alice and her “age-appropriate date,” an actor who was in a Marvel movie or maybe a DC movie because what’s the difference you know???
Alice ducks out to take a call from JoJo Siwa’s people and Bette and Tina don’t know who JoJo Siwa is which somehow inspires a conversational tangent about how Alice lives in an imaginary world of unicorns, rainbows and Oompa-Loompas? Which honestly is a much better description of JoJo Siwa than Alice but I digress!
Game Night is here and Finley is getting the festivities off on the wrong foot by congratulating Marbiel and Micah on the “goo-goo-gah-gah” baby? The baby that:
- Micah has not consented to having
- Neither of them have taken any concrete steps to create
- Sophie told Finley about in confidence
“It’s gonna be cute, a little combo of both your faces,” Finley continues down this intermediate-intensity hike off a cliff. “Wait no. You’re gonna have to choose. How are you gonna choose? You guys both have such good faces?”
The thing about any two people who want to make a baby together is that truly no congratulations are in order until like week 16 of an actual pregnancy because you know, so much can go wrong. And for two people who don’t produce sperm, it can also be incredibly expensive! Luckily on this show everybody is rich, even the poor people.
“Look, we’re not having a baby,” Micah interrupts Finley.
“We’re just talking about having a baby,” Maribel clarifies.
And then Finley does the Finley thing — where when she fucks up she declares herself a fuck-up and sulkily exists the room. I look forward to Finley perhaps learning some more mature methods to dealing with self-loathing and social errors at some point.
Maribel flicks a piece of food at Sophie and chastises her for having a big mouth.
We then journey to the storied Zakarian Gallery, where Bette and Dani are outside in the soft pansexual lighting of a hot night in the city, discussing Dani’s recent success as an event planner. But Dani wants to get personal — “I asked Gigi to move in with me,” she tells Bette. “But she said we had to talk to Nat about it first. As a trio. She’s lost her mind!”
Bette is like yeah babe, that’s called parenting, get a clue! Bette points out that Gigi’s not prioritizing Nat, she’s prioritizing family, which’s something Dani should want in her partner. This is excellent advice, which Bette follows up with honestly incredibly intense inquiry: “The question is: are you ready for that? Are you ready to be a parent?”
We then shoot back to FiSoMi’s, where a riveting game of Pictionary is underway — Sophie’s sketching a bird and a piece of matzoh? — and Micah is reminding Maribel that he’s only 28, and Maribel is reminding Micah that he has mentioned that a few times.
“My Mom had me when I was 26, look how I turned out!” says notoriously mentally stable sketch artist Sarah Finley.
“My Mom had me when she was 24 and look how great I turned out!” I, another notoriously mentally stable person, say to the television set.
The squabble that subsequently unfolds between Micah and Maribel takes a few scenes to play itself out. But it begins right here right now:
Squabble #3: Baby Baby Baby
In the Ring: Micah v Maribel
I love this snippet of dialogue:
Micah: “Did you ever think that I might wanna carry?”
Maribel: “No” […] “Do you?”
Micah: “No. No but that’s not the point. The point is that you didn’t think of me!”
In the background of this exchange, Sophie and Finley are crushing at Pictionary but unfortunately nobody cares because of goo-goo-gah-gah.
