I had hoped, briefly, that Baby Bar #2 had vanished into the vortex, like the Lez Girls negative and the character of Papi, but alas. It exists and Tess is inside it, drinking, because they’re really dedicated to keeping this relapse storyline alive. The house music screams, making me give in oh I can’t help it, I think there’s too much that I need to erase!
Well look who’s here it’s Shane, hello!
Squabble #17: what do I need to do to see myself in a better mood
In the Ring: Shane vs. Tess
Content: Shane confesses to Tess that she in fact does not desire a second bar, which is an important moment for us as lesbians who have known all along that she doesn’t desire a second bar.
But then something magical happens — Shane has an idea of her own! What if instead of opening a second bar (The Jenny Schecter Memorial Tavern), they opened a hair salon (Jenny’s Hair by Shane for Wax)? Shane darts around the room describing where everything would go and maybe honestly this is the first time we’ve actually heard Shane declare what she wants for herself?
She’s always just gone with the flow, gotten into the passenger seat with various hotties who’ve got their own ideas of who she is and what she should be doing with her life until she gets itchy or feels small and then blows it all up. Usually, things come to Shane — both girls and gigs. And true, she bought the first bar and started poker night of her own volition, but the former happened when she was going through a divorce and she seemed mostly happy about how happy it made Tess (who she barely knew, but!) and the latter at least was mostly about just needing some cash. She didn’t seem as wide-eyed and passionate about either of those things as she does about this, here, now.
Shane’s been missing cutting hair, the thing she was always good at. Tess could be at The Dana Fairbanks Memorial Tavern and Shane could run the hair salon. It’s honestly a really solid business proposal, and a much better idea than Bar #2.
But Tess can’t see any of that, maybe ’cause she’s drunk or grieving or inconsistently written. I don’t know what to make of this, besides that it’s nice to see Shane take the initiative to express her desires instead of only acknowledging them once she’s backed into a corner, or not at all. Their foundation was likely always gonna be tough — Shane being the one who slept with Lena while Tess was still dating her (a similar problem arose for Shane and Jenny, due to Shane sleeping with Nikki). There’ll always be some resentment there, some sense of someone owing someone else something.
Tess: I think it’s bullshit. Why do you get to make up all the rules??
Shane: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t! Tess, it’s just an idea —
Tess: No, you do! You get to fuck whoever you want—
Shane: I apologized, we’ve been over that—
Tess: Yeah yeah yeah, and now you’re just coming in here and blowing this whole thing up! This was my dream. You are so fucking self-centered it’s exhausting. It’s like if you’re not happy, no one’s allowed to be.
Shane: I can’t do this anymore.
This is objectively bonkers, “if you’re not happy, no one’s allowed to be” is a very inaccurate evaluation of Shane’s personality from someone she’s apparently been dating for well over a year.
Anyhow, Tess says fuck you and throws a wine bottle at the wall. As she storms out, Shane looks back at her with a tinge of bewilderment.
Who Wins? Shane
Back at The Aloce Show, Sophie’s abuzz with the thrill of leadership! She’s finally got the chance to be in charge of something she’s wanted to take over, secretly, this whole time, and now she is, and she’s going to fucking kill it.
Dre’s here in an interesting outfit and Dani’s talking them through all of it, and Dre wants to know if they’re just going to act like this morning didn’t happen. But Dani says this moment isn’t about her and Dre! It’s about Dre!
Bette and Tina have foregone their fancy dinner reservations for hamburgers at the Frosty Freeze, and Bette’s practicing all of her deep mindfulness techniques and Tina would like to find this man and destroy him.
Bette says Angie will never trust them with the slings and arrows of her romantic life if they react to revelations of problematic relationships by murdering the responsible party.
Tina: I feel like we’re losing her.
Bette: We are! She’s pushing us away — and that’s exactly what she’s supposed to be doing right now.
Tina: I hate it, I hate how it feels.
Bette: I know, me too, but we want her to carve out her own path, right? And she’s ready. And she’s so fucking smart. But it doesn’t matter how smart you are. You’re going to fuck up along the way.
Bette says it’s so sexy to see Tina stand up for Angie and they hold each other ordering their burgers like two teenagers in matching airbrushed t-shirts in line for the Raptor at Cedar Point.
Meanwhile, Alice is out on the streets — as in, literally standing in the middle of a street where she could be plowed over at any time, just ask Cat from Lip Service — hunting for her Little Piddles tiny friend.
Alice realizes that perhaps she lost her cat as karmic retribution for her past actions and says to the universe: “Okay I get it. I stand by my reasons for doing it but I should’ve apologized for the rest. I get it, it’s payback. But karma shouldn’t hurt cats!”
And then! Miracle! Alice hears Little Piddles meowing and locates the fiesty feline inside an actual tree. In blatant disregard of the Ani DiFranco lyric, And what if there are no damsels in distress / What if I knew that and I called your bluff? / Don’t you think every kitten figures out how to get down / Whether or not you ever show up? she calls the number everybody’s been dying to call all season — 911.
And it was in this moment that I knew, that it all flashed before my eyes, what was coming around the corner for us. What this has all been leading to!
We then cut to the office of Professor Hendrix Hendrix Fitz the Worst, where Angie’s shown up to apologize for all that but finds him packing up his office. She asks if he was fired and he says absolutely not, he chose to resign three weeks before the end of the semester. What is this man doing? You cannot simply quit a class you’re teaching mid-semseter!
“I could’ve told whoever I wanted that it was me in the first place,” Angie says, again. Oh my sweet summer child. That does not matter at all!
According to Hendrix Fitz, this job was preventing him from doing what absolutely nobody asked for him to do: spend more time working on his book. Angie confirms he no longer works here, tells him to stop talking, and then shuts the door so I don’t have to watch them make out!
Remember this?
We exit that upsetting scenario to find Carrie and Misty cuddling and watching Grey’s Anatomy. Misty’s getting into it and I’d like to know if they’ve approached the Calizona scenes yet but alas I rarely get what I desire in this life.
They smile at each other and they start making out a little bit and then Carrie moves Misty’s hand suggestively and so Misty asks if she’s sure and then Carrie says she is and then Carrie starts crying because my god isn’t being gay just a fantastic journey and aren’t we all blessed to be going on it.
“I didn’t expect to feel this much, you know? I almost died, and it hasn’t really sunk in yet I don’t think,” says Carrie. That’s how I felt after watching the last two episodes of The L Word Generation Q Season 2, like I had almost died but it hadn’t sunk in yet.
Misty tells her she’s not going anywhere and neither is Carrie and so Carrie grabs her face and they are kissing harder now.
I’d really like to thank Carrie and Misty for representing a typical Saturday in my own lesbian life with my girlfriend: going on a hike, watching bad television, eating take-out and making out.
We return to the Frosty Freeze where our Mommis are eating burgers on a bench. Bette asks Tina if she misses Los Angeles and Tina says not really, she has Bette so she can be anywhere! Bette feels the same way about Tina. They just wanna be together forever like sea otters.
“What if we got married?” Tina asks, rifling through her french fries. “You know, threw a party for our friends, something like that. Something fun.”
What’s about to happen is super cute and I love it but unfortunately I am who I am and I must first note the following: Bette and Tina already were married — Season 6 ended with Bette and Tina planning to move to New York with Angie and tie the knot and Generation Q began with the assertion from the showrunner that they’d been divorced for two years because Tina had left Bette and then fallen in love with someone else. (Granted, they wouldn’t have been able to get legally married in New York until 2011 or California until 2015, but perhaps they intended to get hitched in Canada or Massachusetts or something. At some point they must have gotten legally married though, otherwise no divorce would’ve been necessary!)
So I think it’s the language here that confused me — why say “married” instead of “re-married” or “married again” or any type of brief acknowledgment of a past marriage? Why mention having a party for their friends without nodding towards what they’d done the first time around? (e.g., “We didn’t have a party for our friends the first time, maybe we could do it now?”) Is this an intentional obfuscation from the characters or an incidental oversight from the writers?
Thank you for listening I will now continue as if none of that matters!
So, then Tina turns back to Bette with fries in her mouth and Bette has the box with the ring in it right out there and says that’s what dinner was supposed to be for.
And Tina puts on the ring and they smile and lean into each other and it’s so sweet and I had no choice but to tear up!
Back at The Sophie Show, Dre is performing the song they wrote about Dani this morning with backup singers and a drummer pulled out of thin air through the magic of Hollywood.
Their song runs under the next few scenes as the episode races towards its end:
Finley gets home, lies on her bed, hears Misty and Carrie boning, and literally googles “LA apartments,” an interesting first step! But really: Finley, you just bought a car and you’re looking to go back to school and you’ve currently got your own room in a great house in a nice neighborhood … perhaps now is not the time!
Tina and Bette are fingering each other’s fingers like lesbians as actual fireworks go off in the sky!
Angie… watches Hendrix Fitz put his pants on? Ew stop!
Tess pours Shane’s favorite brand of Vodka, “Vodka,” into a glass and dances around her little bar that she owns ’cause it’s her dream.
Back at the Shane Shack, Shane’s packing up Tess’s belongings for her, which is certainly a move!
We return over and over to Dre’s performance and I will say that they are doing a truly incredible job I have never been prouder of a former Autostraddle Calendar Model than I am of Dre right now!
And then we return to Dani’s Castle in the Sky, and I’m just now noticing that the exterior of her building looks like one of those behemoths that aren’t real and have no windows because they’re just filled with telephone wires or whatever?
But as soon as they get all the way inside, Dre starts packing their own bag. They’re gonna bounce. They meant what they said earlier, they’re falling for Dani, and if Dani doesn’t feel the same way they’d rather head home, protect their heart and cut their losses. This is a little bonkers — just ’cause someone’s not ready to say “I love you” after (checks watch) two weeks doesn’t mean they’re never gonna be ready to say it!
I would like for the record to have my original note for this scene, written before the scene took place, preserved in the Lesbian Herstory Archives:
please let this firefighter be tasha
Alice is too consumed by her reunion with Mr PP to notice what the rest of us are gradually noticing, egged on by the camera’s strategic positioning behind the firefighter handing over the kitten. But once our local American hero removes her firefighter helmet-mask and says, “Hey, Alice” — well, I’d recognize that voice anywhere.
It is my number one L Word Crush, Tasha Williams!!!
And I wanted Alice to soften in this moment, to lean into this person we’re all still a little bit obsessed with, this opposites attract relationship that required a lot of work to work but also maybe brought something out in both of them that they needed and would’ve been resistant to otherwise.
But she doesn’t. She almost does, betraying herself for a split second, before hardening, narrowing her eyebrows: “Oh my God. That is so annoying.”
Tasha shakes her head.
Lesbian Squabble #18: But You Still Crumble at My Name
In the Ring: Alice and Tasha, just like old times!
Content: Alice says she’s had “as you know… a very, VERY bad day,” and Tasha’s unclear on how exactly she’d know that, it’s not like she’s got a google alert set up in Alice’s name.
“Right, ’cause you hate celebrity culture it’s just so vapid and so meaningless…” Alice mocks her. Tasha says Alice hasn’t changed one bit, which isn’t a compliment. Then Alice strides back and forth, thanking the entire squad profusely for their service reuniting her with her kitten, “present company excluded,” and Tasha stands there, grounded as always, shaking her head, rolling her eyes, giving that little smile of bewilderment at Alice’s overall deal.
And Alice has turned, and is walking away, when Tasha goes, “Alice, wait.”
So Alice slowly turns back, clutching her kitten to her chest, eyes wide open—
“There’s paperwork,” Tasha declares, before walking away. Alice hardens again, and follows her.
Who Wins? Tasha. Handily.
The Round-Up:
Squabbles: 5 this episode, 18 Total
Sexy Moments: We Are Never Having Sex Again Sorry
Quote of the Week:
