“To L and Back” L Word Podcast Episode 603: LMFAO With Rhea Butcher!

Comic and tie dye enthusiast Rhea Butcher joins us for a little LMFAO-ing on Episode 603, LMFAO! This week the whole group gets some very concerning text messages regarding Shane and Jenny’s sexual activities, someone has stolen THE NEGATIVE, Alice saves a life, Shane does Eric Mabius’s hair, Bette tries to fire Jodi and ends up getting fired, and so much more!

The usual:

Riese: Hi, I’m Riese!

Carly: And I’m Carly!

Riese: And this is—

Carly and Riese: To L and Back!

Carly: A podcast!

Riese: About The L Word.

Carly: All of The L Word.

Riese: That was cute!

Carly: I know, that was cute.

Riese: Every single episode.

Carly: Every episode of The L Word, so many episodes, so that we’re, in fact, now on season six… which… are these even episodes?

Riese: Yeah, or are they just experiments? Yeah.

Carly: I think they’re experiments.

Riese: Variety shows.

Carly: I think they’re scientific experiments, actually.

Riese: That’s true.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: You can’t forget science, that’s what I always say every day.

Carly: Science is so important.

Riese: But I have forgotten a lot of science, I was really bad with science.

Carly: I mean, I’ve forgotten a lot of the specifics, but I would say that it’s still a part of my life. I am an organism in the world.

Riese: Did you get the… That’s fine. No, it was stupid. No one needs to hear it. Sorry. I’m just minimizing myself like always.

Carly: Riese, stop it.

Riese: Speaking of things that should be minimal, today, we’re talking about episode 603, that’s the third episode of the sixth season of The L Word, a hit program on the network Showtime that aired in 2009 back when we were young, or younger?

Carly: When we were 11 years younger than we are now.

Riese: Yeah, and so much less mature.

Carly: Oh, yeah.

Riese: We’ve grown up.

Carly: We are so much more mature now.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Oh my God. This episode’s title is “LMFAO,” which immediately made me think of perhaps, the most famous uncle-nephew duo in music, the band LMFAO. I mean what a time, right?

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Did you know that, that one guy was an uncle and the other guy was the nephew? Like those two guys?

Riese: I didn’t, I didn’t. I didn’t know they were related. Wow.

Carly: Our very special guest is also shaking their head because they also didn’t know that. I think it’s time to introduce them. Rhea Butcher, are you there? Are you on the line?

Rhea: Oh, yeah. Oh, I’m here. You got me on the line. I’m right here.

Carly: Welcome.

Rhea Butcher: What’s up? That was such a great — just brought me right in. I love just the, “Get the hell on here.”

Carly: Yeah, just get in here, let’s talk about this group, LMFAO.

Rhea: Yeah, dude.

Carly: I went and saw…

Rhea: You saw them?

Carly: I saw them perform live in New York once…

Rhea: Wow.

Carly: … because I was working at Logo and we did a bunch of stuff with them inexplicably.

Rhea: Are they gay or something?

Carly: No, not at all.

Rhea: I don’t know shit about — okay, of course not.

Carly: No, not at all. All I know is that—

Riese: No one was gay then.

Carly: No.

Rhea: Yeah, that’s right.

Carly: No, that was before anyone was gay. I wasn’t even… no, I was super gay, I was working at Logo. And me and a bunch of my coworkers, we all went to their show, and someone pulled a fire alarm, or like, we almost died, and we got evacuated by the New York Fire Department, and that’s my relationship to the band, LMFAO.

Rhea: Wow, yeah, I don’t even…

Carly: Why is this episode called this?

Riese: Because of the beginning—

Carly: I guess because Bett can’t stop laughing.

Rhea: Yeah, the whole beginning thing. And then, also, the outro…

Riese: And the end.

Rhea: Yeah.

Carly: So, the beginning and the end.

Rhea: The beginning and the end.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: Yeah.

Carly: That ties it more together than a lot of episode titles on this show, so that’s something.

Riese: Yeah, most of them are pretty bad.

Rhea: Yeah. “Lagrima de Oro” is one that sticks out in my head.

Carly: Greatest title.

Riese: Yeah. Well, the best episode title is coming up this season.

Carly: It is.

Riese: And that is, of course —

Riese and Carly simultaneously: Lactose Intolerant.

Riese: Yeah. Can’t wait for that one.

Rhea: They really did it to themselves with that shit. You know what I mean?

Carly: Yeah. Yeah.

Rhea: And it’s like, you love to just see… It’s like, yeah man, I get it, of course, you would do that, and then, here you are, 20 years later… it’s not that long, but.

Riese: Ah, ha.

Rhea: My goodness, hearing you guys say that was that long ago, I cannot believe it, I was 26 years old. What?

Carly: It’s crazy. Crazy, I know.

Rhea: Oh boy.

Carly: Okay wait, so…

Rhea: I can’t believe I was ever that young, you know?

Carly: Okay. First, before we even get into it…

Rhea: Yeah, yeah, yep.

Carly: Tell the audience, tell our wonderful listeners, all about you!

Rhea: All right. Let’s see. Queer, non-binary trans person. A comedian. I have a new album out. I know the plugs are later, but I just want to let everybody know up top, I have a new album out and I’m very proud of it. It’s called “Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootleg,” which, I also came up with the title. Very, very proud of that title. But yeah, that’s me. A comedian, actor, writer, all-around good guy. I don’t know. A bit of a gender cowboy, whatever.

Carly: Can definitely vouch, you’re a good guy.

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: Everybody on this podcast is all-around good guy. You know what I mean?

Carly: I think so.

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: It’s always fun to be around good guys. But yeah, a big baseball fan. I have a baseball podcast, plugs are later. Sorry. We are not defined by our plugs.

Carly: You can plug now, you can do double plugs.

Rhea: Sure.

Riese: Do you want to plug your team? Do you want to plug your baseball team?

Rhea: Oh yeah. My actual team that I play for is a team called Death.

Riese: Same. Yeah.

Rhea: Yeah. So we actually have like a bat coming out, which is pretty cool.

Carly: Wait, for real?

Rhea: I’ll show it to you guys later, I don’t want to take up time on the podcast showing everybody something that they can’t see. But yeah, that’s me. I mean, I’ve been, just like getting through this pandemic, like everybody else watching a lot of Ink Master.

Carly: Awesome.

Rhea: Peppering it with The Bisexual every now and then, and you know—

Carly: Good stuff.

Rhea: Just to, Oh, and I do Instagram Lives on Sundays that have been really fun talking with people about all kinds of things, but usually gender. That’s what I tend to talk about, and that’s cool. So I’m into it.

Carly: Love talking about gender.

Rhea: Always love talking about gender.

Carly: Favorite things to stumble my way through.

Rhea: It’s one of my favorite fairy tales to talk about. There’s no right answer, and there’s no wrong answer, so let’s just talk about it. You know, what I mean?

Carly: I love that, that’s a great jingle too. That could be like—

Riese: That was a really good — yeah, yeah. We should record that. Well, I guess we just did.

Carly: We just did!. We just laid that track down.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Okay. We’ll get Lauren to put some beats under it.

Rhea: Yeah.

Riese: Yeah, for sure.

Rhea: Maybe the season one L Word — beeping noises. I honestly feel like if I heard that it would bring back — like that would make me, like, a little tender being, you know what I mean? Like that first season, like that was something for me, but it did a lot of stuff for me.

Riese: Life changing.

Rhea: Yeah, totally, that’s an L Word right there.

Riese: Speaking of. What is your L Word origin story?

Rhea: So my L Word origin story… I’m trying to remember, I’m trying to remember exactly where — I feel like I started watching the first season, I was in college and I was house-sitting for a professor. So it was like the first time I was ever, like, living on my own. Because I lived at home, I went to like a commuter college, paid for it myself, all this stuff. So in the middle of Akron, Ohio, in the middle of — so this would have been like ‘04, like, so I was catching it right after the first season had happened. So I was aware of it and we had the Internet obviously, but it’s not like it is now. So it’s hard to even really remember what it was like. So I was just vaguely aware, but they had cable, like at a level that I didn’t have. And so I think I watched it On Demand and I feel like it just changed me, like watching it change me. And I had already started to see like some queer movies, because like Blockbuster existed.

Carly: My God, yeah.

Rhea: Blockbuster always had like, even in Akron, Ohio, had a tiny little LGBT section, which I think it wasn’t even called that then, which is nuts to think about, that it wasn’t like, “gay movies,” it was like, “LGBT movies.”

Carly: LGBT, yeah.

Rhea: Which is like, “I don’t even know what that stands for!”

Carly: “What are all those letters?”

Rhea: Exactly. And it was just like To Wong Foo and then like maybe Go Fish or something.

Riese: Six Degrees of Separation.

Rhea: Exactly.

Carly: Muriel’s Wedding.

Rhea: I don’t know, whatever. Yep.

Riese: What?

Carly: I said Muriel’s Wedding.

Rhea: Yeah, that one.

Carly: Which was always in the gay section for some reason.

Rhea: Benny and Joon, and you’re like, “Wait, what?”

Riese: Well, there’s one with Jennifer Aniston where she was like a gay guy’s best friend.

Rhea: Is that the …

Riese: Remember that? The Object of My Affection?

Rhea: Oh, yeah, not-

Carly: Oh, is that — Paul Rudd was in that?

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: Oh, weird.

Carly: Man, wow.

Rhea: Bringing back some memories.

Riese: Oh, In and Out?

Rhea: Yeah, yeah. In and Out.

Carly: Classic In and Out.

Rhea: And then The Birdcage, and that’s it.

Carly: And that was it.

Riese: And The Birdcage.

Carly: That’s a whole section.

Riese: Honestly, I fucking love The Birdcage.

Rhea: It’s so good.

Carly: I still deeply love The Birdcage.

Riese: It’s so fun!

Carly: That’s a great movie.

Rhea: It’s so good. And it’s such a great version because like — we’re still, today, having the conversation of like “Should straight people play gay,” and it’s like, I don’t know, man, probably not, as a general rul?  Like probably see some queers first and then if you absolutely cannot find the right person, sure, Robin Williams.

Carly: Like, “Fine.”

Rhea: His performance is so grounded in humanity and love in a way that like I have not seen us and like, I don’t even know if Robin Williams is actually straight, you know what I mean? That’s the thing, like I don’t really know and no one will ever really know, but anyway, this is totally off the topic of The L Word, but that was my experience of like seeing it there and then totally hit on my first girlfriend with it. Like we watched it or whatever together.

Carly: Brilliant, yes.

Rhea: And then I think I watched all of it. And then a friend had been watching it at the same time and then it became like our show and I got season two on LimeWire after completely spoiling myself as much as possible on the website that probably shall not be named anymore. Like I used to just like — it was like I had to know, I had to know so that I could be okay, which is just such a weird — I needed to know what the storyline for the second season was so that I could feel safe, which is just like where I was at, you know, as like a 23-year-old queer trying to understand — but people who are younger, I think that, or somebody that didn’t experience the show firsthand, like totally get it. But for me, this was my first group of gay friends. It’s like, I knew queer people, gay people here and there, but I did not have like a group of gay friends to just be immersed in at any time… like until, honestly, out here. Honestly, Los Angeles. It took till 32 or 33 years old to find that. And a lot of that is me, it’s not like the world, whatever, but that was what this show gave me, for better, for worse. It gave me that, and so I will always have a place in my heart, and the first season, how rooted it is in lesbian cinema. Like it really did come from Go Fish, basically.

Carly: For sure.

Rhea: It’s like, oh, it came from the creative forces that were really involved in it with Rose Troche and …

Carly: Guinevere Turner.

Rhea: Yeah, Guinevere Turner.

Riese: Angela Robinson.

Rhea: Gabby, and all of them just like being—

Carly: Gabby Deveaux.

Rhea: Yeah, yeah, Gabby Deveaux, being very influential in the story and the narrative and the way it was shot — like it really did early, which is why it was so interesting for me to watch one of these episodes. Because it’s very different.

Carly: We have really fallen from grace here.

Rhea: Yeah, it just really made a lot of sense at the time. And it’s wild to go back and watch that and see it now based on television that’s happening now that — even just the way that show was shot and what it was doing at that time was like so nuts, so nuts that it was existing. So that’s my L Word origin story.

Carly: I love that. I remember I’ve watched the show in it. I was like in college and watched it.

Riese: I think we are all around the same age.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: 38.

Riese: 39.

Carly: Will be 39 in April, so 38.

Rhea: Yeah, I’ll be 39 in August. So yep, welcome to the crew, everybody!

Carly: 82!

Riese: We’re all exactly the same age.

Carly: Yup. And I remember, my friends and I, in college, it was like a bunch of queer people, it was my first ever group of gay friends, every Sunday we would get together with the one person that had Showtime at their apartment or their dorm or whatever, and we would watch Queer As Folk. And then we started seeing the promos for The L Word and then started doing that, it kind of grew off of that, but L Word was like such a different show than Queer As Folk.

Rhea: Oh, yeah.

Carly: Like, it really was, you’re right.

Rhea: 100%.

Carly: Its genesis was in this like indie lesbian film world, whereas Queer As Folk was this, like, remake of the British one, and it was so glossy and set in the club, and it was such a different vibe.

Riese: And allegedly in Pittsburgh.

Carly: Allegedly in the glamourous clubs of Pittsburgh.

Rhea: Supposedly in the State of Pennsylvania.

Carly: Yeah, sure. Man. I mean, a show now set in the queer clubs of Pittsburgh would be incredible.

Rhea: Oh, it would be lit.

Carly: The drag scene in Pittsburgh is unbelievable. Anyway, yeah. It was such a different show and yeah, by the time you get to season six, there’s like shadows of it remaining, but not much.

Rhea: It’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I feel like over the course of the show, just seeing like — remembering like, oh right. Elizabeth Ziff is a co-executive producer on that show right now. It’s like, honestly, no shade to Elizabeth Ziff. It’s just like, oh, you kind of like lost where you were going. What purpose was the show serving? You know, it was just like, there’s a lot, there’s a lot, there’s a lot going on, you know, there’s just a lot going on.

Carly: One more question then we can get into the episode. Did you have any favorite characters or anything like anyone resonate with you? Anything like that?

Rhea: I mean.

Carly: You’re saying no.

Rhea: No. I mean, I loved the show, so I feel like there is, I feel like I had my relationships with every character over time. Like I re-watched seasons one and, especially two, many times. Like, I bet if we watched one of the first four or five episodes of season two, I could probably quote a scene. Like I could probably still do it. You know, like it was just a thing that I did. It’s the thing I’ve always done with everything, but this show just like really gave me a lot, it really gave me a lot. But, I had my time with Shane, I had my time with Bette, I had my time, ultimately, I mean, that’s the thing. Turning this episode on and dropping into it without re-watching really any of it, not getting the context of the season and just going like, “Man, Dana really was this show.” There’s just relationships, and I don’t want to beat a literal dead horse in talking about Dana but it’s just like, she was an incredibly integral part of what made the show so fun and real. You lose a lot when you lose that—

Riese: And funny.

Rhea: That middle person in the Greek chorus of Alice, Dana, and Shane. It’s really missing a lot. Like everybody’s just sort of out on their own and there’s not a real center.

Riese: Or coupled.

Rhea: Yeah, exactly, and there’s so many characters on this show. The OGs are like the ones that I gravitate to the most because I feel like in season three, I was just like, “No, thanks.” I swear I was like, “I don’t know.”

Riese: Yeah, season three was terrible.

Rhea: Yeah. It just really didn’t—

Riese: When we re-visited it we were shocked by how, just insistently, I remember not liking it, but it was profoundly, profoundly, awful.

Rhea: Yeah.

Carly: It was deeply terrible.

Rhea: Like I would imagine. I mean, I just remember that episode where Max is sitting at dinner with everybody and they’re all basically laughing at him.

Riese: Oh, the lobsters?

Rhea: And I just was like, “How dare you?”

Carly: The fucking lobster dinner.

Rhea: Like, how dare you do that? You know what I mean? It’s so cruel to its own audience and it doesn’t even know that. And as I was watching this episode, I was like, has anybody that is working on this show ever lived anywhere other than Los Angeles? Because it doesn’t feel like it. It really doesn’t feel like it.

Carly: No, it doesn’t feel like that.

Rhea: But you know, I think retroactively, retrospectively without having re-watched it whatsoever, I have like a real soft spot for a Daniela Sea as an actor, that little sweet little friend, sweet little, I don’t know, like field nymph, just like, “Yeah, sure. I’ll give it a shot,” like holy shit — after a small amount of acting that I’ve done, to realize then what that person was given to do and the fact that they did it with a big heart, it’s just like, “Wow, great job. Great job.”

Carly: I know.

Rhea: “ Great job, kid, you did the best you could.”

Carly: We talk about that a lot.

Riese: We talk about that a lot.

Carly: Just like, our like deep empathy and sympathy for Daniela and just what they went through.

Rhea: They seem like such a sweetie.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: My goodness. You know, just like a tender sweetie.

Carly: I know, what a sweet little babe.

Rhea: I know, I know! I did have a funny answer to my favorite character, it’s — and I always get their name wrong, which is like, they’re clearly my favorite character. But I think their name is Dax that worked at Ivan’s Garage.

Riese: Yes, yes. Who worked at the body shop? Who worked at the body shop? With Ivan?

Rhea: The best, only Butch representation in the whole show, potentially, like, “Wow, thank you.” Like, that was it.

Riese: They had their hair like this and a tank top. I mean, obviously, I remember this character.

Rhea: Yeah, Of course. Like just embedded in the brain.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: It’s a great character.

Riese: They were in two episodes.

Rhea: They’re in two episodes.

Riese: So funny.

Rhea: In many seasons of my heart.

Riese: Maybe one line.

Carly: Like a line or two.

Rhea: Over the hood, in there working on it. And then they get up, and they’re doing this.

Riese: And they’re like, “Ivan’s over there.”

Rhea: “Ivan’s gone.” Oh, and he took off.

Carly: Wiping hands off on a towel.

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: “Breaking up, Kit, you’re going to have to get out of here, you broke his heart, man,” or whatever, something like that.

Carly: Oh, my God.

Rhea: And Ivan, of course. Anyway, all right.

Carly: Ivan, yes.

Rhea: Let’s do it.

Carly: Today’s episode is Episode 603, LMFAO, no relation to the band. And it was written by Alexandra Kondracke, directed by Angela Robinson, who we love. We actually love both of them and I believe they are married or at least they are partnered. Which is wonderful. So that’s fun. This originally aired February 1st, 2009 before we were born, let’s get into It.

Riese: Let’s get into it.

Carly: Okay. The first thing we noticed is that both Nadia and Dylan are in the previouslies, which is never a good sign.

Rhea: Oh yeah. Dylan. That’s true.

Carly: Not good, this is not good.

Riese: And then we go to Shaolin.

Carly: Yes.

Riese: Ghost themed movie Studio Shaolin.

Rhea: Oh, my God.

Riese: Where Tina’s walking in, everyone’s concerned, Aaron wants to see Tina ASAP.

Rhea: Question.

Riese: Yes.

Rhea: Did Aaron, did that actor play another character on this show? Or am I just remembering him from something else? Because he seems so familiar to me and I really didn’t watch this.

Riese: He looks a little bit like Stanley Tucci.

Carly: Yeah. Yeah, but like if Stanley Tucci was not fun.

Rhea: Squished. Anyway, we don’t have to spend too much time on this, but man, is he swinging for the fences with this performance?

Riese: He’s, for sure, Canadian.

Carly: And he pops up in many seasons because he’s Tina’s boss for the duration of most of the show. So he’s around a lot, but maybe he was in something else.

Rhea: I think I always confuse him with the guy that Bette runs into in traffic in season two, when she’s like, “What makes you think I’m not already?!”

Riese: “What makes you think I’m not already?!” Oh my god, he does look like that guy!

Rhea: I’m always thinking it’s that guy for every guy in this show, it’s that guy.

Carly: They might as well just be that guy.

Rhea: It might as well. Yeah.

Carly: So he is like screaming at Tina and she has no idea why, which is not that weird because he’s always screaming at her about something.

Riese: He’s a bad boss.

Carly: It seems That the negative for Jenny’s film has been stolen.

Rhea: Remember when we had negatives?

Carly: Yeah. Right?

Riese: Can you tell me what that, like, I don’t understand.

Carly: Okay. So.

Rhea: Later in the episode, Tina tells you exactly what it means.

Carly: Tina does explain it later in the episode, but they shot this film on film. This was back before we shot everything on digital, even though digital was an option in 2009.

Rhea: I love how she’s like, “You can’t just digitally project things, Jenny!” And it’s like, it’s 2009, you absolutely can.

Carly: You super can.

Rhea: You can super totally can.

Carly: Okay.

Rhea: iMovie absolutely exists. I believe a movie has already won at con for that right now, as you’re talking.

Carly: Yeah. So this film, somehow they shot this movie on film, which is wild because—

Riese: Well, Jenny is an artiste.

Carly: Exactly. And that was, she probably was demanding to shoot on film.

Riese: And so it’s like, high art, as they say.

Carly: High art. Indeed. So Aaron thinks that Tina did this, and Tina’s like, “I don’t even know that it was stolen. So I didn’t do it.”

Rhea: Airtight defense. I didn’t even know about it, so how could I have even done it?

Carly: I don’t see how, like how could I steal something I didn’t know about? Like, ooh, she got you there. He calls Jenny devious and insane and thinks that she did it. And now it’s Tina’s problem because Jenny is, I guess, Tina’s responsibility, I guess just because they’re both women? I don’t know.

Riese: Yeah. But he’s very sexist, this man.

Carly: He sure is.

Rhea: He screams a lot.

Riese: He screams a lot and he’s always screaming at Tina.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: And as we know, I’m not like a fan of Tina, but she hasn’t deserved to be screamed at by this terrible man.

Carly: I agree, but in the grand tradition of season six where the cold open features one of our series regulars vowing to murder Jenny, she then basically looks into the camera and says, “I’m going to kill Jenny,” and winks.

Rhea: Yeah. I forgot about that whole thing until she did it. And I was like, Oh God.

Carly: Yeah. Plausible deniability. Yeah.

Tina in Aaron's office says "I'm Going to Fucking Kill You"

Rhea: That is like a first idea on the wall, and then it sticks and then you do it. Nobody goes, “eh…”

Carly: They were like, “Well, we could do, yeah, okay. You know what? We’ll write it down, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something better.”

Riese: Yeah, exactly.

Carly: Then it’s like, narrator, “They did not.”

Rhea: The episode just writes itself from there. You know, hand it off and then see what they do on the day.

Carly: Yeah, that’s fine. They didn’t even write the scene. They were just like, negatives missing, Aaron yells at Tina, Tina murders Jenny.

Rhea: Yeah. Right.

Riese: Like what we need is to be able to do in the previews a montage of everyone saying that they want to kill Jenny. That’s what we need. And so you’re going to have to find a way to get into the show.

Carly: That has to be in every script.

Rhea: Every script.

Riese: Every script. Yes. A death threat.

Carly: A direct threat at someone’s existence.

Riese: Yeah, Jenny’s life. Yeah.

Carly: Oh, boy.

Riese: You never know when a boring person like Tina could do something exciting, like murder. You never know.

Carly: It could happen.

Riese: Could happen.

Carly: It probably didn’t happen.

Riese: Also, Tina didn’t steal the negative. Also neither did Jenny, anyway. Then we cut to Shenny’s for a beautiful scene between my favorite couple of all time, Shane and Jenny.

Carly: Yeah. Riese is a Shenny truther. So, welcome.

Rhea: Wait. Really? Okay. Just checking it out. I mean, I remembered watching this, like how crazy it was to me that this happened and that there was a big part of me that was, like, into it. But I will tell you this time around, I could not even look at it. Like I couldn’t even watch when they were together. For whatever reason. I was just like, “Ooh, Ooh, Ooh, Ooh.” I couldn’t do it.”

Riese: Luckily, I had my eyes glued to the screen for this beautiful morning after when, you know, they — they were such good friends, they were best friends, they knew each other so well…

Rhea: Yeah, best friends.

Riese: And then they had sex and it went really well. They had a nice sex time. They had good sexuals and she says that she’s happy they fucked and they start making out again and it’s just so sweet. It’s the morning … You know?

Carly: I love how Shane’s like …

Shane: I don’t know what to say.

Rhea: … is the first thing when they woke up. And my partner goes, “How about, “Good morning?’, or, “Want some coffee?”

Carly: Oh, you’re there.

Rhea: Good morning. Yeah. Woof.

Riese: And, Jenny’s like, “Do you think we made a mistake?” And, Shane’s like, “No.” Because, they didn’t.

Rhea: Absolutely not.

Carly: Oh, wow. Yeah?

Riese: Because, it’s true love. Yeah.

Carly: Also, Sounder Two has a cameo in this scene. The dog.

Riese: Yeah, I do appreciate that I noticed that, a little bit of Sounder Two.

Carly: I was like, “Oh right. Jenny has a dog.”

Rhea: Just barely.

Carly: Where is the dog? Yeah. The dog’s never around. This one’s going to die too, just like the first one.

Riese: Unfortunately, Shane’s journey towards giving Jenny oral sex is interrupted by Alice. Knock, knock, knocking at the door.

Carly: Jenny is going to give Alice notes on her treatment, which last time we saw, Alice was writing the screenplay and calling it a treatment, if I remember correctly.

Riese: Exactly. But now she has papers with words on it, in pen.

Carly: Yes, she wrote them in pen, on paper. So this is definitely notes. This is not a screenplay. You can’t hand write and turn in a screenplay. I mean, you can, but they’re going to just give it back and tell you to type it. Shane opens the door.

Riese: And Alice is like, “You had…”

Carly: You had sex all night.

Alice: I know that look… Woo!
Shane: What look?
Alice: “Yeah, I had sex all night” look. Anyone I know?

Alice at Shane's house, tells Shane "you wewar your sex nights on your sleeve"

Rhea: You banged.

Riese: You banged.

Rhea: This is your bang face.

Riese: She banged.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: It’s bang face.

Carly: You’ve got bang hair, you’ve got bang face.

Riese: Bang written all over you.

Carly: Okay. I thought this was very funny.

Riese: This is so funny.

Carly: And really good directing from our best friend, Angela Robinson, where Alice is just sort of watching them. And we’re watching them with her, and picking up on all the clues. And then there’s this slow camera push in on Alice.

Rhea: Yeah, that was nice.

Carly: As it dawns on her. And she looks at once horrified, disgusted, and intrigued.

Riese: Yeah. I laughed.

Carly: I did too. I actually laughed.

Riese: Wow.

Carly: I LOL’d.

Rhea: Wow, you—

Riese: I didn’t LMFAO, but I did LOL.

Carly: I LMFAOed.

Riese: So she has to go to the bathroom.

Carly: She has to go to the bathroom because she has to text every single cast member of the show to tell them what’s going on, because much like me, Alice loves gossip more than anything.

Riese: Yeah. And then they have this really funny texting montage with everybody receiving their text messages.

Rhea: That was funny.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: It was good. It was good. It was legit. And it was funny, although I would say, “Come on, Kit owns a business. She knows what her phone is doing. Come on.”

Carly: Yeah, I know.

Riese: I can’t.

Carly: I was like, “Oh, we get it. Kit’s older than everyone.”

Rhea: Yeah, it was funny. Helena falling off the treadmill was always going to make me laugh.

Carly: Yeah, that’s funny no matter… Anyone falling off a treadmill is funny, full stop.

Riese: Bette laughing in her meeting.

Carly: Tina screaming at her meeting, Bette laughing at hers. I mean, that was great. It was all great.

Riese: Also Tina’s meeting has a cameo from Angela Robinson herself.

Rhea: Oh yeah. That was funny too. And the writer.

Riese: Oh that’s right.

Carly: Yeah. Alexandra was also in that scene.

Rhea: Yeah. That was cute. I enjoyed that.

Carly: The song that’s playing was a real blast from the past. It was “Shut Up and Let Me Go” by the Ting Tings. I’ve not heard that song in 11 years.

Rhea: It’s been a long time.

Carly: Yeah, wasn’t that like in an iPod commercial or something, too? Like that was… It was like a big break moment for that band.

Rhea: Yeah. That was the song.

Text message from Alice reading OMGGGGG JENNY AND SHANE HAD SEX LAST NIGHT!!

Carly: So anyway, she’s sending all these texts, everyone’s reacting. And then Alice comes out of the bathroom and Helena calls her because she needs the rest of the gossip. She needs to know what’s going on. And so now we have Alice hiding behind the front door while they’re on the porch talking to each other and whispering to Helena what’s going on, which was very funny also. And this is so campy. And I feel like when the show is at its best, when it lets the characters be really silly and campy. So this was really fun. And Jenny wants to set boundaries and has no expectations, and Helena very rightly points out that Jenny has no idea what boundaries are, which I appreciated. Just anyone talking about boundaries on the show, I appreciate, because they never do.

Rhea: They never really define what boundaries are. They just kind of say the word boundaries a lot and then never have them.

Carly: Exactly. They’re like, “We should talk about this” or “We should say the word at least.”

Riese: Yeah. If you say it, it doesn’t matter what you do.

Carly: Exactly. So they kiss and Shane leaves for work and Alice is so grossed out and it’s very funny. I thought it was really funny. I enjoyed this whole bit.

Rhea: But before Shane leaves for work, there’s a little discussion as to whom’s hair she is cutting and Jenny’s like, “Are you cutting Patrick Dempsey’s hair?” And she’s like, “No, no, no. I’m cutting Eric Mabius…. Mobius. Mabius? Mobius? Mabius?

Riese: Eric Mabius’s hair.

Rhea: Eric Mabius’s hair. The actor who played Tim, which is so funny.

Carly: Oh shit, I didn’t even catch that. I was like, not paying attention. I was trying to write notes.

Rhea: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You were writing notes, but yeah. She’s cutting Tim from seasons one and two. And does he come back in three also with all the babies? Is it three that they run into each other in a parking lot?

Riese: Three he comes back. That’s when Max asks him if he pumps the iron.

Carly: And they go eat at Pink’s hot dogs.

Riese: The hot dogs at the hot dog store.

Rhea: Yikes.

Riese: And then he says, “Next time Johnny’s going to be dating a German shepherd.”

Carly: Oh God. Anyway, Jenny asks Alice to keep her mouth shut about all of this. And Alice was like, “Right yeah. It’s none of my business.” And Jenny is like, “No, it’s not any of your business.” I thought that was also funny and also very just ill-timed because she already texted everybody. Oh, that lovable scamp, Alice.

Riese: Let me go to Bette’s office.

Carly: At Carly University.

Riese: At Carly University. Yeah. We go to Carly University where Bette is walking into a meeting with her ex-girlfriend while on the phone with her girlfriend who she cheated on her ex-girlfriend with, which is a move.

Rhea: It’s a move. It’s so trashy.

Carly: It’s so trashy. She’s like, “Bye, love you.” And stares at Jodi when she says, “I love you” to Tina.

Rhea: And it’s a matter of a week or two. It’s a matter of weeks, right?

Riese: It’s been a month, yeah.

Carly: Okay. Yeah. That’s not very long.

Rhea: That’s pretty trashy. That’s pretty trashy for Bette. Bette gets around, but I just didn’t expect that kind of behavior from Bette. Bette Porter…

Riese: No, be a little maybe tactful.

Rhea: Governor Bette Porter.

Carly: Bette Porter 2024.

Riese: Absolutely. I’m voting. She’s mad at Tom is at their meeting.

Carly: Yeah. She’s like, “I can sign really well.” And she’s like, “Actually you don’t sign very well.”

Riese: Oh yeah, that was good.

Rhea: Did Tom and Max hook up? Is that something that…

Riese: Yeah, they’re together.

Rhea: Okay. All right. Oh, they’re together.

Carly: They are together. And in the previous episode, last week’s episode, Max found out he was pregnant.

Riese: And then threw Tom against the wall.

Carly: And called him mean names and kind of beat him up a little bit, which is super fine.

Rhea: Okay. All right. Well anyway.

Carly: Yeah that’s not good at all.

Riese: Jodi refuses to resign, but threatens to fire her if she won’t resign. Right?

Rhea: Which seems pretty straight-up-harassment. Even with me not knowing much of what’s going on, I was like, “Well, this is unethical.”

Carly: Big time unethical.

Riese: It was unethical for Jodi to make this weird video art installation that was all this alleged captured footage of Bette. But that’s not really what’s being mentioned here. What is being mentioned here is the environment, the workplace, and you can’t… If you enter into a relationship with somebody who you work with, you have to face the fact that one day you might be working together and not together anymore. And you don’t get to fire them.

Carly: It’s incredible that… It seems like this never crossed Bette Porter’s mind.

Rhea: Certainly did not.

Carly: Good for you, Bette. Way to not think any of this stuff through. She didn’t think it through when she hooked up with Nadia and we will get to that later.

Riese: Yeah. Also again, Jodi has never looked better.

Carly: Oh my God. She looks amazing in this episode.

Rhea: Marlee Matlin was just crushing it. This whole episode.

Carly: I love that they were like, “Season six, we need Jodi to be styled better, better hairstyling, better wardrobe, better makeup. We need to up the ante on Jodi’s look because this will make Bette look even more foolish that she’s broken up with her.”

Rhea: Also, I do think she has a bit too much of a perfect tan for an artist. But other than that, just loving it.

Riese: Back to Shenny’s. I think that this entire scene was improvised.

Carly: This is so funny. I love any scene where Alice and Jenny are like antagonizing each other is always great.

Rhea: Yeah, that did seem fully improvised. I don’t agree. I’m not on the same page with its wonderfulness. However, glad to see actors getting to do something they seemingly wanted to do.

Carly: It’s so wonderful.

Riese: So, Jenny’s a bitch? I guess it’s the conceit of the scene.

Carly: Yeah, Jenny acts towards Alice exactly how you expected that she would. I found it to be entertaining because I like the two of them antagonizing each other. But yeah, everything that was said was ridiculous.

Rhea: Sure, I agree with that. I don’t think you’re wrong. I just was like… this was so… it is hard to jump back into this show and take it seriously at all. I guess you’re just like, what is anybody talking about? People don’t talk to each other.

Jenny at her kitchen table talking to Alice telling her that writing a screenplay is a craft

Carly: Oh, completely. What’s anyone ever talking about on the show?

Rhea: She’s like giving her notes, like some executive from 1950 or something, you know what I mean? It’s like, “What are you talking about?”

Riese: And also she says that basically the script is about Alice and Tasha. Alice is writing a script about her own relationship. And Jenny says, “The relationship is unrealistic. It doesn’t work out.” And we’re all supposed to be like, “Ha ha ha.” But I wasn’t. And then Jenny suggests that Alice do cartoon voice overs, which was lovely.

Carly: I love that.

Rhea: It’s such a weird dig. Also can I just point out, I hate how dark that that house has been turned into. It’s painted so dark and it’s just such… It’s so weird. This whole episode is so dark and Carly and I talked about the lighting on it ahead of time. So just want to point out that I’m already not into the lighting of this episode, especially in these interior spaces. It’s such a choice. It’s almost hard to see people’s faces, which is a weird choice for a television show where you’re watching people talk to each other

Carly: It is. For a television drama, that’s about interpersonal relationships. It’s hard to see people’s faces, that’s ridiculous.

Rhea: Yeah. It gets very difficult near the end of the show.

Riese: It was very dark.

Carly: Yeah. It’s really hard later

Riese: Well it was really hard originally, because we watched screeners, and usually the screeners, they haven’t fixed everything yet. So it was basically just watching a dark room with little voices peeking out of bed with a glitter because everyone was wearing a lot of sequins that year I guess.

Carly: I’m sure, yeah.

Rhea: This season is all like the sheen business suit with a wide collar that really took me back. Holy goodness.

Riese: They had to buy those in Europe.

Carly: They had a lot of those big wide collars on standby. I used to call those lesbian collars and I think what it is. I think that’s accurate.

Rhea: Woof.

Carly: It still is.

Riese: It is.

Riese: They make those shirts for about… They went to Europe and bought men’s shirts from Europe. You know, Europe.

Rhea: Heard of it?

Carly: Hello, I’d like one ticket to Europe, please.

Riese: Yeah, they just went over to Europe and went to the Europe store clothes and then tailored them for Bette’s body.

Carly: Wow.

Rhea: Well, there’s the Bette version. And then there’s the Tonya version then there’s no real space in between.

Riese: Tasha.

Rhea: No, no, no. I mean, Tanya from the Tan-Tans.

Riese: Oh you mean the originators?

Rhea: Yeah.

Carly: How dare you bring her up?

Rhea: I occasionally see that actor in other things and I’m like, “Oh my God, I love it!”

Riese: Wow. I forgot that she existed for a second.

Carly: Oh God. The Tan-Tans. Jesus Christ.

Rhea: The Tan-Tans.

Riese: The Tan-Tans.

Riese: Tan-Tans. She could be in the Ting Tings.

Carly: Oh my god, she could form her own band called the Tan-Tans. So, okay. So this meeting goes horribly. Tina’s here. She’s banging on the door. Alice goes to leave and she’s like, “Hey Tina, by the way, I was not supposed to tell you that they hooked up, but like whatever. No one cares.” And so Alice leaves, and Tina’s not here to talk about the missing negative, but Jenny’s really into this new cappuccino machine she just got. She has to make the cappuccinos and she has to be interrupting Tina and not listening to her with the noise…

Riese: Smell these beans.

Carly: All the beans. And my favorite part is when Tina says, “Jenny, if we don’t find it, no one’s going to see the movie.” And then she goes—

Jenny: Are you saying that nobody’s going to see the movie?

Carly: That was my favorite part.

Riese: Again. This was improvised, which I think Mia is pretty good at, but Laurel always looks a little bit panicked.

Carly: She looks lost.

Riese: You could also tell it’s improvise because Mia says “out” like a Canadian at one point.

Rhea: Yeah, she does. She just goes straight back to Canadian near the end of it. Yeah. It’s so funny. It’s super funny. I do love how Laurel Holloman explains how film works and is basically like, “I don’t care what’s on the editor’s computer. We have no way of digitally projecting a movie. What are you talking about?” And we absolutely did have that technology.

Carly: We absolutely had the ability to project digitally.

Rhea: As I said, but it’s just so strange. It’s such a weird conversation.

Riese: Is that a real thing? Could someone steal a film reel and that would mean that no one can see the movie? Is that a real thing ?

Carly: That feels like something that could maybe happen in like 1950?

Rhea: Maybe even I feel like if you’re talking about 1927 when they’re like… stealing the negative would be really… But I feel like very early on people made copies.

Rhea: Because like if you messed up in the edit, you had to have copies of it. Also you had to have copies to edit. You had to have more than one negative to be able to splice a scene in or whatever. And also there’s not the… I don’t know. It’s a very simplistic explanation of…

Carly: It’s like real loose. It’s…

Rhea: It’s basically… To me it lines up with somebody being like, “They stole the script! We can’t shoot the movie now!” That’s what it feels like. Even if it’s accurate, it doesn’t feel… The way it’s being acted. It’s like, “They stole our words! We can’t do it!”

Riese: I mean, this has never happened, right? Like this has never happened.

Carly: Like, are you asking is this a concern that peep that filmmakers have, and the answer is no, this is not a concern that anyone actually has.

Riese: If this was a real situation that could happen, that someone could steal a negative and then the film would be canceled. Then it feels like that would have happened at some point in human history.

Rhea: Totally. Right.

Carly: It’s not really a thing. If you shoot on film, then you’ve got all the different film reels of all your footage and then that’s all digitized and that’s what the editor’s working with. And then eventually you want to take that final edit and go back to your original film and create the final reel. So could someone steal that final thing? Yes?

Rhea: Yeah. It’s all very unclear. And I do think it’s possible. It just feels — it’s very contrived within the world that they’re… Somebody stole the negative!

Carly: Improbable. It’s very Warner Brothers, Looney Tunes. Hanna-Barbera. It’s very snidely whiplash coming by with his funny mustache and zipping by in a car with that one bear-dog.

Rhea: It’s a children’s version of what would happen.

Carly: Yeah big time. That’s what I was trying to say. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Riese: When I made my first film in 1998, which took my entire hard drive and Adobe Premiere 1.0, I made 10 VHS copies of it. Just so you know.

Carly: Well, you’re smarter than these guys.

Rhea: Shaolin Pictures.

Carly: Shaolin.

Carly: So the scene ends with Tina having to ask Jenny if she stole it and Jenny being very offended that she would think that, and Jenny’s reasoning behind why she didn’t steal it is that her agents have dropped her. She has… basically, this film will be the only thing that could potentially even help her continue to have a career in this business because she has nothing otherwise. So she seems… I don’t think she did it guys. I don’t think she did it.

Riese: She didn’t. I mean, she didn’t do it.

Carly: Well, yeah.

Riese: Yeah. Sorry. Spoilers. But I feel like spoilers don’t even matter in season six, because it’s so bad that who cares? You can’t spoil something that’s already rotten.

Carly: All right so… Alice and Shane are at The Planet and they’re talking about Jenny.

Riese: Yeah. Shane is going to be totally chill because they understand each other.

Carly: Right. She’s like, “This isn’t going to become an instant relationship all of a sudden,” even though it already has.

Riese: Yeah. You can’t just sleep with your roommate and then it’s chill. That’s like the opposite of chill.

Carly: Yeah. That’s super unchill. I would say unchill.

Riese: Yeah. So once upon a time, Leisha Hailey was in a yogurt commercial for Yoplait.

Rhea: Oh, yeah.

Riese: And the commercial involved her eating yogurt and they were like, “How good is it?” Blah, blah, blah, good. Bah, dah, dah, dah. Good. Everyone knows I’m talking about… Yeah?

Speaker 1: This is like, cute best man good.
Leisha Haley: No, this is like, burning this dress good.

Rhea: Yes I do.

Riese: Anyway, we get a little homage to the yogurt commercial here in The Planet with Shane and Alice eating yogurt out of these very small bowls — like bowls that I feel like for soy sauce. If you have sushi, you know like, they were that size. And then these tiny little, these little baby, baby bites of baby yogurt, and talking about how good the sex was. So, ha ha ha.

Shane eats yogurt

Carly: “It was good. Better than I expected good.” All right. We go back to California University also known as Carly University where that… This is amazing. This is a real great Bette Porter sticking her foot in her mouth moment. She storms into Phyllis’s office, guns blazing, screaming about Jodi, who is obviously in Phyllis’s office already. And then Phyllis has actually a really great conversation about how there’s this thing called accountability and responsibility and you need to be a professional. And you can’t say that your subordinate is being insubordinate when the reason that you want them to resign is that you had a relationship with them. You kind of have to just suck it up at that point.

Rhea: I love the continued emphasis on how bad a sexual harassment suit will be specifically because it’s lesbians as though that has some extra curricular sort of, Oh my God, really Cybil Sheparding around in every scene. Really Cybling everywhere.

Riese: I love how chill Jodi is, I love how wrong that is, I guess. When Phyllis is like… And again, Phyllis is correct. When you enter a sexual relationship with your subordinate, you relinquish your right to fire her. And that’s true. Bette, come on!

Carly: Get with it, Bette. And Phyllis talks about dyke drama and you definitely get the sense that Phyllis was really proud of herself for using the phrase.

Rhea: She hit that “dyke” really hard in that read. She was ready.

Carly: She hit it hard. She was like dyke drama, right? Did I say it, right? So we go back to Shenny’s, Riese’s favorite place.

Riese: My favorite, the dark house. This scene was so dark!

Carly: This scene was the darkest room. This was so dark.

Riese: Jenny walks into Shane’s nap and wakes her up, which is a little rude. But she says that she finished her treatment.

Rhea: Oh now, she’s got a treatment.

Carly: They have dueling treatments. Jenny’s treatment is about Jenny and Shane and Alice’s treatment is about Alice and Tasha.

Rhea: Write what you know!

Carly: Write what you know.

Riese: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It was probably about, well, I guess it was about Jesse and Shawn.

Carly: Right, of course. Yeah. A sequel to The Girls? The Girls 2?

Riese: So she was thinking about how she liked having sex last night and Shane liked it, too. So then they start making out again because I think they’re going to have sexuals again.

Carly: Do more sex?

Riese: Yeah. Do more sexes. There’s going to be more sexy.

Carly: But they don’t even let us see it, because we just go to the next day. Is it the next day? I guess — was she napping or was it nighttime? I truly don’t know what’s going on, but it’s time to film a new episode of The Look. There’s no way to know.

Riese: Time for a bummer episode of The Look.

Carly: Oh boy. So the first thing I noticed is that her blonde co host no longer looks like she’s walking through a windstorm. Every time we’ve seen that woman previously, her hair has been brushed back. And then hairsprayed as if she was like, whoosh, like a gust of wind.

Riese: She’s like the gorilla glue girl.

Carly: Her hair was a little better. It was less back — like flying backward, less wind. But Alice had a really like young Republican mom haircut, which bummed out a little bit. I didn’t like that at all.

Rhea: Yeah. And a young Republican mom top, like that whole scene really took me way back in the time machine, in terms of wardrobe.

Carly: That was rough, it was rough. Time capsule for real.

Rhea: Also they’re all like in black, which is like, nobody would ever dress a talk show host in all black. Like they look like they’re hosting a funeral. You know what I mean?

Carly: Yeah. That would never happen.

Riese: They kind of are about to.

Rhea: I mean, yeah, you’re right.

Carly: So Alison goes completely off book here and we see everyone panicking. The producers panicking, the hosts are panicking, because she wants to read a letter that someone sent her, a letter that taught her a valuable lesson. I don’t even know how to take this seriously, I’m sorry.

Rhea: I mean it, yeah. It’s hard to take it seriously because it gets to a place — She reads the letter that a viewer has written into her about her brother who wrote a love letter to someone who then shot him in the face. Now, is that something that has happened? Yeah, absolutely. However, on the day, if you’re reading that, and that is the way that it comes across, I would have been like, you know what? I think we need to workshop this one little part. Let’s do a little pickup here. If I was Angela Robinson I’d be like, “Let’s just leave. Let’s just do a little, let’s just do a read through of that part. I think we can get in there. And Leisha, if you could just give me, ‘and then he shot him.’ Let’s just leave it at that. How about we just leave it at that. Let’s not say ‘in the face,’ let’s see how that plays.” Because it plays almost comedic, even in this context. It’s super weird, you know?

Carly: It’s super weird.

Riese: It’s supposed to be a serious…

Rhea: I feel like that could be the subtitle of The L Word. “It’s supposed to be serious.” Because it is at its height when it’s campy, but then they have a hard time translating around and giving each thing it’s due. And it’s like, “Yeah, do this thing. Actually you guys should do this thing,” like, “I stand firmly behind you doing this thing, but not like this.”

Carly: Right, exactly. The tonal shifts are a little jarring, you could say.

Rhea: It’s abrupt. I get hit with the airbag many times.

Carly: Yeah. Big time.

Riese: I also was just like, this would have been in the news. That stuff always was in the news when it happened so that we could all remember how terrible the world is.

Alice on "The Look" in a pink silk shirt saying she is more than the keeper of dirty little gay secrets

Rhea: It’s also wild to have her bringing up outing. It actually gave me a lot of, I don’t know what the word is, but to just stop and go like, “Oh, I’m so glad we don’t really do that anymore.” And I guess, there’s many ways to look at it. I don’t really have a firm stance on the whole thing. It’s definitely that sort of in-group kind of, assault, I guess? I’ll use that word, to out somebody publicly for the service of the community or the liberation or whatever. It has certainly shifted into other places. That sort of aggression still exists within the community and in the in-group or whatever. But I’m just glad that’s not happening. I’m glad that we as a people, I’ll say, are just doing it a little bit differently. And I’m just glad that’s not a thing, because it doesn’t end well for anybody. And there’s so many better ways of doing that, just outing people. Because I immediately was like, “Oh right, I forgot about k.d. lang getting outed.” And somebody would look at that now without the context of experiencing it firsthand, and be like, “Well…” It’s the same thing as my experience of telling somebody’s coming out and them being like, “Duh.” None of it is kind. None of that is kind. None of it is kind. And whether you knew it or not, or whether it seemed accurate or not, you’ve got to let somebody else live. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent now. But it just was interesting to me to be like, “Oh wow—”

Riese: That’s all this podcast is.

Rhea: It was still a thing. Yeah, it was still a thing in 2009. Even if The L Word was being a bit retro by doing it in the context of the fiction of the show, it was still around in that way. It’s just wild, wild to consider.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: In this moment, Alice is basically resigning from the show because she was hired to out people.

Rhea: Just out people. Which is also wild to consider that a TV show would ever want to have that as a bit. Like, no.

Carly: Yeah. I know.

Riese: Yeah, that was what Perez Hilton was doing, I guess, at the time.

Rhea: Oh yeah, I guess so. Oh yeah, you’re right. I completely forgot about all that because I didn’t pay attention because it seemed toxic. Anyway.

Carly: Because it was.

Rhea: It was. Continues to be.

Riese: Yeah. But when she first started talking, she was like, “Everyone wants me to tell dirty, gay secrets.” I was already like, “Oh God,” because I didn’t remember. We’ve talked about this before, but season six is the only season I haven’t re-watched since it originally aired, and I had to recap it. So I forgot, and I was like, “Oh God.” I was like, “Is she going to talk about Shane and Jenny? What is she going to do?”

Carly: That’s what I thought she was about to do too, weirdly.

Riese: Because I hate it when she does that stuff. It makes me so uncomfortable.

Rhea: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. The personal is political. No, that’s not what this is.

Riese: Yeah. So she reminds everyone that homophobia exists.

Carly: Thanks, Alice!

Riese: You know what else is homophobic? Is hiring Alice on the show just to out people. That’s also homophobic.

Rhea: That’s also super homophobic.

Riese: Everyday homophobia.

Rhea: Right? Bigotry.

Riese: You know, but let’s get extreme. Anyways. So she brings the house down, like down, like bad.

Carly: Oh, yeah. Everyone’s very concerned.

Riese: Everyone is upset and unhappy.

Carly: And she’s clearly about to get fired.

Riese: Yeah. In this world where The Look is shot live, I guess.

Carly: I guess. Sure.

Riese: Then we go to Shaolin, where Tina walks in and everyone is whispering about her.

Rhea: Everybody’s looking at her over by the rest rooms.

Riese: Looking at her…

Carly: Everyone’s staring her down. What’s going on?

Rhea: One of the shots goes right past the bathrooms, and I was like, “That’s interesting that that’s where you put that.”

Carly: I know, that’s so strange. And once again, Aaron wants to see her right away.

Riese: He’s an abusive boss.

Rhea: Joke facts.

Carly: He gets an awesome fax that someone has clearly forged, seen as Tina’s signature on a memo from whoever… From Tina to Deluxe who has the print.

Riese: The Eastside Messaging… Eastside Messenger Service?

Carly: “A messenger is coming to get the print and you have to give them the print, and here’s my signature to prove that I am in fact Tina Kennard, and you can give them the print.”

Rhea: Tina Kennard!

Carly: Right, Tina Kennard, so now it really looks like Tina orchestrated this, even though she clearly didn’t.

Rhea: She obviously did not.

Riese: Right, because why would she?

Carly: Obviously did not. Tina’s not interesting enough to do any of this, like this never even occurred to her.

Riese: No, she toes the line.

Carly: Yeah, as mad as she is about them changing the ending and the title and the poster, she still never thought to do this.

Riese: No, because who would?

Carly: Because she doesn’t have any imagination. Also, it’s not a thing.

Riese: No one’s ever done this. It’s not a thing anyone does.

Rhea: Yeah. That’s not a thing people do.

Carly: It’s not a thing. No one’s ever been like, “I’ve stolen the negative and now I’m holding your film hostage,” like that’s…

Rhea: It would be very easy to get a movie not made. There are many ways. Movies pretty much don’t get made. So going to all this trouble to get it not made doesn’t make any sense.

Carly: Movies get not made every day.

Rhea: All the time.

Carly: Every hour.

Rhea: Every moment of every day.

Riese: Another movie is not getting made.

Carly: So now Phyllis and Bette are having a drink at a bar, and Phyllis wants Bette to resign. I totally forgot about this and fully busted out laughing when she was like, “I think you need to resign.” I was like, “Oh my god, Bette, you suck.”

Rhea: She takes her to that Chili’s to get her to resign. It also looks exactly like the bar in the new series, The L Word: Generation Q. It’s shot exactly the same way.

Riese: Oh the one—

Rhea: …the same angles. I stopped watching after episode three. But it looks exactly the same, at least in my mind.

Riese: Episode four is when it got good.

Rhea: Also, shout out — Okay, sure. But shout out to the Dos Equis shit hanging in the back of the bar. I was like, “There it is.” I used to, back in the day, my friend that had Showtime that I found out she was watching season one and we had this friendship over the show and then we started watching it together. That was our drinking game, is every time somebody had Dos Equis, you drank, and we would get very drunk watching this show.

Carly: It is on the show, constantly.

Rhea: Shout out. And also no one calls it Dos Equis, they just call it “beers,” which is my favorite part. But shout out to the Dos Equis in the background of the shot. It’s so perfect.

Carly: Yeah. When the show was airing and I was in college, my friends and I would, whenever we’d be joking that that was the official beer of lesbians. If we were somebody who’s going to drink a beer in a bar, we had to get that one.

Rhea: It had to be Dos Equis. Absolutely.

Carly: Because it was on the fucking show.

Rhea: That is 100% the only reason I ever drank a Dos Equis is because it was on the show.

Carly: Same, fully same. She’s like, “If you don’t resign, I’m going to have to fire you.”

Riese: Yeah, because she already has a complaint.

Carly: Ridiculous, yeah. But then we find out that Nadia filed a complaint about her. OMG.

Rhea: OMG.

Riese: Which is bold, but also it was bold of Bette.

Carly: It was super bold. We all recall when Nadia was very upset when Bette called things off with her after their one night and then she had to move away. She had to move up to Seattle to start working at a hospital, Seattle Grace, we all know this famously, it was… It was on the documentary series, Grey’s Anatomy, where it followed her adventures, changing her name, going into the witness protection program, and it’s a whole different show, but—

Riese: And found someone who could really love her.

Carly: Yeah. And it was good that she did file that complaint before she left for Seattle.

Riese: Yeah. And of course, I mean, obviously she did. She hooked up with Bette and then Bette rejected her. That’s the next move. I’ve seen TV shows before. That’s what you do.

Rhea: Yeah.

Riese: Also, Phyllis calls her a coed and Bette is like, “She was a grad student.”

Rhea: It’s so funny.

Riese: But she’s like, “Why didn’t you tell me that?” and Phyllis is like, “Well, I just, whatever.” But then Phyllis says she’ll always be grateful.

Carly: She says, “I thought you’d get mad.”

Riese: Yeah, which is true. She probably would’ve gone to Nadia’s house and been like, “Why did you do that? You came onto me.” And it’s like, yeah, true. But also you could have been like, “No.”

Carly: She absolutely would have harassed the shit out of Nadia if she had found out that she filed a complaint against her, which is also very indicative of a much larger problem.

Riese: Yeah, when you get accused of harassment, what do you do? You harass. You harass a little bit more.

Rhea: Go in harder. Do it more.

Riese: Double down.

Carly: What do you do after you sleep with your TA? You start sleeping with the artist that’s visiting your school in some capacity, or she’s a teacher, I don’t know what Jodi’s doing there, frankly. Still don’t know what her job is.

Riese: Yeah. She was a visiting artist, but then she was such a fan favorite that they decided to renew her contract, I think. And they had to keep Tom around.

Carly: Of course.

Riese: Phyllis says she’ll always be grateful to Bette’s leadership, and then she starts talking about how she actually has had a crush herself. She’s had a crush on someone who she finds—

Phyllis: Tall, strong, brilliant, erudite—

Phyllis says "tall, strong, brilliant?" while Bette is like, "please no" with her hands

Riese: So obviously we all know that it’s Bette that she has a crush on

Carly: She wants Bette to ask her. She’s like, “Do you want to know who it is?” It’s like when you have something you want, like, “Come on, ask me, ask me, ask me who it is.”

Riese: She’s like, “No.”

Rhea: Shout out to Jennifer Beals’ food-in-mouth acting because Shane does that shit all the time and I can’t stand it. But Jennifer Beals is good at it. Because she’s just absentmindedly putting these peanuts in her mouth, all to set up the look that she gives her. To have these peanuts ready? She really does crush it in this scene.

Carly: She does. She’s wonderful.

Riese: And her face, backing away from Phyllis, when Phyllis tries to… But also, I mean, come on, Phyllis immediately undermined herself.

Carly: She’s like, “I’d drop Joyce in a heartbeat if you in any way, showed any attraction to me.”

Riese: This is bananas.

Carly: It’s just like, Jesus Christ. This is so funny. Bette’s reaction is to just laugh hysterically in her face because she doesn’t know what else to do. And she doesn’t think she’s serious, but she’s very serious.

Rhea: Deadly serious.

Carly: Leans in to try to kiss her. Falls.

Rhea: Hard edit out.

Bette: You’ll have my letter of resignation in the morning.

Carly: Hard edit on the fall. It’s like Phyllis is leaning in, Bette’s leaning out, and then Joyce just falls out of frame.

Rhea: And then Helena, I think.

Carly: Helena in the forest.

Rhea: Then they cut to Helena.

Carly: Flowers.

Riese: The Planet. Dylan has sent Helena a topiary, a tree, a whole flower garden.

Rhea: Does Helena work at the Planet?

Riese: Helena owns it.

Rhea: Oh, right.

Riese: Right? Her and Kit are co-owners. They bought it from Ivan.

Rhea: They’re co-eds. They’re co-eds who own The Planet.

Carly: That’s right.

Riese: Exactly. They’re the co-eds of The Planet and also of their sister business.

Carly: And Hit Bar.

Riese: Yeah, Hit Bar.

Carly: Hit Club.

Riese: Porter Peabody’s Pleasure Palace.

Rhea: Oh my God. Remember the days of Cunt the Night on this show?

Carly: Cunt the Night?

Riese: Twat the Night.

Rhea: Where they still had this plausible… Oh yeah, Twat the Night. Sorry, I went too hardcore.

Carly: Twat the Night.

Rhea: Twat the Night, not Cunt the Night. Cunt the Night would be great, too. But man, Twat the Night was great. That was a great joke.

Riese: Right? There’s these little tidbits of great jokes.

Rhea: Yeah, Guinevere Turner, man.

Riese: That might be number one, actually.

Rhea: You can just see the parts that Guinevere Turner wrote.

Riese: When you’re looking for toasts, Twat the Night.

Rhea: Oh yeah, toasts.

Carly: Yeah. So Helena doesn’t want the flowers, but then she takes one of the flowers to give it to a girl that was checking her out, which is pretty smooth.

Rhea: Yeah. She’s like, why don’t you recycle it?

Riese: I love this realistic thing that always happens on The L Word, where people just see other people and they just go up and then they—

Carly: They just look at them, and then they look at them. And then they just give each other flowers and then they’re just having sex in five minutes.

Riese: Yeah, and then they’re like, “boo ba doo, let’s go do it, let’s make out, here’s a flower.”

Carly: One of the cards from Dylan says, “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” which…

Riese: Yuck.

Carly: It’s a choice. It’s a choice.

Rhea: It certainly is.

Riese: I hate it.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: I hated it. They obviously didn’t want to put Alexandra Hedison on the payroll this week. So instead they sent these flowers.

Rhea: They couldn’t afford her day rate.

Carly: They couldn’t. They couldn’t afford her for even a few hours.

Riese: She had a lot of other projects, probably.

Rhea: Certainly.

Riese: Has she done any…? I guess if you marry Jodie Foster, you don’t have to do anything anymore.

Rhea: You don’t have to.

Carly: No!

Riese: I mean, you win. You win.

Rhea: You really do. That is it. That’s bingo, right there. See you guys.

Carly: You did it.

Rhea: Later.

Carly: You did it.

Rhea: I’m going to do my thing now.

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: It’s only whatever I want, from here on out.

Carly: Oh my god. So Alice is trying to get dressed at home, and — is she getting dressed to go to a meeting to get fired, but then doesn’t go to the meeting because she gets a call from the LGBT Center?

Riese: No, I think she’s getting dressed and going to the Porter Peabody Pleasure Center for the party that night.

Carly: Okay, that makes more sense. I definitely missed some things in this episode, even as I was watching it.

Rhea: Certainly.

Carly: That made it far more confusing.

Riese: I, for some reason, have never taken less notes than I did on this episode. Like this is the smallest amount of notes I’ve ever taken.

Rhea: Are we talking about Tasha and Alice at home? Is that the scene that we’re talking about?

Riese: Yeah, Tasha in the Free City tank top.

Rhea: Yeah. This is where the lighting begins to fail the narrative, fully.

Carly: Big time.

Rhea: It is just amazing. It’s kind of like anything in movies and film or TV and stuff like that, where you don’t realize how good things are until you see a bad thing. And you’re just like, “Oh my god, I had no idea how much the lighting in a film really affects it.” Until you kind of can’t see your character’s faces? And you do just start to go like, “Hmm, what’s going on in my apartment?” And you don’t even realize that’s what’s happening.

Riese: Right, why your mind is wandering.

Rhea: Yeah, it’s so distracting. I will say, shout out to the, I feel like, classic L Word shot, out of the closet. They really just did that one to a T and I was happy to see it come back through the clothes, and somebody trying to decide. I feel like they did that one a lot and it’s great. It’s a great one.

Carly: That is a classic.

Riese: It is. It is.

Carly: Yeah, this is the first… This is where the lighting starts to get distractingly terrible.

Rhea: They’re like, “It’s nighttime,” but I still need to see the interior.

Carly: But we have lamps.

Rhea: And see what’s… Yeah exactly. See what’s going on. And I’ll say, in the morning, it was just as dark. So it’s hard to really… I mean, that bar they were in was brighter than anything. The lighting in that scene—

Carly: That was odd.

Rhea: It was super bright. And then Shaolin is super bright, but then everything else… Also, is there a single exterior? There’s a single exterior shot that we’re getting up to. There’s no exteriors throughout the beginning of the episode, and then there’s just one at the end. So they’re really rushing through the story, the narrative, to just—

Riese: This was a budget ep.

Rhea: Oh, 100%, yeah.

Carly: This is a short ep, too. This was just, “We have two plot points to hit. Let’s get through it fast.”

Rhea: We got to get this information out.

Carly: And save our money for the big dance competition.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Which is where they really went all out.

Riese: Tasha reminds Alice that sometimes you get punished for doing the right thing, like she did with Army.

Carly: At Army. Yeah. And Alice is like, “Ugh.”

Rhea: This is not about the Army.

Carly: This is not about you, and it’s not about Army. And then the LGBT Center calls. This was interesting. Okay. I think I would like to give the LA LGBT Center a lot more credit than Alice being the person they call for an emergency. Alice, a person they have not ever, as far as we know, never met or worked with before.

Tasha looking hot in a tank top telling Alice that you don't always get rewarded for doing the right thing

Rhea: Not a celebrity?

Carly: Yeah. I don’t think that that’s necessarily what you want to do, but…

Riese: Well, she was a fan.

Carly: I don’t really have any expertise. Sure.

Riese: She’s a fan of the program, of The Look, because I think that a lot of young people…

Rhea: Watch daytime television shows, yeah.

Carly: Daytime TV?

Riese: Watch daytime television, yeah.

Carly: It would make more sense that she was a fan of Alice’s video podcast.

Riese: Right.

Rhea: For OurChart?

Carly: OurChart.gov.

Rhea: I mean OurChart… OurChart is a great thing for lesbians to say. OurChart. Y’all on OurChart?

Riese: OurChart. I love saying OurChart.

Rhea: OurChart. I definitely… Is that shit still active anymore? Because I definitely had a profile on OurChart.

Carly: Oh we all did.

Riese: I wrote for OurChart. For free.

Rhea: Wow.

Carly: OurChart was the most broken website. That shit never worked.

Riese: It was terrible.

Rhea: They could have influenced an election. They didn’t know what they had in their hands, you know what I mean?

Carly: They didn’t know. They did not know. I guess we’re at the LGBT Center? Which I thought—

Rhea: Yeah, the locker room at the LGBT Center.

Carly: Before the big game.

Carly: But then they’re up on the roof and it says “hotel,” but the LA LGBT Center is in Hollywood?

Riese: Yeah. Yeah, it is. First of all, we meet Jamie.

Carly: That’s right, a new character that we don’t know is going to be important yet.

Riese: Well, so here’s the thing. So the actress who played Adele is, I think, 1/8 Filipino or something? But I don’t know, because I don’t think her character was? Anyway, we’re at season six, episode three, this is our first Asian character.

Carly: Wow.

Rhea: Wow, they really got it in there.

Carly: They’re really just right under the wire. They’re like, “Look at our diversity. We did it.”

Riese: Yeah. Los Angeles. They’re in Los Angeles, California.

Rhea: But wait, can I ask you a question though? Because I feel like, and I could be wrong here, wasn’t Marcus’s girlfriend slash wife Asian?

Carly: She was.

Riese: The hysterical—

Carly: The hysterical woman.

Riese: This is our first Asian queer character.

Rhea: Okay, I just wanted to be… I just—

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: Not saying good!

Carly: That was a deep cut, and I’m very impressed.

Rhea: I also wanted to just lay my credentials out on the table.

Carly: You dropped something. I think you might want to pick it up.

Riese: Yeah, we did have a hysterical Asian woman in the first season.

Rhea: Terrible.

Carly: Just absolutely awful.

Riese: Just out of her gourd. Yeah, and that was really nice, how they did that.

Rhea: It was nice for everyone. It was nice for everybody.

Riese: That was one of those things when we were rewatching it, where I was like, “Oh my holy god, what?” And you would think after that, after… And that’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s level, like you’ve really fucked up with this character.

Carly: So a teenage fan of Alice’s is on the roof and she’s going to jump.

Rhea: What the fuck?

Riese: I hate this so much.

Carly: And so Jamie, who works at the LGBT Center, decided to call Alice, to try to literally talk her off a ledge. Alice is not qualified to deal with this, which is literally what Tasha points out, which later Alice seems very offended by, which I thought was like, “No Alice, you actually are not qualified to deal with this.”

Rhea: What if this went bad? You would feel pretty bad about it. Like Alice, the character, probably wouldn’t feel that bad about it.

Carly: She doesn’t care. This is ridiculous.

Riese: Tasha says to call the police though, which is another terrible idea.

Rhea: Well, yeah. Tasha’s a cop.

Carly: Tasha’s a cop, now literally a cop.

Rhea: I don’t remember… I just remember them talking to each other and then we’re at The Planet or whatever the nightclub is called. That’s all I remember from the episode.

Carly: Hit Club!

Riese: They barely talked. Like Alice… First of all, this girl, the suicidal girl’s name is Marie, and that’s also my name.

Carly: That was a shout out to you, obviously.

Riese: So that was obviously a shout out to me personally, because that’s my name. Because Riese isn’t actually my name. Marie is my name, so that was me. It was me on the roof.

Carly: So that was you. You inspired that character on the roof.

Riese: I did inspire that character because I was on my roof a lot in that era. In 2008, I was on my roof all the time. You came on my roof with me. One time we locked ourselves out of my apartment. We went to the roof and then I had to climb back down, through the window and then come back up.

Carly: Classic.

Riese: Classic. Classic 2007 hijinks for Riese and Carly.

Carly: Riese, I have just… Something just occurred to me. This is so absurd that it can only be explained by some sort of…

Riese: By a little flying insect?

Carly: Like some kind of like, extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps. Perhaps some sort of effect caused by a winged—

Riese: By a caterpillar?

Carly: Flapping insect. Well, it’s funny, you mention a caterpillar because it was once a caterpillar. What was once an applique sparkly caterpillar became an applique sparkly butterfly.

Riese: Because they are on the roof and that’s in the sky.

Carly: Exactly. Thank you.

Riese: And that’s where birds live and a butterfly is a bird.

Rhea: (Singing) Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high!

Carly: Twice as high, that’s the roof, because it’s a two story building, twice as high would be the roof. Exactly, thank you. Yeah.

Rhea: Yeah. (singing) Take a look, it’s in a book, at the LGBT Center slash library…

Carly: Slash teen crisis hotline for teens who are on the roof of the LGBT Center.

Riese: Just to be sure I understand — her brother’s the one who just got shot?

Carly: Okay. I did not get that this was what was happening. Her brother… She’s the one that wrote the letter.

Rhea: Yeah.

Riese: So is she also gay?

Rhea: Yeah, why not?

Carly: I didn’t get this until she said it, until they said it. She was like, “I read your letter on air.” And then I was like, “Wait, what?” Totally didn’t understand what was going on. Yeah. This was the weirdest possible scene they could have put in this episode. I truly don’t understand why this is here.

Rhea: It really lost my attention. I really didn’t pay any attention to it whatsoever. I just have an image in my mind, the wide of them sitting in between the O and the T.

Carly: The O and the T.

Riese: And, that being it.

Tasha and Alice on the top of a building "I can't talk a teenager off of a ledge"

Carly: There’re so many ways you could have introduced Jamie. For instance, she could still work at the LGBT Center and she could have seen the episode where Alice so bravely got herself fired on the air.

Rhea: Oh, so Jamie is going to be a thing?

Riese: Yeah.

Rhea: All right, I’m done.

Carly: What simple way to introduce a new character.

Rhea: A potential suicide.

Carly: Right.

Riese: She could have volunteered. She could have done a live taping at the LGBT Center like you and me did.

Carly: Yeah. She could’ve called Alice and been, “I saw what you did on the show and it was so cool. And, I’m assuming that you’re fired now, so why don’t you come and work with us?”

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Easy. Now, you have a character that you’ve introduced and it gives Alice something to do.

Rhea: Yeah. Whatever.

Carly: Oh, brother.

Riese: It’s just the last season, build this out. Let’s build it out.

Carly: Who cares, right?

Riese: Let’s take some time and build it out.

Carly: Yeah. So, we go to Hit Club, which finally has new signage that says, “Hit Club.”

Riese: Porter Peabody’s Pleasure Palace.

Carly: They clearly rejected your much better name and went with Hit Club, which is a terrible name.

Rhea: Cunt the night, like I said.

Riese: It’s hard to really tell where they are though. Huh?

Carly: It is. You know why, because the lighting is so dark.

Rhea: It’s so bad at this point now. You literally cannot tell what is going on.

Carly: You have Kit and Sunset Boulevard, the drag queen, standing outside talking to each other, and it is so dark you cannot see them. These are also both Black actors. There is, historically, a very racist problem with lighting in film and television. Many people have talked about this and there’s been a lot of attention paid, especially recently, with shows that are doing things well and finding much better ways to light people with darker skin. There was a really cool piece a few years ago about how Ava Berkofsky lit season two of Insecure, that I love.

Riese: Oh yeah, I read that.

Carly: It’s so good. And, there’s a video and it was great. And so many other shows and films are doing this correctly. Still now, people are not doing a good job of it, but things are better. This is so glaringly terrible.

Riese: So bad.

Carly: And horribly offensive.

Rhea: It’s such a great example of how bad it can be. It’s actually like, if somebody’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Carly: Yes, perfect example.

Rhea: Obviously, a white person, is like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Which, you could be ignorant to it, obviously, that’s part of it. If you ever wanted to show somebody what anyone means when they mean, yeah, Hollywood, historically, does not know how to properly light Black skin, melanin-rich skin. Sunset Boulevard specifically, you literally cannot see that person.

Carly: Yeah, cannot.

Rhea: It is bonkers. It’s bonkers. It’s bonkers. They’re outside of a club. You could easily have those flood lights that go up for a poster, for the building. Anything to give an outline. It’s actually crazy, what it looks like.

Carly: Yeah, absolutely.

Rhea: I don’t mean to hammer it home, but it was so glaring.

Carly: I feel like, if I showed this scene to any of my cinematographer friends, they would lose their minds completely.

Rhea: Yeah. Thank God, we now live in a time where like Insecure exists, Atlanta exists, Black Panther exists. All these shows exist and it’s just not happening to the extent that it was. But, I was lamenting how long ago this was. Also, not that long ago. You know?

Carly: Only 11 years ago.

Rhea: But, thank God things have changed as much as they have, in what is a short amount of time. Again, not perfect, but way more examples of good lighting than examples of bad lighting, I think.

Carly: Yeah, for sure. I think so, too.

Rhea: Yeah. I agree.

Carly: We go inside for a second and Tasha’s like, “We’re going to toast to Alice because I guess she saved the teen’s life.”

Rhea: Also, Tasha — her wardrobe is the same colors as the background of the room that she’s in, by the way. This is also stuff that I’m just like, huh, I don’t know that I would have noticed this stuff before, but after working just a little bit in TV, I’m like, how did you not see that you’re putting somebody in an outfit that… You’re underlighting her skin, and then you’re also basically putting her in camo for the scene that she’s in. I understand she’s military, but, come on. Yeah. You are disappearing this person. Yeah.

Carly: Yeah. Very bad.

Riese: We also find one quick thing, is that we find out that Sunset thinks that Kit and Helena are dating.

Carly: Oh, that’s right, yes, of course. Sorry, I missed so much of their dialogue because I was so distracted by how I couldn’t see them.

Rhea: Yeah.

Riese: So, Tasha likes Alice again now.

Rhea: Their relationship is a roller coaster relationship.

Carly: Their relationship is totally fine now. Last episode, they were making pros and cons, should they break up lists? In this episode, they’re perfectly fine.

Rhea: My goodness.

Carly: Sure. Then, Kit sees Shane and her Jeep pull up and she’s going to go get her, I guess, so that she can get into the club and then catches Shane and Jenny just making out, just going at it. And, she is shocked.

Riese: Yeah. They’re French kissing.

Rhea: European.

Riese: Yeah, exactly, European kisses. Straight out of Latvia.

Carly: Incredible, European kisses. Oh, my God. We quickly catch a bit of Bette saying that Phyllis coming on to her earlier was the scariest moment of her life, I think.

Rhea: So, needlessly cruel.

Carly: Kit runs in and she’s, “I saw Jenny and Shane in the…” They’re all like, “Yeah, you don’t know how to operate a phone.” Ha ha ha, so funny. Okay, then Shane and Jenny are just with the group. So, somehow, they got out of the car, got into the club, got drinks and came and sat with the group in about seven seconds.

Rhea: Right.

Carly: It’s incredible.

Rhea: They’re just in a room. They’re just in a big, gigantic room.

Riese: Uh-huh (affirmative)

Carly: Yeah. So then, this thing goes on for a really long time where they’re toasting and everyone’s looking at Shane and Jenny and laughing. Bette can’t stop laughing, Tina can’t stop laughing. It’s very chaotic.

Bette and Tina are laughing at the club

Riese: Yeah. The way that Jenny says—

Jenny: Hi, Bette.

Riese: “Hello, Bette.”

Carly: I don’t know that the scene needed to go on as long as it did, but everyone was laughing, so I guess it was fine.

Riese: LMFAO.

Rhea: Yeah, they had to really bring the title home. But, I will say, at this point, these people do not seem like they are friends. They do not seem like a group of friends at all. They’re just antagonizing each other constantly.

Carly: Yeah. There’s so many pairings in this group that don’t work. How is this a group of friends? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s purely, they’ve known each other for a long-ish amount of time.

Rhea: Yeah, they’re just stuck together.

Carly: Like, y’all need new friends, all of you.

Rhea: Yeah.

Riese: Everyone’s dancing real bad, in the background.

Carly: Oh, yeah, really bad dancing.

Riese: It was really bad dancing. It was, just, especially bad. Sorry, someone had to say it.

Carly: It was hard to see, but what you could see, was bad.

Riese: You could see because of the shimmer fabrics.

Carly: Oh, yeah.

Riese: Everyone was shimmering. Yeah.

Rhea: Yeah.

Carly: Then, Jenny goes to check out the VIP area and Shane goes to check out the second floor.

Rhea: Maybe, they called it two different things to shake people off the scent.

Carly: Yeah, no one had any idea what was happening. The old switcheroo.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: There’s a lot more laughing. A lot more laughing happening.

Rhea: Yeah. And then, when they make fun of Shane, I’m just, man, this is too much. You guys don’t even like each other. You really don’t even like each other at this point.

Carly: I don’t understand what any of this group dynamic is anymore, I just don’t.

Rhea: Yeah. I don’t think they do either.

Riese: LMFAO.

Carly: Yeah. Then, Sunset Boulevard calls Kit up on stage.

Riese: I’m still so annoyed that they don’t have an actual drag queen.

Carly: I know. This is not an actual drag queen, this is just an actor.

Rhea: This is pre-drag being like a real thing to anybody. It’s still just this far-off concept that they could just dress up anybody and be, this is drag, right? It’s such a great example of how the show is not rooted in any real thinking. I don’t know. It’s so on its own vibe of what everything is. It’s just so funny to me.

Carly: Okay. I just quickly looked this up because I was, wait, were drag queens on TV shows a thing? And they were, because Willam was on an episode of Sex in the City in 2001 or 2002.

Rhea: Yeah. I mean forThe L word.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: Oh, no, totally. Yeah.

Riese: But, they also did this with drag kings and in an early season. I want to say in seasons or two, they had actors who weren’t drag kings or even queer, being drag kings.

Carly: That’s just a thing that they like to do on the show. Okay. So, Bette starts chanting something at Kit as gets called up to dance and it was not subtitled. I think it was, “Go Bollyhood, go Bollyhood.”

Riese: Oh yeah, we forgot to say this was Bollywood night.

Carly: Yeah. They love a theme. The Hit Club loves a theme. I swear to God, Bette was saying, “Bollyhood.” “Go Bollyhood, go Bollyhood,” like that, when she got up. It wasn’t subtitled, so I couldn’t tell, but I really think that’s what she was saying.

Riese: Maybe, when they were doing the subtitles for it, for streaming, they were like, is that—

Rhea: Nevermind, no one needs to know what this is.

Carly: Let’s just not.

Rhea: Except for the podcasts—

Carly: “Music plays.” Yeah.

Riese: Which is probably what it said, right, “music plays?” Tina was really doing a really intense chair dance during this. She was really dancing in her seat.

Carly: Yeah.

Riese: Really going for it.

Rhea: Oh, Laurel Holloman.

Riese: She really was.

Carly: She’s had a day, you know? That’s where the episode ends with Kit dancing with the not drag queen and everyone laughing.

Riese: And, Shane and Jenny kissing. Shenny kissing and everybody’s like, ha ha ha. They’re kissing because of true love.

Rhea: And, Laurel Holloman, just nearly falling on the floor.

Carly: They’re all just beside themselves with glee and derision watching their friends kiss. This is crazy. This is crazy.

Riese: “Hi, Bette.”

Carly: “Hi, Bette.” Anyway, that’s the episode!

Riese: That’s the episode!

Carly: Okay. Did we like this episode?

Riese: Categorically, no. On the scale of season six, which is bad, there were some parts that were funny.

Carly: Not a lot happens in this episode. It’s a real filler episode.

Rhea: It’s a real, get you from point A to point B episode.

Carly: Yeah. It’s like, this episode could have been a text. Like this meeting could have been an email, is kind of, how I feel about this.

Rhea: It basically was a series of text messages.

Carly: Yeah. That’s all you needed to know from this episode.

Rhea: Also, shout out to Alice for using promotional photos from the show as all of her contacts photos. That’s kind of my favorite. Just emotional stills.

Carly: Yeah, that was our only moment of Max in this episode.

Riese: Oh, right, the promo photo of him popped up on Alice’s phone when he tried to call her.

Carly: Yeah.

Rhea: So silly.

Riese: That was good that Max wasn’t in this episode, because every time Max is in an episode, something terrible happens.

Rhea: Yeah, man, poor, Max.

Carly: God, poor, Max.

Riese: How’d you guys feel about the episode?

Rhea: It’s hard for me to give a… just because I’m dropping in out of nowhere, like parachuting into the season, that I want to be like, what the shit? What was this? Because, it’s like, out of nowhere, it’s really weird. It’s really weird television. But, ultimately, okay, now that I’ve thought about it a little, it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s no season two, it’s no season one.

Carly: It is not.

Rhea: But, on a scale of what, 1 to 10 or something like that, it’s a 5 or something.

Carly: Sure.

Rhea: It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Shout out to the Eric Mabius thing. Cool, thanks for doing that. That made me feel seen. That was funny. That was fun, I guess. I don’t know.

Riese: Wasn’t he on Ugly Betty at that time?

Carly: Yes. Yes, he was.

Rhea: Funny, I forgot about that.

Riese: I was going to ask if everyone remembers when Tim left California to coach the championship swim team at Oberlin?

Rhea: Of course, I remember when he left California to coach the championship team at Oberlin. Who doesn’t remember that? Yeah, that was pretty terrible.

Carly: Everybody remembers where they were when they got the news that Tim was leaving Los Angeles to go teach the famous swim team at Oberlin.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: This is common knowledge, we all remember where we were.

Rhea: Everybody knows about the Oberlin swim team.

Riese: Exactly. Yeah.

Carly: A great swim team that definitely exists.

Rhea: For sure. They definitely have sports at Oberlin.

Riese: For sure, yeah. Because, everyone thinks Ohio State, they think like, Miami of Ohio. But, those aren’t really the big sports schools in Ohio. No, the big sports schools in Ohio are Oberlin.

Rhea: Oberlin.

Riese: Kenyon, probably.

Rhea: Yep.

Carly: Kenyon, yep.

Riese: They call it the Big Two.

Rhea: Yeah, the big two.

Carly: That’s the conference that they’re in. They’re in the Big Two conference.

Rhea: They just play each other.

Carly: That’s it, they just play each other. Yeah, this was an okay episode. I give it a “fine.” There were funny moments. Nothing happened in the plot at all. And, that’s about it.

Riese: I really do like Jamie though, so I’m glad that she’s coming in. Yeah.

Carly: Yeah, they definitely could have found a less ridiculous way to introduce her, but—

Rhea: This is The L Word.

Carly: This is The L Word, and, you know what, the butterfly effect is real and a serious issue. We can see it causing all kinds of issues. Yeah.

Rhea: Also, just, shout out to the fact that they got all the way to season six without a character named Jamie, on a queer show.

Carly: That is a good point.

Riese: Right.

Rhea: Like, wow, you didn’t use that one already? Okay, all right.

Carly: That’s shocking.

Rhea: Nope.

Carly: Do you think the writer’s room just kept a list of queer names and they just checked them off anytime they used them, because I do?

Rhea: At least, the writer’s assistant did.

Carly: Yeah, someone had that list.

Rhea: Someone had that job, that volt, had to hold onto that.

Carly: All right. We did it. We got through this episode.

Riese: Wow, we did it.

Carly: Rhea, thank you so much for joining us.

Rhea: Thank you for having me, this was so great.

Carly: On this terrible journey.

Rhea: We learned a lot about lighting.

Riese: Yeah.

Carly: And, about life.

Rhea: And, about life and about love.

Carly: Exactly. Yeah.

Riese: And LMFAO.

Rhea: We certainly did.

Carly: And yes, that is important for all of us. This is the time for the plugs.

Rhea: Oh yeah, time for the plugs.

Carly: Plug some shit. Plug, plug, plug.

Rhea: So, as I said, up top, I have a new album out and you can buy it at aspecialthing.com. I also have an enamel pin that my friend who did the artwork, Lindsay Jones… she designed a little enamel pin. That’s just my name and it’s cute. I don’t know. It’s hard to make merch as a comedian, but we’re swinging at the fences. So, you can buy that for 10 bucks and then you get the download of the album for free, or you can stream it on Spotify or Amazon Music, all that stuff. You can also buy it on iTunes. It was number one all weekend, at least. I haven’t checked back for a while.

Carly: Hell, yeah!

Rhea: Not a lot of queerness on the charts. So, if you want to support queer art or whatever, that’s very helpful, I think, personally. Yeah, so that’s out, it’s called Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootleg. It was recorded considerably pre-pandemic. So if you want a time machine to go experience a live show, without it feeling stressful, it might feel stressful no matter what, and, for that, I am sorry… But, if you feel as though you can, this is the record for that, because it contains no reference to it whatsoever and people are just like laughing in a room because it was way before the pandemic. So, very lucky to get to put that out.

Carly: Wow.

Rhea: Then, just the usuals on Twitter and Instagram. I’ve been doing some Lives on Sundays, Pacific Time, around noon. That’s been really fun. So, stop by for those. Then, also, I’m in the new season of Good Trouble, resuming my role as Lindsay Brady, non-binary comedian. It’s a stretch for me. I’ll say, it’s been very hard to get into that. Very out of my comfort zone, as they would say.

Carly: Your process must be incredible for that.

Rhea: So, I need days to prepare. I’ll say, I need days to prepare.

Riese: Is that why you do the gender things on Sundays to get into the mindset?

Rhea: Yeah, to really get in the mindset of a non-binary comedian. But yeah, it’s a great show. It’s a lot of fun. Check it out. So, they have some really great special guests on that show, too, so keep your eyes out for that. I think that’s it for me in terms of things I do.

Carly: You have a podcast about baseball.

Rhea: Oh yeah, I have a podcast about baseball, but it’s on winter hiatus right now because I just needed a quick break. Oh, and I make tie-dye with my partner and my friend called Trash Canyon. We have a new drop coming out soon.

Carly: Oh, yeah, you do!

Rhea: Buy some tie-dye. We donate 10 bucks, five bucks, I can’t remember from each shirt to, probably, the Sunrise Movement again, or the OCRE Project. I might put it to the crowd, where we should send some money to, but we’ve made three grand. We’ve donated three grand, just making tie-dye. It’s been a lot of fun.

Carly: Making tie-dye.

Rhea: Yeah, man. Far out.

Carly: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for listening to To L and Back. You can find us on social media, over on Instagram and Twitter. We are @tolandback. You can also email us [email protected]. And, don’t forget, we have a hotline. You can give us a call, leave a message, it’s (971) 217-6130. We’ve also got merch, which you can find at store.autostraddle.com. There’s stickers, there’s shirts, including a Bette Porter 2020 shirt, which is pretty excellent. Our theme song is by Be Steadwell. Our logo is by Cara Sykes, and this podcast was produced, edited, and mixed by Lauren Klein. You can find me on socials, I am @carlytron. Riese is @autowin. Autostraddle is @autostraddle, and, of course, autostraddle.com. The reason we are all here today.

Riese: Autostraddle.com.

Carly: All right. And, finally, it’s time for our L words. This is the segment of the show where we end things by simultaneously shouting out a random L word. Usually these have little to no relevance to anything we just recapped. Okay. Riese, you ready?

Riese: Okay. One, two, three, liminal spaces.

Rhea: Lymph nodes.

Carly: Laughter. Rhea, what did you say?

Rhea: Lymph nodes.

Carly: Oh, that’s great. I love that.

Riese: Ye old lymph nodes.

Carly: Riese, what did you say?

Rhea: What did I say? Oh, I said liminal spaces.

Carly: Ooh, that’s good.

Rhea: Very gay.

Carly: I said laughter, because I have no imagination today. There’s a lot of it in this episode.

Rhea: The world needs more laughter.

Carly: Oh, my God, you’re right.

Riese: LMFAO.

Carly: You know where you can get laughter is a comedy album, just saying.

Rhea: Laughing in your lymph nodes, finding those liminal spaces. Listen to my album.

Riese: Bringing it back around.

Carly: Thank you all for listening. We’ll be back in two weeks with another one of these cool episodes about the worst season of television that ever aired. Thank you, all!

Riese: Bye! Jenny forever!

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3267 articles for us.

2 Comments

  1. Kenyon actually IS one of the best swim teams in the country… have y’all not heard of D3?

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