“To L and Back” L Word Podcast Episode 410: “Little Boy Blue”

Well paint a map on my abs and call me In The Pink, we’re going to the races! Also, Bette’s planning a big dinner party, Paige and Shane are super into storytelling and green ice cream, Tina gets a boner for Kate Arden who by the way made a wonderful film called Pandora, Jodi wears a tiny vest over a big shirt and Papi wears a baggy vest over no shirt, Max takes a terrible rip back home for a funeral because this show simply has NO MERCY.

A close-up shot of someone's stomach, with a red marker drawn circle, dollar sign, and x. "Are you in?"

Carly: “We’re doing something that lesbians love to do in television and film, which is draw on each other’s torsos.”

Bette (wearing a gray blouse, her back to the camera) is talking with Jodi (wearing a pink top under a blue cardigan) in Jodi's studio. Behind Jodi is her sculpture of Barbara Bush, who is blindfolded with an American flag.

Riese: “Did you notice Barbara Bush was still in there.”
Carly: “Yeah she was like LOOMING in the background. I was gonna say staring at us but she’s blindfolded, so. She’s just sort of hovering in a very uh, menacing and disturbing and distracting kind of way.”

A blonde woman in a white top is signing with Jodi in Jodi's studio. Subtitles read, "She must be an incredible fuck."

Max's sister (wearing a pink top) sits on a couch holding a coffee cup. She says, "You know how Dad feels..."

Carly: “One thing I would like to point out is that Max’s sister is NOT played by Taryn Manning. Because if you’re like me, that scene started and you thought… “is that Taryn Manning?”
Riese: “I thought ‘is she wearing a wig?’ Because her hair was so specifically askew, it seemed like they were like “what do people outside of LA do their hair like? What do the country people do in the wilds of Illinois?”

Shane has just opened the front door to find Paige (who is wearing a bucket hat) and Jared. Shane says, "Ice cream."

Riese: Back in los angeles california, Paige is wearing a hat.
Carly: Paige is wearing a truly unfortunate hat. This hat should be illegal.
Riese: I think she found it on the set of The Parent Trap set in 1956.

Shane (wearing a black jacket) and Paige (whose back is to the camera, and is holding a strawberry ice cream cone) sit in a coffee shop. Shane has a look of dislike on her face. Paige says, "I thought of some new... stories..."

Carly: We’re having ice cream breakfast. I thought it was gelato.
Riese: Shane put on a blazer.

Jared is wearing a blue shirt and eating green ice cream with a green spoon. "[Clearing throat]: That one story"

Carly: Shane put on a blazer to go to breakfast. That’s…. sure. It looks like they’re in little gelato cups.
Riese: Yeah cuz, green apple gelato?

Jenny is sitting outside, wearing red lipstick, her hair down and curled, and a black jacket .She says, "I saw the film, Tina."

Bette is sitting at her desk in a grey blouse. Jodi is straddling her in her office chair, kissing Bette's neck. Bette says, "Not now, I'm busy."

Max gets the charm bracelet

Angus, wearing a black shirt, has a desperate look on his face. He says, "I believe in you."

Riese: “Also is he growing out a beard or is he shaving? He needs to pick one. It’s gross enough that he’s just walking around.”

Angus and Papi stand in a dimly lit room. "I also got a couple of radio stations."

Carly: Papi is wearing a sweater vest without anything under it. Well maybe like a tank or something, like a cami.
Riese: Maybe a camisole.
Carly: I used to wear sweater vests when they were really popular, during this time, and once I wore one with a t-shirt under it and thought I was like, fucking edgy.”

Tina in her living room, wearing a brown top and a purse over her shoulder. Her head is tilted to her right, and is facing Jodi and Bette (who are off camera). Tina says, "My date is with, uh, Kate Arden."

Tina smiling slightly and looking upwards. She says, "She's talented and intelligent."

Jenny, her hair pinned up and wearing a dark jacket, looks off to her side and says, "I always have this compulsion to take off all my clothes."

Kit holding a cup of fries in one hand and a hot dog wrapped in foil in another. She says, "This ain't your granny's taco, but..."

Tasha holding an empty cup of fries, next to Alice who has two fries sticking out of her mouth. Tasha says, "Hello?"

Catherine and Helena at the horse races, about to hand over a briefcase full of cash over to the workers to place a bet. Catherine says, "100,000 on in the pink."

Carly: Helena and Catherine have a suitcase with 100,000 of cash in it. Because they are in a different movie.

Tasha (wearing a leather jacket) and Alice (wearing a white top and brown cardigan) stand in a crowd at the horse races. Alice says, "Yeah. Women."

Carly: Tasha runs into a guy that she knows from the military and she gets super worried that he’s gonna know that she’s queer because she is with a bunch of obviously queer people who are all behaving ridiculously
Riese: Helena and Catherine walk by and are holding hands and they kiss

Tasha looks displeased. She says, "Just one furlong away."

Riese: Tasha looks up and sees them having very public skybox sex and is like, oh my god, horrified.

Catherine and Helena holding each other close. Off-camera, the announcer announces, "With Rock Hard Ten finishing third."

Jenny, Kit, Alice, an Tasha standing in the stands at the horse races. Alice says, "Fucking fuck. Fuck me."

Jodi and Bette (whose back is to the camera) in Bette's house. Subtitles read "[Paper crumples]"

Riese: And then she stuffs the seating chart up Bette’s hoo-ha.

Max (wearing a blue dress shirt) is walking along a dirt path. Subtitles read, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Riese: It is the standard trope of the person standing away from the funeral who doesn’t feel like they can be at the funeral hiding behind a tree and even though the entire graveyard is empty except for the funeral party nobody ever notices.”

Shane sits with her arm around Paige on the couch. Shane says, "A whole box set of -- of -- of stories, right?"

Jodi and Bette sitting on the couch, with Kit and Jenny standing off in the background. Bette says, "You reading stories to Paige's son."

Jenny (wearing a floppy black hat), Shane, and Paige sit on the couch together. Shane has her arm around Paige. Off camera, Alice says, "Really sweet, you guys."

Jodi and Bette sitting together on a couch. Subtitles read, "They were fucking all day. [Doorbell chimes]"

Tina and Bette open the door for Kate to come inside.

Carly: “Kate bought a very large amount of tequila”

Kate, with long brown hair and wearing a forest green jacket, says, "At the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival."

Bette sitting at a dinner table with a glass of wine in front of her, wearing a deep-v dark dress. She is looking at her fingernails. She says, "I feel so..."

Riese: What? They say you can tell gay girls vs straight girls because gay girls look at their nails basically palms up and fingers in, which isn’t true!

Catherine sitting at an outdoor dinner party table. She says, "Gay girls want monkeys as children."

Jodi looking serious. She asks, "Did you want a monkey or a horse?"

Paige looking down the dinner table. She says, "Girls that grow up wanting horses are straight."

Tina and Kate sit next to each other at the dinner table. Kate asks, "So, you guys used to be lovers, right?"

Tasha and Alice sitting next to each other at the dinner table. Tasha is holding a glass of white wine. "That is a very long lesbian phone tree cord."

Jodi with her hand on her hip, looking exhausted. She is wearing an oversized white blouse under a cropped black vest. She says, "That was hard.

Riese: “It turns out that Jodi is wearing a tiny little vest AND A GIANT SHIRT!”

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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 3302 articles for us.

6 Comments

  4. Three things, in order of silliest to most serious:

    1) If Jenny did have a monkey in the cold open, it would truly be a BANANAS scene.

    2. I, like Carly, wanted a dog, moose and penguin as pets more than either a horse or a monkey.

    3. All throughout Max’s mother’s funeral storyline, I kept thinking about a similar scene in season 1 of Pose. In Pose, Blanca has her whole chosen family–her children–with her to help her through the painful encounters she has with some of her family of origin. And in the end, Blanca does get an inheritance that is significant not only to her, but to her future generations.
    If Max had his friends around him, if he was actually able to be at the grave site, and if what he got from his mother became a part of his new life, I think some of the horrible family stuff would have been easier to bear.
    In other words, if The L Word had even a bit of the love and compassion Pose has for Blanca (and MJ Rodriguez herself) then his more difficult storylines would feel more like character development and less like weird tacit punishment.
    To be fair, I am a cis person who is close to her family of origin, so I can’t speak to what this experience would actually be like! This was just how I’ve felt as a viewer of both shows.

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