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L Word recap: Season 5, episode 5

by jill on February 4th, 2008

“Lookin’ at You, Kid”

As the episode starts, we meet the actresses cast in the main roles for Lez Girls — more on them later.

First, Bette and Tina are trying to work out the awkwardness ensuing from their kiss on the last episode. Bette thinks Tina is ducking her, which Tina tries to say is because she’s so busy getting the movie rolling. They postpone any rehash of their renewed feelings.

In a scene that should have had a “bow chicka bow-wow” score to go with its porn overtones, Cindi, of Dawn-and-Cindi, the couple who own She Bar, decides she wants Shane all to herself after last week’s menage a trois. She seduces Shane with some cheesy come-on lines and some full-on nudity. Within minutes, Shane’s blasphemed her vows to avoid drama. She and Cindi doing the nasty without Dawn — dramalicious for sure!

Oh, btw, Dawn and Cindi apparently were lying when they said that She Bar was going after different clientele than The Planet. Promises to Kit aside, they soon start serving breakfast and copying other aspects of the coffeehouse.

On the Jodi front, the issue with her student’s provocative performance art has escalated. Bette’s worried about Jodi’s ability to remain composed with a committee that’s looking into the matter (You may recall from last week that the student outraged one of his classmates by carving a gun from stone, pointing the sculpture to his head and threatening to kill himself in front of the class). Anyway, Bette calls Tina to talk it through but Tina thinks she wants to talk about their make out session, so she uses work as an excuse to avoid the conversation, again.

While at work, Tina cozies up to Adele, letting her know how much Tina appreciated her efforts to get Jenny on board with the Nikki casting decision. She asks Adele to watch out for other possible problems with Jenny and to let her know if anything comes up that could be a roadblock for the movie.

In other Adele news, Max does some Internet research on her and discovers some discrepancies about how she’s representing herself. When Max tells Jenny, she brushes it off in her prickly diva way. Adele plays off the accusation that she’s hiding something, but the seed of doubt is planted.

Alice’s story arc this week is the most melodramatic. Angered when she hears the basketball player she saw at the closeted Hollywood party making homophobic remarks about another athlete, she rashly posts the video she took at the party. In so doing, she forcefully outs the player and thrusts herself into the spotlight as a gay advocate. She’s interviewed on national TV and the timing couldn’t be worse for Tasha — remember that low profile she wanted to keep in light of her upcoming trial? Even though Alice swears she wanted to ask Tasha’s advice before doing what she’s done, Tasha is royally pissed.

OK, back to the Lez Girls actresses we met in the opening scene. Jenny invites them and their real-life inspirations to a party for the film. Bette doesn’t really want to go and she tries to convince Jodi to stay home to spend some quality time, since the situation with the student is driving a wedge between them (As, no doubt, is the renewed sexaul tension between Bette and Tina.). Eventually they make it to the party, where Shane has provided hash brownies and the everyone’s washing them down with plenty of alcohol. The ladies meet their on-screen counterparts, with truly entertaining results. While Alice offers to give the woman playing Elise some insight into the role, Bette’s appalled to find that the actress playing Bev is “too white” to play her, and doesn’t appear to be very bright. Bette tells the actress off and goes to find Jodi, who she thinks is trying to pick up another woman. Jodi’s not into the woman at all and can’t understand why Bette’s making a scene. Bette storms out, followed by Tina. Finally, they talk about the kiss. Perhaps not being truly honest, Tina says it was a mistake she regrets. Bette’s upset and when Tina asks if she’s in love with Jodi she says yes, though it doesn’t sound genuine.

Soon after, the Shane drama returns. Dawn crashes the party, with Cindi in tow. Dawn lambastes Shane in front of everyone for breaking the rules by having sex with Cindi without her. Not that anyone really cares — they’re all  busy getting loaded.  Jenny and Nikki hook up in a closet (perhaps a metaphor for Nikki’s life in Hollywood? If so, it’s none too subtle), while Adele plays voyeur and watches the whole thing.

By the end of the night, Tasha and Alice have fought over the basketball player incident and appear to have broken up, Tina has gotten trashed and everyone has jumped into Bette’s pool except Bette, who calls the cops to report their rowdy behavior.

Jodi somehow becomes the caretaker of Tipsy Tina, who she brings over to Bette’s for some water. Tina falls asleep on the couch and Bette discovers her there. Again, we’re left with the Ti-Bette-Di triangle to ponder as the show draws to a close.

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