SPOILERS! All about Season 6 of The L Word

* SPOILER ALERT *

WARNING: THIS CONTAINS -SPOILERS- ABOUT SEASON 6 OF THE L WORD! YES, THAT'S RIGHT: SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS.

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The L Word: Fifth season.

Okay, hopefully all those who hate surprises have departed....

With the premiere of season 6 fast approaching, what will happen in The L Word’s last season?

The teaser doing the rounds on YouTube offers very little.

Will Bette and Tina get back together?

Meanwhile, will Alice and Tasha stay together?

What will happen with Shane? Jenny?

Question, questions...

* SPOILER ALERT *

WARNING: BIG, BIG -SPOILERS- BELOW! BEST TO AVOID IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN IN THE DARK.

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The spoilers doing the rounds indicate that - gasp! - Jenny dies. Drowning in Bette's pool. Was it an accident? Was it intentional? It seems Shane might be involved.

If Jenny is found floating in Bette’s pool, what does that say about The L Word? Some fans are lambasting the storyline claiming it plays on tired, old stereotypes of the tragic lesbian meeting her death à la The Children’s Hour. If Shane is to blame for Jenny’s death, you then have the lesbian-turned-murderer stereotype to draw on. It’s raining clichés! Grab an umbrella!

Back when The L Word launched, Chaiken said in an interview for Hollywood networking group POWER UP! that “Jenny, although not me, certainly reflects a little bit of my life experience. Jenny the writer who comes to L.A. and then discovers, or reckons with her sexual identity”. The first few seasons were doing just that – allowing Jenny to discover and come to accept her sexuality.

And now? She’s dead. One cannot help but think that it’s a less than great message to send to viewers (especially the curious) – come out and end up as a corpse. But then again Chaiken has repeatedly said that television, particularly melodramas such as The L Word should not be a place for politics.

So what does Jenny’s death mean? With The L Word often being regarded as a soap opera, Jenny’s death draws on similar themes from old favourites such as Melrose Place. In this context, her death seems only fitting. Maybe we should look past the politics and just see it as light entertainment? But then again, we are lesbians and that seems impossible...

As Jenny’s storyline was the impetus for The L Word at the beginning, with her death, maybe the show is seeking some kind of morbid full cycle? Maybe it’s Chaiken bringing about closure for the show and her old shelf as embodied by Jenny? Although that sounds a bit artsy...

What do you think about Jenny’s death? Good riddance? Tragic? If nothing else, the character certainly polarised the opinions of fans.

- C

POSTSCRIPT: Hmm, I wonder if a movie version is in the works like Sex and the City. Now that would be interesting. But what about Jenny? Bring her back from the dead? Or maybe draw on that staple from other soap opera’s and introduce Jenny’s long lost twin? Hmm, but then that has already been done, kind of, with the introduction of Adele.

The L Word: A fourth season cast shot.

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* SPOILER ALERT *

WARNING: YES, -SPOILERS- ABOUT SEASON 6 OF THE L WORD ABOVE! SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS.

The Chart

“To incestuousnnneeesss”, we cheered as we clinked our wine glasses and beer bottles together at The Bank in Newtown last Wednesday.

This seemingly odd little cheer was prompted after we realised that our friendship circle(s) had become even more incestuously interconnected, with further hook-ups between mutual friends and friends-of-friends occurring.

Naturally, this then prompted rummaging for a piece of paper and pen, with names and lines been drawn all over the place – dashes for relationships and solid lines for casual flings.

Alicia, Helena and Jenny looking at the chart

I cannot help but wonder how many charts The L Word has inspired.

In the end, the density of the interconnectedness was quite, well, astounding.

How did this happen? Is it because the dating pool is so small? Would moving interstate solve the problem? A suggestion made by one friend.

I cannot but think that the internet has also played a part. Afterall, every single woman I know is either on GayDarGirls or Pink Sofa. A new Facebook group even seeks to document Sydney’s lesbian chart. Meanwhile, the creators of The L Word have launched OurChart, a social networking site for lesbians which enables users to create and view profiles and blogs.

Rewind five years and prior to having a so-called knitting circle of queer women friends, I remember watching The L Word and feeling incredulous that every character could somehow be connected on Alice’s chart. ‘Surely not?’ I remember thinking.

And now I find myself thinking, ‘How can they not?’ Of course, not everyone is so interconnected. On Wednesday, we were thrilled to discover that one friend’s latest girlfriend was all but absent from the chart. Maybe there is hope yet! Although as one friend dryly noted, “She’s on the chart now; forever caught in the lesbian web of death!”

Looking at our chart, I certainly think Alice had a point when she said, “We’re all connected – through love, through loneliness, through one tiny, lamentable lapse in judgment”.

- C

The Cranky Lesbian, Prop 8 and Facebook

If you believe the stereotype, lesbians are always angry about something. The Cranky Lesbian is a blog that plays on this stereotype, with the 25-year-old Californian blogger directing her “crankiness and prodigious amounts of homosexuality” towards topics such as the recent U.S elections (Palin anyone?), Grey’s Anatomy (the Callica romance!) and those just-for-fun 'Are you a Lesbian?' quizzes.

Most recently, the Cranky Lesbian has also been directing her crankiness towards California’s Governor Schwarzenegger (most famous for his portrayl of a cyborg and pregnant man), because he mostly kept quiet about Proposition 8 and didn’t fight against it. As you all probably know, Proposition 8 was passed at the recent U.S elections to amend the constitution in California to ban same-sex marriage.

Proposition 8: Are Ellen and Portia still legally married?

Of course, this leaves in limbo land all those couples and celebrity pairings such as Ellen and Portia who got married after the Californian Supreme Court overturned the ban in May. (For all those law geeks out there, here's the judgement in full). What will happen now?

My Facebook has been flooded by friends since the elections with requests to join groups such as 1,000,000 Million Strong Against Newly Passed Prop 8. I cannot help but be a bit cynical about this digital activism.

What do you think about such Facebook groups? Do they bring about change? Or is it just a way for us to vent our frustration online? Whether it be about the success of Proposition 8 over in Calfornia or closer to home, the end of historically queer establishments such as the Newtown Hotel and the axing of The L Word on free-to-air Australian television.

- C