The Final Season of The L Word: Who Killed Jenny? Who Cares?
Now, I love the melodramatic soap opera known as The L Word, and I’ve followed it as a loyal viewer through thick and, often, thin. When dignified heiress and mother Helena became a professional gambler and went to jail (without it affecting her child visitation rights), I suspended my disbelief. When Jenny somehow got her inside-joke-filled book Les Girls made into a major film, even though it looks like a shittily acted two hour version of the first season of The L Word, I believed it, if only because I figured it was a reflexive exercise or show creator Ilene Chaiken getting all Woody Allen by working herself into the story. But now this!
Who Shot J.R. was original (unless you count millions of whodunnits and Agatha Christie plays).
Who Shot Mr. Burns was funny, and they did it right–with a cliff-hanger spanning a season finale and a season premiere, so you had the whole summer to wonder.
Who Shot Julian Crane (in Passions) was awesome but they only sort of resolved it, years later, in typical Passions style, so the tension kind of vanished after a while.
But why spend the whole of the short (8-episode) last season of this relationship drama unraveling a murder mystery? Not only do I not believe anyone’s motives (Max is hormonal? Tina might lose her job?) It will probably turn out that Jenny killed herself. Or she wasn’t dead at all, and that Lucy Lawless cop was just a plant from extras casting, and it was all a test of Shane’s loyalty! I don’t know, that’s a bit farfetched, but we are talking about Jenny here. What do you think?
