The L Word Generation Q Episode 204 Recap: But This Lake House Has No Lake

Welcome to the fourth recap of the second season of The L Word: Generation Q, brought to you by the same network that brought you The L Word, a story about a camisole-and-cargo-shorts adorned computer whiz and dancer from the esteemed Berkeley dance troupe “Homo Erect Us” who moves to Los Angeles to work in music videos, immediately regrets it due to her perception that everybody in LA is “into high fashion” and fails to “celebrate female masculinity,” meets a newly-out trans male OurChart coder with a big group of transphobic friends, starts interning for and dating him, gives him a beejer in the computer room, tags along with him to a poorly lit funeral in Illinois but somehow vanishes for the majority of the storyline, accompanies him on a trip to San Francisco for eventually thwarted top surgery and then is never seen, heard from or discussed ever again. However, her OurChart Bio lives on forever in my mind and, I can only hope, in yours as well.

About 60% of the way through episode 204 of The L Word Generation Q, I texted The Gen Q podcast team “I’m watching 204 and I already cried 4 times.” So that is what I have to say about THAT.

We open on a cool spring evening in the fine city of Los Angeles, where our young friend Dani is returning home with Gigi following a three-hour period in which Dani was not actively devastated about the implosion of her life and relationship. Unfortunately, her joy is immediately thwarted because there are cop cars surrounding Daddy’s Manor!

Could you PLEASE ask Ari to bring me my yellow toothbrush, my gluten-free crackers and my Bobby Axelrod bobble-head

As you may be aware, people in television programs with a lot of money often find themselves the victim of a home invasion from the FBI. The FBI will enter the office or home with brisk efficiency and emerge with neatly labeled file boxes. If the FBI ever raided my home, they would be like, “how much A-Camp memorabilia do you really need to be holding onto??” and I would be like “Sirs, that is for the Lesbian Herstory Archives!” Anyhow, don’t worry the FBI will never take my A-Camp maps and pigeonhole notes away because I’ve done nothing illegal and have no money to seize.

So, Daddy’s being arrested for Criminal Conspiracy and Fraud. Somehow I am already crying??? For Dani??? HOW MUCH PAIN CAN ONE GIRL HANDLE???!!? (Dani, that is.) (Although it is also worth asking about me.)

Cut to a gorgeous spring day on the verdant streets of Los Angeles, California, where Micah and Maribel are flying in the face of their obvious chemistry by making plans for Micah to allow himself to be set up with Maribel’s co-worker, Harry, a 27-year-old lawyer, and for the two of them to double date with Maribel’s “man-child who doesn’t deserve me.”

Be honest was it you who sent an Edible Arrangement to my office with an enormous teddy bear holding a HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA balloon

MAYBE

Anyhow, this adorable pre-amble to their eventual marriage is interrupted when Rodolfo decides to call Micah from jail.

We then jet some number of blocks in a specific direction to FiSoMi’s (I’m renaming it permanently) where Sophie’s looking at vintage lesbians on her laptop as she researches her new segment, an experience I am intimately familiar with.  Finley shows up looking hot to trot in her athletic shorts and grey sweatshirt and announces that she just went on a run and also coached soccer at the LGBTQIA+ Center.

You know I personally would not necessarily store my jeans in an empty box of waffles but who am I to judge

Big development for Finley: she has a life goal! To be coach children’s soccer!! Maybe she can take over for Roy Kent now that he is abandoning the small girls for the large boys. Anyhow: Finley does her Finley things — scrounging for food someone else bought, offering a waffle before realizing there’s just one — and Sophie starts smiling a little bit as she watches Finley and eventually takes a deep breath and asks Finley if she’d like to have dinner that evening. Like at that sushi place on Hyperion at 7?

Wow Riese’s recaps are so funny

Finley is truly delighted by this prospect, like a kitten who was found on a highway, nursed back to health, and then placed atop a silk pillow to eat tuna out of a can. I admit that I, too, am delighted.

We then sprint over to Chez Bette, where the Original Cast has gathered for breakfast and emotional processing, as Alice apparently crashed there last night following her breakup with Nat. Unfortunately, Alice is exhausted because she stayed up all night watching videos of soldiers reuniting with their families. I hope she watched my favorite one, in which a lesbian radio hostess named Alice is sitting at home in her glasses watching a news report about Baghdad and crying softly to herself when SURPRISE her hot girlfriend Tasha arrives at her front door in a leather jacket and promptly fucks her right there on the floor!

By the way the ghost of Jenny Schecter was banging on my window all night so I did a few banishing spells but I dunno how long they’ll stick

Now Alice has gotta kick her Mom out of her house so she can move back into it.

Shane: Well I can talk to Lenore for you if you’d like—
Bette: That’s very generous of you ——
Alice: We’re very aware of that, thank you Shane.

Bette says Alice is welcome to stay as long as she’d like, but also EXPOSITION TIME: Bette’s dressed up (“like a million bucks” – Shane) because she’s gotta “hunt down” a prospective client today. Watch out Pippa!

Then we take a group field trip to The Aloce Show, where Micah has tracked down Sophie to demand she find Dani because he cannot find Dani anywhere in this entire city!

Come ON just tell me the truth was it Finley who ate the pair of jeans I left in the Eggo Waffles box

Micah: Don’t blow this off.
Sophie: Micah, what do you want from me?
Micah: I want you to find her.
Sophie: I haven’t heard from her in weeks and she wouldn’t want me to find her.
Micah: Okay, maybe she doesn’t want you to find her, but she needs someone. How can you not see that? Just… make sure she’s okay, and have her call me, okay?

It was in this moment that I knew, deeply and entirely, that Sophie would not be, in fact, meeting Finley for dinner tonight at that sushi place on Hyperion, and within me a great sadness took root and began to grow, its branches reaching through my ribs and angling towards the waning moon.

Angie and Kayla are literally taking a walk in the actual park as an activity, chatting about Marcus and also what they want to be when they grow up. Angie wanted to be President or else Snoopy. Kayla wanted to be a dancer. Angie, blissfully unaware of the anxiety I am currently experiencing re: Finley, is BURSTING WITH JOY regarding this conversation, particularly when Kayla says Angie reminds her of her Dad.

Oh my God I ALSO have really severe seasonal allergies!

However, Kayla says there’s something she’s gotta tell Angie about her Dad but she doesn’t know how. Jesus Christ I hope this man is not already dead?? I have so much anxiety this episode!!!

Crosstown at the Dana Fairbanks Memorial Tavern, Tess and Shane are setting up for Movie Night when Tess gets a phone call revealing she is immediately needed in Vegas. Shane attempts to invite herself to Vegas but Tess insists she cannot before eventually explaining that she’s going to see her Mom, so there will be no Bacchanal Buffets or Whitney Houston hologram shows or other forms of Vegas-induced fun on the menu tonight. Therefore Shane should stay right where she is.

Tess bring me to Vegas I have to see the Blue Man Group

Shane nobody actually likes the Blue Man Group

BUT THEY COMBINE THEATRICS, ART, MUSIC AND SCIENCE TO CREATE AN INTERACTIVE, WILD AND PERCUSSION-DRIVEN EXPERIENCE FULL OF HUMOR AND ENERGY

What is wrong with you

“I’ll be back tonight,” Tess promises. “Don’t try and put the projector together without me.”

Alice returns to her home and OH MY GOD IT’S LENORE

I can’t find my “MILF OF THE YEAR” Mug anywhere!

Okay, if they brought back Lenore then all bets are off! Reboots often re-awaken major characters from the past, as this show has with Tina and will be doing with Helena later in the season (according to IMDB) — but bit characters generally remain in the annals of history, especially when your bit characters were largely sourced in Vancouver and you’re shooting the reboot in Los Angeles. But damn! If Lenore is back then who knows, Marcus Allenwood may very well be lurking around the corner. That said, Mark Gibson, who played Marcus, isn’t an actor, he’s a house painter who was working for an A.D of the original series and got asked to be on the show ’cause they somehow could not find an actor “suitable” for the role. So, who knows!

Anyhow! Lenore obviously is up to her elbows in boxes relating to her new career as a Multi-Level Marketing Wizard Super Silver Seller for Swan’s Breath Cosmetics.

Mom, you can’t just throw out my Dana cardboard cut-out without asking me!

Alice: Nat and I broke up.
Lenore: Oh sweetie.
Alice: I know. It ran its course so it’s probably better this way.
Lenore: Is that why you look so terrible?
Alice: That feels unnecessary.

Alice informs her Mom that she’s gotta hit the road, Jack. Mom insists she’s needed right here in Alice’s apartment because Alice does not need to wallow here alone. Alice insists that she very generously rented her mother an entire apartment in Brentwood, replete with a second bedroom for her Swan’s Breath scam boxes. Mom insists once more that in fact she is very needed during Alice’s trying time. Alice says Mom’s gotta be out by Monday, bye!

Gather round the wooden table, my dears, because Angelica has sought out the deep wisdom and advice of Ol Uncle Shane-o. Angie has learned that her donor is dying and wants to know if Shane thinks she should meet him before he kicks the bucket. For crying out loud, this show needs to think long and hard about how many Black relatives of Angie they have already killed and maybe RECONSIDER.

How do I tell Shane that her restaurant has its ice-to-drink ratio all wrong

Angie wants to know what Shane would do if she was in Angie’s situation, which Shane struggles to answer due to her own experiences with her father, a noted philanderer and scammer who robbed the Peabodys, disowned his son, re-owned his son and didn’t read Some of Her Parts.

Slander

Shane: He left when I was very young. And then I was in and out of foster care. And uh, when I felt like I was ready I tracked him down. And I realized I didn’t like the guy.
Angie: Why?
Shane: Well, he uh. He reinforced the worst parts that were in me. And I made a very poor decision because of that.
Angie: What did you do?
Shane: I left someone that I loved very much at the altar.
Angie: Shit.
Shane: Yeah. Sometimes I think I would’ve been a lot better off had I never met the guy.

The thing about Carmen is that she was REALLY, really, just really really hot.

I know. I saw the gif.

Once again I find myself in tears, while also thrilled to hear the past addressed in a logical context in which to address the past. Shane asks where Jordi’s at and Angie says they’re “on different life tracks” ’cause Jordi is running for Prom Queen. Unclear how that would prevent her from engaging in this storyline, but anyhow, Angie wants to ask her Mom if she can see a therapist. Everybody light a candle and pray she won’t suggest Dan Foxworthy.