Trans character, new baby shake up 'L Word' third season
MORE INFO
MORE INFO ‘The L Word’
Sundays at 10 p.m.
Showtime
‘The Book of Daniel’
Fridays at 10 p.m.
NBC
Women from ‘L’ The lovely lesbians of Los Angeles can be hard to keep track of. Here’s a refresher course.
Bette Porter (Jennifer Beals): Sexy and fashionable, art curator Bette is at the center of a circle of lesbian friends. At the end of season two, Bette lost her job but got back together with Tina, her partner of seven years.
Tina Kennard (Laurel Holloman): Though she’s been together with Bette for years and gave birth to their daughter Angelica, this is the first lesbian relationship for the former movie executive.
Kit Porter (Pam Grier): Bette’s straight half sister is a former singer and recovering alcoholic. She stays in the ladies’ lives as the owner of The Planet, their local hangout.
Shane McCutheon (Katherine Moenning): Butch hairstylist Shane was the love ‘em and leave ‘em type that all the ladies wanted (and had), until she settled down with Carmen.
Jenny Schecter (Mia Kirshner): Jenny moved next door to Bette and Tina with her boyfriend, but the writer eventually discovered her true orientation. After suffering a nervous breakdown last season, she returned to her parent’s house in the Midwest.
Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey): Often the comic relief, this bisexual radio host is obsessive about her love interests, especially her ex Dana.
Dana Fairbanks (Erin Daniels): A pro tennis player and Olivia cruise spokesperson, Dana outed herself to the world. In the process she dropped Alice for her former flame Lara.
Carmen de la Pica (Sarah Shahi): The hottest DJ in town, Jenny and Shane fought it out over this hottie before she chose Shane. However, Carmen’s family doesn’t know their relationship is romantic.
Helena Peabody (Rachel Shelley): This wealthy Brit can have just about anything she wants, except the new object of her affection.
AFTER A SLOW summer and a rocky autumn, it seems that, improbably, the winter is going to be the hot time for gay characters on television.
Of the new shows with gay characters that started on network TV this fall, only the CBS comedy “Out of Practice” gained any footing. This month, both network and cable television are premiering or bringing back series with strong gay representation.
But with the death of Showtime’s “Queer As Folk” last year, the highest gay quotient of any television show is the cable channel’s lesbian drama “The L Word,” which returns with a 12-episode third season Jan. 8.
Over on network TV, NBC’s new family drama “The Book of Daniel” offers gay viewers a promising new option with one regular and two recurring characters who are less than straight.
The new show, airing on NBC Fridays at 10 p.m., replaces the fertility clinic drama “Inconceivable” which offered two gay characters but failed to gain an audience this fall.
“Daniel” starts off with two back-to-back episodes on Jan. 6 at 9 p.m. before airing the remaining six episodes in its regular time slot.
The ‘Word’ is out
“Your other glove is downstairs,” Ilene Chaiken, the lesbian creator, executive producer and writer of “The L Word,” tells one of her daughters moments before the child gets on the bus to go to school.
Though she is familiar with motherhood, Chaiken, 48, says that the relationship and struggles of “The L Word’s” new mothers, Bette (Jennifer Beals) and Tina (Laurel Holloman), aren’t based on her life.
“My having a child has informed their story,” she says. “The arguments we have about parenting—you can’t get away from that experience. But their story, the dramatic narrative of their story is not taken from my life.”
The introduction of baby Angelica isn’t the only change for the third season of the show.
‘The L Word’ creator Ilene Chaiken (right)—seen here with Katherine Moenning—says the upcoming third season of her series is the best yet. (Photo by James Dittiger/Showtime)
“I had a very specific notion about how I wanted this season to work when we set out,” Chaiken says. “The second season was a little darker than I like to go. We tend to deal with real issues, and sometimes it tries to get dark.
“I loved the fun and humor of the first season and it seems our audience did too,” she adds. “We made a conscious decision to go back to that and make it more talky and paced like life as we see it and go to the humor whenever we could. It’s not an out-and-out comedy, but it’s more funny.”
And the humor often comes from class clown Alice (Leisha Hailey), who at the outset of the season is hysterically hysterical about her recent breakup with Dana (Erin Daniels).
Also adding some zest this season is gay actor Alan Cumming as outré “pansexual” club promoter Billie Blaike, who comes onboard to help Kit (Pam Grier) run her restaurant The Planet.
But the most prominent addition to the cast is Daniela Sea as Moira, a butch lesbian who Jenny (Mia Kirshner) befriends when living at her parents’ house in the Midwest. Jenny brings Moira back to Los Angeles.
Without giving too much away, Moira eventually decides to make the transition to become a man.
“The transgender story for us is a big story,” Chaiken says. “In our group [of writers], we had a number of women who had exes who were now men or becoming men and going through the permutations of gender redefinition.”
Chaiken says the most difficult aspect of the story was finding an actress who was believable in the role.
“I was aware that it could be gruesome if we cast someone you didn’t believe,” she says. “On the occasions when Hollywood decides to do trans stories, it can be really bad. Having lived in a community and known lots of transgender people, we know there are certain things we look for in mannerism and voice, and I wanted it to be real. Daniella was the one person who I absolutely believed in this part.”
A med student played by Christian Campbell (left) finds it hard to be the gay son of a prominent ...
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