The L Word: Season Two (2005)

4 Discs DVD

"Are dykes the new fags?" Ariana Huffington asks Shane (Katherine Moennig).

Showtime marketed The L Word early on as its lesbionic answer to Queer As Folk. Gay microcosm? Check. Titillating drama? Check. Mindblowing sex? Check, check and um, damn. Check.

It's hard not to have expectations when you're a stalwart fan of Showtime's first gay golden child, Queer As Folk. Would the The L Word feel like a lame bid for the other half of the gay demographic? It occasionally feels like QAF with the tens of nonsensical sex scenes crammed into each episode, but otherwise, The L Word comes across as a different creature altogether. These women - even the bitchy ones like Tanya and Helena - are wonderfully flawed human beings in wonderfully-flawed relationships. It's great that the show portrays such a variety of lesbians - the feminine, the masculine, the drag kinds and everyone in between - with relatable characters, though notably, its heterosexual beacon, Mark, can be exasperating with his documentarian mumbo-jumbo.

Flies in the ointment? A few.

Talk about drama. These women's lives are so rife with issues, you wonder why they don't ritually down martinis with Xanax. It's a web woven with unbelievable plot threads: Tonya's engaged to Dana. Dana and her former best friend Alice hook up. Dana and Alice plan to tell Tonya but are pre-empted when Tonya breaks up with Dana because she falls in love... with Melissa Rivers?

Sometimes far-out and frequently far-reaching, The L Word features magnetic performances by Moennig, Jennifer Beals as Bette and Sarah Shahi as Jenny. If only the show didn't aspire to reach the depths of despair and profundity almost every episode, adhering to the natural ebb and flow of "real life" more closely (would it be so wrong to wallow in the superficialities of life as Sex and the City frequently did?) and included more comical moments (Dana and Alice's Loveboat role-playing scenario is priceless), The L Word would break out of its melancholic state, becoming the all-around heavyweight it wants to be.

L Word GIRLS ON THE RECORD, L Word BALDERDASH, PLASHING THE GIRLS: L Word Shorts

In GIRLS ON THE RECORD, the cast dishes on random highlights, everything from working with Camryn Manheim to Shahi's "Felicity" moment. They're amusing, but too brief to be notable. BALDERDASH and PLAYING WITH THE GIRLS are longer, but more random, a montage of questions and words asked of the cast and crew. Sweet and fun, but disposable extras.

If the L Word would simmer down and lighten up, I'd be a happy camper. Luckily with directors like Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don't Cry) and Moises Kaufman (The Laramie Project) slated to direct episodes next season, maybe there's reason to hope after all.