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A guest post from intern Margaret Johnson:
Sam, I was psyched to watch Being Erica Thursday night after your glowing recommendation, but I was on a plane at the time, and JetBlue's 36 channels of Direct TV apparently do not include the Soap Network. Guess I'll have to wait for next week.
But speaking of girl crushes, last night Showtime aired the series finale of The L Word. And while I won't be so sad to see Jenny (Mia Kirschner) finally go, I will miss the rest of cable's loveliest lesbians. Sure, their creators have made some missteps over the show's six seasons, including some criminally bad writing—the debut episodes of Seasons 4 and 6 come to mind—and the carnival flashbacks that terrify for all the wrong reasons. The show has also taken heat for casting only a few real lesbians and for making the whole cast so—gasp—pretty! (Creator Ilene Chaiken's response to the latter criticism: "You wouldn't have watched the show if they weren't.")
In my book, though, the L Word's accomplishments far outweigh its shortcomings. First of all, it brought Jennifer Beals back into our lives. Secondly, one word: Carmen. The show also deserves kudos for clarifying points sometimes misunderstood elsewhere—see Season 2's endearingly awkward discussion between the cast and Gloria Steinem on how not all feminists are lesbians, and vice versa—and just for some moments of great television, like the tragicomic chaos of last week's baby shower for Max.
Rumor has it we're in for a spinoff that has quirky Alice (gay golden-girl Leisha Hailey) in prison. (Can she really have murdered Jenny? Discuss.) I wouldn't put it past her to smuggle in a dry-erase board and some expo markers and link everyone in the pen into one happily charted family.
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Is anyone else nursing a total girl crush on Erin Karpluk, the star of the new show Being Erica? She plays a smart, pretty 32-year-old with a master's degree who just hasn't turned into the success story she knows everyone expected her to be. Instead, she's wandering the streets in her dorky green PJs, struggling to snag a job or a man she really loves and obsessing over the choices she's (possibly incorrectly) made.
That's the gist. Now, the top three reasons you should watch it tonight at 10 p.m. on the Soap Network:
3. Time travel! That's how she gets to revisit all those bad choices. It may sound cheesy, but just think how often that combination of melodrama and sci-fi has done us right: Lost, Heroes, Buffy, the last season of Felicity. OK, maybe not the last season of Felicity.
2. Erica doesn't always fix her mistakes when she relives them. That would be dumb. And this show is not dumb.
1. Revisiting Erica's past means revisiting the music of the '90s. Four Non-Blondes, the Spin Doctors, Blind Melon. Beautiful.
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