I should've braced myself for disappointment the instant I saw the advertisement on the back cover of Star Magazine. There, in full color, with sunbeams and palm trees adorning their crotches, were the real lesbians of the new reality series, The Real L Word. The highly anticipated show, developed by L Word creator Ilene Chaiken, premiered Sunday night on Showtime. And it might as well be called The Real Leswives of Los Angeles because the show is pretty trashy.I do not say it's trashy because I am offended by sex. No, no. I was a big fan of the plentiful sex scenes in The L Word. In contrast, this new lesbian reality show was surprisingly lacking in sex. Rather, it was trashy because Chaiken managed to find, among the otherwise appealing and smart lesbians of LA—which I assume exist, though you'd never know it from this show—a half dozen gutter-mouthed, unprofessional, and unlikable young women. I suppose I should expect nothing less from reality TV. But Chaiken seemed to be aiming no higher than the low-brow bar set by The Real Housewives and The Jersey Shore, which is surprising considering that The L Word was a show of some substance and quality, not to mention beauty. Or perhaps the real lesbians of LA—the polished lesbians—wouldn't be caught dead on reality TV.
In the opening scenes we hear Whitney, the show's tattooed Shane-esque stud, describing LA lesbians as "polished" compared to those East Coast ruffians in New York. If polished means having a vocabulary with adjectives and adverbs limited to those used by Tony Soprano, then, yes, the LA lesbians are very polished. Very fuckin' polished. Or maybe a sign of being polished is pronouncing "Sara" as "Sada"? I dunno, I'm so East Coast. Sadly, I just didn't see anything that struck me as polished on this show. I saw a lot of bad overhead lighting and cheap kitchen cabinetry and poor interpersonal communication skills. And the unfortunate use of the word "douchebaggy." I try not to judge. But these gals are bragging about how sophisticated they are, and it's hard to not call them out when one of them—domineering Mikey, who wears sunglasses indoors—can't control her emotions at work. "We'll never fucking work with your agency again. Don't ever fucking call my showroom," she says into the phone. Badly done, Mikey. Badly done.Grace Chu has created a hilarious "The Real L Word Dictionary," which illustrates how miserable things are. Considering everything, one wonders who was the intended audience for this show. Chaiken must have looked at the success (if you can call it that) of The Real Housewives franchise and seen dollar signs, because the show oddly does not seem targeted to a niche audience of lesbians. For example, the producers of the show felt the need to include an explanation of "pants" and "pumps." Get it, ladies? It means "butch" and "femme."
