The L Word: Generation Q season 1 finale review: Kansas City or Honolulu?
This week’s episode of The L Word: Generation Q sees our characters trying to determine what they really want after going through some staggering losses.
Last week’s episode of The L Word: Generation Q, in classic L Word fashion, saw all the relationships growing deeper and more complex. This week, we kick off with an election night watch party at Dana’s, bringing everyone together to await the results from the polls. While Dani and Bette are in campaign mode, Sophie and Finley are awkwardly avoiding each other, and Shane is trying to be a wingman for the newly single Alice.
However, Shane is soon called away to the emergency room where Quiara is bleeding. She whips out the full power of her masc, butch energy on the triage nurse to get them to take Quiara back, but it’s too late. Quiara loses the baby.
Back at Dana’s, it’s a nail biter, and despite a close tie, Milner wins the election by two percent of the vote. Bette is devastated, but keeps her composure in typical Porter fashion.
That night, now that the election is over, Dani convinces Sophie to run away and elope in Hawaii. If there were ever a couple who shouldn’t get married more than Dani and Sophie, I’d like to see it.
I also still don’t have a good read on Dani’s character other than she cares a lot about work. Where she stands with her fiancée is unclear to me. She’s the definition of hot and cold, and this week, after blowing her off for weeks (even when her grandma was in the hospital), she’s the hottest she’s ever been.
It’s confusing and I don’t buy it. If not for her guilt over kissing Finley, Sophie would probably be a bit more annoyed by it, too.
The next morning, Bette and Alice show up at Shane’s to comfort her after the miscarriage. She and Bette are both remarkably chummy considering their respective losses. But, of course, Shane is quietly and secretly relieved at the miscarriage because she never wanted the baby in the first place…
Bette’s pride and optimism in her campaign inspires Alice to go down swinging for her last episode of the season (and possibly series). She delivers an amazing pep talk to her staff and tells Sophie to book Roxane Gay. Honestly, Alice would probably be a really fun boss, even though the show is a mess.
Later, Quiara tells Shane she wants to try again as soon as she can and Shane gets quiet, leading to a huge blowout as she realizes the truth about Shane’s feelings. Shane responds that she was always honest (which is true), and behaved the way she did because she loves Quiara.
Quiara then pulls out her wedding ring and tells Shane that it was impossible for that to be true because she only loves herself and walks out. It’s a gut punch of a scene as Shane collapses to the floor and breaks down.
Honestly, Kate Moennig’s performance in this episode was absolutely fantastic acting all around. As always, she is subtle and restrained while still conveying what she’s feeling in every moment. Amazing.
Back at Alice, Sophie tells Finley about her plans to elope. Finley tries to be cool, and do the honorable thing. She says she doesn’t feel anything, but Sophie pushes it, and one thing leads to another…
I kind of wish they hadn’t gone there with these two. I definitely like Sophie and Finley together better than Sophie and Dani (even though Sophie and Finley still have a very buddy-buddy vibe), but they’ve positioned it so that they both regret what they’re doing which makes it icky.
This leads Finley back to Rebecca’s one last time. (Hopefully just for this season, though. I still stan Rebecca.) Finley finally apologizes to Rebecca for the hurtful things she said, while also word vomiting her self-hatred. It’s a well-written and believably acted scene between Jacqueline Toboni and Olivia Thirlby, one that has me finally coming around on Finley.
Meanwhile, Micah and Jose still exist! It’s the opening night of Jose’s art show, where he’s painted Micah beautifully. At first, Micah doesn’t see himself in it, and Jose tells him, “It’s how I see you.” It is an unspeakably sweet moment, truly so great, as Micah tells Jose he loves him finally!
And then this show has to go there by having some random white guy come up and introduce himself as Jose’s husband? I can’t even!
Jose and Micah are the best couple of the season, and they had to do this? There were plenty of other ways to create conflict between them without degrading Micah as a character. I’m pretty upset.
Back on the Porter front, thanks to intel from Dani’s dad, Bette learns that the opioid crisis task force Milner asked her to run is a total sham and all of the feelings finally catch up with her.
Angie comes home from school to a deathly quiet house, calling for her mom with no response. I had Buffy flashbacks and really thought they were going to pull a season-six L Word and jump off the deep end and kill off Bette for a minute!
Instead, Angie finds her mom in an almost comatose state. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen Bette depressed, and Jennifer Beals plays it amazingly, somehow making her eyes gray and hollowed out. Angie tells her, “It’s okay to be sad.” But then she asks her to get dressed so they can go somewhere.
Angie takes Bette to the mountain where they spread some of Kit’s ashes. Bette realizes she’d been compartmentalizing her grief over Tina and Kit for so long, “outrunning her feelings,” that she’s just now having to deal with it.
So they have a good old-fashioned scream together. I’m just so happy that Angie is a good kid and has a good relationship with Bette. It would have been very easy to do the stereotypical surly teenager storyline, but it makes sense that Bette and Tina’s kid is great.
The Alice finale arrives, with the amazing Roxane Gay in tow, and Nat of all people shows up in the audience to try to win back Alice. (They’re really doing all of the rom-com tropes in this episode.)
I was so satisfied with Alice walking away from Nat and Gigi, that I’m really done with the whole throuple and throuple adjacent story, even as much as I like Stephanie Allyne. But Alice isn’t, and so she takes Nat back. Sigh.
It is a season finale and we have endings and beginnings for our characters who have been dealt a lot of blows. Bette goes on a date with a reporter and Shane, who is so lovable, thank you very much, rescues a dog off the street.
But the big triangle that the back half of the season built towards has Finley deciding to go back to Missouri to work on herself and Dani waiting on Sophie to take their flight to elope in Hawaii.
It is a classic rom-com trope once again as the season ends on a cliffhanger and we have no clue whether Dani is going to Kansas City or Honolulu…
dark. Next. The L Word: Generation Q season 1 episode 7 review: Plenty of Funyuns