The L Word Season Four, Episode Eight: The Parenting Perspective

The common thread in the parenting narratives this week is time. Children show that Bette and Jodi have been spending time, Helena and Catherine have no time, Shane and Paige are trying to find the time, and Shane’s dad has bad timing. (Warning: spoilers below.)

In this episode, we get to see Bette and Tina’s toddler Angelica in her most interactive performance to date, showing us her skills in sign language. Yes, she’s still just a tool to further the plot of the adult relationships (proving to Tina that Jodi, who is deaf, has been spending a lot of time at Bette’s place), but at least Ilene Chaiken got an adorable kid to play the role.

Helena’s children Wilson and Jun Ying appear again, too, after many episodes away, but never make it off the sofa in front of the TV and into the foreground. I’m not sure what the point of including them in the episode was, except to remind us that they exist and to show that Helena doesn’t know “how people cope without a nanny.” She’s easily lured away from them for the evening to play poker with her new girlfriend, Catherine. Catherine later stops Helena from checking on the kids, saying “They’re fine, they’re fine,” as she leads Helena into the bedroom.

Neither Shane nor Paige can afford a nanny, but they manage to hire a babysitter who doesn’t look much older than ten-year-old Jared. It’s enough to give them an evening alone in a parked car, where at one point Paige says “I want to spend the night with you.” Shane jokes “Wait a minute. What will the children say?” It’s the age-old difficulty of introducing a new romantic interest into a single parent’s life.

The episode ends at Shane’s skate shop, where she and Paige are having a picnic for Shay and Jared’s friends and their parents. I like the friendly banter among the parents here, but it seems rather at odds with last week’s “school in need of diversity training” plot. Maybe Shane and Paige’s talk at the school was a rousing success. Maybe the conservative mom who spoke up was the only parent to get her knickers in a twist over LGBT families. Either way, this scene, while good in itself, serves to reinforce the shallowness of the one last week.

Then Shane and Shay’s delinquent dad shows up. Stay tuned.