The second season of The L Word: Generation Q is off to a flying start, which means it’s once again time for my regular recaps about parenting storylines in the show, which I’ve been doing since the original series! This week are questions about donors and DNA, work-life balance, and risky acts in the school drop-off lane.
Not quite caught up yet? Here’s my parenting summary of last season and here are the individual episode recaps!
Spoilers for Season 2, Episode 1 ahead.
Caught in the Line
Parenting first comes up in this episode as Alice (Leisha Hailey) and Nat (Stephanie Allyne) are dropping the kids off at school. They’re stuck in the line of cars waiting to get out of the drop-off zone, and I can relate. Then Nat suggests hopping in the back for a quickie. I can firmly assure you I’ve never tried this. Luckily, as they’re scrambling between the front seats, Gigi (Sepideh Moafi) opens the back door and gets in, saving the two of them from this ill-advised idea.
Gigi, you’ll recall, is Nat’s ex and the kids’ other parent, and was briefly in a throuple with Alice and Nat. She’s brought cupcakes for Eli’s class, and offers to take in Alice’s, too, but Alice has forgotten this to-do and is cupcake-less. Last season, we had seen Alice trying to learn parenting skills while also figuring out how she fits into the family. She’s clearly still working out some of this—but haven’t we all forgotten the cupcakes at one point or another? I’m inclined to cut her some slack here.
The Best Laid Plans
Dani (Arienne Mandi) and Sophie (Rosanny Zayas), in addition to planning their wedding, are also planning to family. We find this out when Sophie tells Dani she’s been offered a promotion with Alice’s show, but doesn’t want to take a job with more responsibility (and presumably more time commitment) if she’s going to be a mom. Turns out that Sophie is the one who’s going to get pregnant, a nice touch by the writers since Sophie is the more masculine of the two. We could use more representation of pregnant masculine-leaning folks. Still, as Riese points out in her recap of the episode at Autostraddle, it can take a while for us queer folks to get pregnant, so Sophie might as well take the new job in the meantime.
For better or worse, though, things between Dani and Sophie end up … rocky … by the end of the episode, so the whole issue of their starting a family may be a moot point.
Donors and DNA
Meanwhile, in the main parenting storyline of the episode, Bette (Jennifer Beals) and her teen daughter Angie (Jordan Hull) await the arrival of Angie’s other mom, Tina (Laurel Holloman), and Tina’s new fiancée Carrie, played by the inimitable Rosie O’Donnell. Carrie, blunt and bumbling, gets on Bette’s nerves from the start, but the adults manage to keep things civil so that Tina and Carrie can tell Angie that they’re getting married soon. They wanted to reveal this when all three adults were present, which seems like a good parenting move, letting Angie know that all of the adults are okay with the situation. (Well, as okay as things can be despite Bette still maybe carrying a torch for Tina and not really liking Carrie.)
Angie is cool with the upcoming nuptials, but throws Bette and Tina off stride by noting that it will be weird to meet Carrie’s family before meeting her donor. “I still want to know more about who I am,” Angie explains.
Bette and Tina say they understand, but that their agreement with the donor means Angie has to wait another year, until she turns 18. This is clearly forever to Angie. Carrie breaks in to say that she did a DNA test with an ancestry service and found out about a bunch of cousins in Florida. Angie is intrigued; Bette is not amused.
Later, Angie discusses the DNA test with her girlfriend Jordi (Sophie Giannamore). Angie thinks Bette would be upset by the test because it was Carrie’s idea. Jordi is all for driving over to Target and getting DNA kits for both of them. She reflects that adding Carrie to the family is scary for Bette (she’s not wrong), but that Carrie is “the best.”
In the next scene, Bette is opining to Alice and Shane (Katherine Moennig) that Carrie is “the worst.” Seeing Tina and Carrie together makes her worried that she’ll die alone. She bemoans, “What is the likelihood that I’m gonna be able to find someone who meets all of my criteria and fits into my life with Angie?” That’s a good question, especially since Alice has shown how difficult it can be to find one’s place in relation to a new partner’s kids. (Real-life parenting tip: Check out this new book about Queer Stepfamilies.)
Alice has an idea for someone to set Bette up with, however, and a few scenes later we see Bette getting ready for a date. She awkwardly admits this to Angie, but Angie is fine with it.
Just because I am curious about my donor doesn’t mean that I think he is my dad or anything.
Angie is still thinking about her donor, though, and tells Bette, “Just because I am curious about my donor doesn’t mean that I think he is my dad or anything. Like, that word doesn’t even sound right. You’re my mom.”
This feels like a big flashback to Season 4, Episode 3 of the original series, when Tina and her then-boyfriend Henry throw a cocktail party and one of the straight women there asks Bette what she’d do if Angelica one day decides she wants to live with her father. Tina responds “We don’t call him the father. We call him the donor.”
Now, Angie’s reassuring Bette that she sees him that way, too—but also reassuring every one of us queer parents who used an anonymous donor and wonders how to handle our children’s curiosity about them. As Angie said before, her interest has to do with knowing more about who she is, not about replacing the parents who raised her. While the exchange feels slightly pedantic, I can’t argue with its inclusion.
Bette tells Angie that they need to honor their agreement with the donor and Angie agrees. Then Bette adds that she and Tina don’t think she should do the DNA test since the companies collect people’s data. “I know you’re a young adult,” she says, but still wants her to wait. That’s the hardest part of being an older teen, almost grasping the prize of adulthood but still coming up against limits. Angie agrees to wait, but at the end of the scene, after Bette has gone, she takes the DNA test out of her bag. Teens. Gotta love ’em. (My own son, whom I love dearly, is 18.)
There’s lots more that happened in the episode unrelated to parenting, but I refer you to the fine folks over at Autostraddle for that. And no, LW:GQ is not primarily a show about parenting, but it is one of the most visible representations of queer life on television, so I think it’s worth taking a look at how it handles the subject. Let’s remember, too, that the show is led by two queer moms: showrunner and co-executive producer Marja-Lewis Ryan and original L Word showrunner and LW:GQ co-executive producer Ilene Chaiken. Much of the show may be over-dramatized (and I love the escapism of it), but there are also some glimmers of reflection and nuggets of wisdom for us parents. Stay tuned to see what they may be next week (and be careful what you do in the carpool line)!