One Way the New <em>L Word</em> Is Deeply Modern

Read: Jennifer Beals discusses the ‘The L Word’ and why the show’s reboot is necessary

A lot has changed since 2004, when The L Word first premiered on Showtime. Generation Q enters a television landscape that has already been altered by series with varying depictions of queer people, from scripted dramas (Pose, Orange Is the New Black, Euphoria) to frothy reality shows (RuPaul’s Drag Race, Are You the One?). Though the show creator Ilene Chaiken serves as an executive producer alongside Moennig and fellow returning actors Jennifer Beals and Leisha Hailey, she knew the reboot needed to have a distinct, modern voice. When we spoke in Los Angeles recently, she recalled some of the early conversations about the new series: “There should be a new kind of head writer/showrunner, and she should be some young, incredibly gifted lesbian who is still kind of out there in the world,” she remembered saying then. “I think I said someone who still dates,” she added. “That shows why I shouldn’t be doing the show.”

Generation Q’s 34-year-old showrunner, Marja-Lewis Ryan, who watched the original series as it aired, said it wasn’t difficult “to expand the umbrella, because I come from a different generation,” she said. “I had The L Word. [Chaiken] didn’t have The L Word.” As much as Ryan’s show is indebted to its forebear for the enthusiasm of its fan base and the specific foibles of its returning characters’ personalities, the reboot also benefits from something more intangible: the shared language that The L Word provided to young queer people who came of age during its run (and to those who’ve watched it since). “I got to come out with a television show,” Ryan noted. “And then I also got to look back and think about it critically as a student of television.”

The reboot picks up with Shane, as well as the museum director turned mayoral candidate Bette Porter (Beals) and the radio-show host Alice Pieszecki (Hailey), 10 years after the first series ended. Viewers are also introduced to new characters who broaden the ensemble’s range: The golden retriever–like Sarah Finley (Jacqueline Toboni), who is estranged from her Christian family, goes by Finley and draws close to Shane. Quick-thinking and family-oriented, Sophie Suarez (Rosanny Zayas) works alongside Finley as a production assistant on Alice’s talk show. Sophie’s fiancée, Dani Nunez (Arienne Mandi), first plays a foil to Bette, before realizing they have more in common than they’d expected. “We saw that there were no Latinas on the show. It was in Los Angeles. That feels odd,” Ryan noted. “The show does not represent all people … For me, it was just about trying to represent the community that I see and I live in. I live in L.A., and there’s Asians and Latinx people in L.A.”

With the exception of the wealthy, well-coiffed Dani, the Generation Q cast seems far more laid-back than their predecessors. Finley, Sophie, and Dani live with Micah Lee (Leo Sheng), an adjunct professor who takes his love interest out on a first date with a gift card (the revelation of which is refreshingly more climactic than the disclosure of his trans identity). The show has also moved from glossy West Hollywood to the earthier Silver Lake, and its Millennial characters express financial anxiety that was almost never discussed in the first run.

Generation Q’s L.A. has been shaped by the recession, gentrification, and policy failures. One of the reasons Bette is running for mayor, she says, is to address the city’s opioid crisis. For young LGBTQ people, these are far more familiar concerns than some of the original show’s conceits. (Who could forget the time the heiress Helena Peabody racked up a $50,000 poker debt?) References to the bleakness of the current social order don’t take the tone of jarring exclamations, though. Most often, nods to the characters’ struggles or socioeconomic backgrounds are incorporated directly into other story lines. Sophie worries about paying for her wedding, for example. Finley counts on her dates to buy drinks and spends time at the newly rich Shane’s massive house in part to escape her own cramped living quarters.

Meanwhile, where the original bunch regularly looked as though they’d just walked out of a high-end salon, Generation Q skews more DIY. As the show’s hair department head Matthew Holman put it to me, Finley’s cut looks “kinda like one of her girlfriends might’ve just done it in the kitchen.” Sophie’s shaved sides and natural curls, meanwhile, feel as influenced by her Silver Lake and Los Feliz environs as by the YouTube tutorials of countless queer internet celebs. (Ryan noted to me that she’s grateful her team can handle the characters’ style: “Hair and fashion are my weaknesses as a creative,” she said with a laugh. “I’m like really gay, and I wear work boots and sweatpants pretty much every day.”)