L Word stars Kate Moenning and Jane Lynch are back on TV, Portia de Rossi's Better off Ted is renewed for next fall and Dilshad Vadsaria comes out on GREEK.
I started havingThe L Word withdrawals about 2 weeks after the series finale. It started with the need to visit some sort of trendy café establishment, then it developed into a desire to make a movie based on my life with the names of the main characters slightly distorted, and then it culminated with a dance marathon in the name of some good cause.
God forbid. I even missed the Betty song in the opening credits and soon after I had the unexplainable desire to meet girls in tight dresses who drag with moustaches. Though our show is dearly missed it doesn’t mean that we can’t catch our favorite Sapphic ladies back on television this fall. Sure, they won’t be as naked, nor will they be kissing girls, but we’ll take what we can get.
We’ll be seeing Kate Moenning back on TV, but will we love her in any role other than Shane? My first encounter with Kate happened years before the L Word on a show called Young Americans, in which she played a girl who was impersonating a boy to go to an all-boys school to rebel against her mom. Said girl who was playing a boy ends up falling for a boy, and boy ends up liking boy who is secretly a girl, and he starts questioning his sexuality. It was all very charming and is a nostalgic throwback to the days when The CW was the WB and Kate Bosworth was a television star.
Anyway, I digress -- the point of all this was that Kate Moenning is fully capable of playing a character other than a wife-beater-wearing, jeep-driving, womanizer turned good troubled soul, although that will perhaps always and forever be my favorite role for her -- hands down.
The new series is set to air on CBS in the fall, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, Three Rivers is a medical drama pilot about organ transplants, with each story told from the point of view of the doctor, the recipient and the donor.
There is no absolutely no word that Kate will be playing gay, but let’s face it, if the writers know what’s good for them, they’ll find a way to write it in there somehow.
Jane Lynch, the L Word’s feisty cougar of a lawyer Joyce Wishnia, premiered a new show on Fox in Glee, a musical comedy based on a high school. And you guessed it -- glee club! Lynch plays a nazi of a cheerleading coach—I guess it was the closest she could get to P.E. teacher.
Besides watching Lynch in different colored Adidas tracksuits yelling at girls flipping in the air every week, the new series looks entertaining, with the promise of choreographed musical numbers and a classic underdog storyline.
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Along with Glee, Lynch appears in the Starz original series Party Down. The show -- about a group of aspiring actors working as caterers, which also stars Adam Scott, Ken Marino (The State), and Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls), and features guest stars like Ed Begley Jr. and Kristen Bell -- proves that good shows can be made for little money. Lynch plays a veteran of both the acting and catering industry who seems to have no boundaries when it comes to her coworkers or the guests she serves.
Speaking of shows for next fall, ABC knew what they were doing when they decided to renew their series Better Off Ted, a midseason entry starring Portia de Rossi.
I was a little worried that Portia would be playing her typical one-note bitch role, but there’s something cute and charming about this particular workplace comedy that’s worth renewing.
Perhaps my favorite episode with de Rossi so far was last week’s episode in which her character Veronica tries to boost company morale after a survey reveals that they’re completely miserable. Once the survey shows that she’s too intimidating, in an attempt to appear more likable, the uptight and unemotional ice-queen reemerges complete with flowing hair and the smile that likely won Ellen over.
From ice queens to sorority girls, this week’s recap of GREEK has our curious sister looking for some answers. After her run-in with Robin, Rebecca (Dilshad Vadsaria) reaches out to a fellow gay for some help with her confusion. She win’s this week’s award for best use of Katy Perry’s song when she tells him that she “kissed a girl, and she liked it.” She wishes there were some kind of test to determine gay – something similar to an over-the-counter pregnancy test, but alas, technology has yet to reach those kind of advances, so they decide on the next best thing---a visit to ladies’ night at the local club.
The set-up of the club is very stereo-typically gay, complete with she-woman bouncer, a sea of plaid and wife-beaters. Rebecca runs into someone she knows -- her sorority big sis who’s brought her newest –embarrassed to be seen with him—boy to the local lezzie watering hole. Talking about her kiss with Robin, she reaches the conclusion that she’s a lesbian. And if that wasn’t bold enough, she chooses to announce it to her sorority sisters, who spill that they already knew. God do they make it look way easier on TV.
Though Rebecca’s coming out was hardly comparable to that of Jenny Schecter’s, her newfound identity ups the lesbian regular on primetime TV count to 2. Or was it 3? There are so many, it’s hard to keep up these days.
