The C.R.A.P. Word

I just finished watching the season finale of The L Word, and I am completely disgusted. This is the worst show on television. Not good bad, like I Love New York. Not sadly typical bad, like According to Jim. Not even My God Americans Really Are Stupid bad like Deal or No Deal. The L Word is ponderously bad. It's balls to the wall, we just don't give a shit bad. It is, and I really feel that I have a lot of credibility here, given my previous posts on Blow Out and Flavor of Love, the worst show on television.

I would know, because I've watched every single episode of the goddam thing.

Man, am I disgusted with myself. What is it about this terrible, wretched, decaying show that keeps me coming back? Before you say it, let me stop you right there: the answer isn't "hot girls making out." Okay, that part, for me, does make the show a little more interesting, or at least less teeth grindingly terrible, kind of like funny commercials during a bad football game.

But during the rest of the show, man, it's terrible. There's no continuity at all. In wild contrast to, oh, let's say Best Show Ever The Wire, where something that happens on season 1 might dramatically affect or inform something on season 4, nothing in the L Word seems to have anything to do with what came before. And I'm not talking about on a season to season basis, or a show to show basis, I'm talking about individual scenes during the course of one show. Characters who have been smart and funny for four seasons suddenly become stupid opinionated jackasses. Rich bitches become fawning, twinkle-in-her-eye upstarts. Characters act one way in one scene and then in a completely different manner in the next. A character who was a struggling grantwriter last season is a seasoned Hollywood insider this season. Scenes don't end so much as run out of ideas or retreat with their tails between their legs.

And the acting! My god, the acting. With the lone exception of Jennifer Beals as Bette, the acting is about as good as The Love Boat. And this season has brought that ton of bricks on the sinking ship -- the guest star. Could Cybill Shepherd ever act? Ever? I mean, maybe in The Last Picture Show, when she was a really hot teenager and she was acting like a really hot teenager, maybe them she could act okay. But now. My god. She can't even clap convincingly. Seriously.

Oh man, its hard to even explain what is so incredibly stupid about this show. Every single scene goes on way too long and then just drifts off into some weird anticlimax. The product placement is clumsy, and the writing. Oh the writing! It's the worst writing on television, even more obvious and ham-fisted than Aaron Sorkin Retroactively Wins Every Argument He Ever Had With Anyone. It's all so rote, both so incredibly typical (the 3 episode alcoholic arc, the aborted nuptials, the affairs with the ex's ex's, blah blah blah) and amazingly, uniquely terrible, that it may actually be written by a computer. A really fucking stupid computer. Like, the computer that was powering my calculator watch from seventh grade.

But the real reason this post is so damn long is that I watched every goddam episode. I'm a moron. Shit.