The third season of The L Word: Generation Q is upon us, and I’m here recapping every single episode. Whether it be the epic rekindling of everyone’s favorite (or least favorite) romance, the return of The One, or the wedding of the century, I will be talking about every key moment and giving you all a chance to chat about it in the comments.
It’s the final episode of The L Word: Generation Q Season 3, and likely forever if recent trends are anything to go by. While the finale of a beloved television show is always bittersweet, this year it is particularly painful because of that fear. This could be the last time we see Alice, Bette, Shane, and Tina on our television screens ever. Truly a sad fate!
The promos for this episode were truly incredible, with Laurel Holloman tweeting to invite us all to “her” Wedding and Showtime creating wedding invitations that the whole cast posted. I want to point out for the record here that there is a 0% chance that Bette or Tina would design comic strip wedding invitations for their own wedding. There is a 100% chance they’d consider these “not classy enough”. However, that is minor and the thought was cute at least. I am going to be so sad to let this group of lesbians go, there’s truly nothing like it on television, despite all of its flaws! But alas, there is nothing more to do about it than to dive right in and start recapping the episode.
We open the episode with some beautiful summer LA b-roll, indicating that potentially some time (we later learn two weeks) has passed. Alice is zipping through the wedding venue directing various question asking caterers and asking herself why the wedding planner isn’t doing this job.
The answer to that question can be found in a nearby bathroom, where Shane is engaging in her personal favorite wedding activity— finger banging people who she shouldn’t. In a shocking twist from every other sex scene this season, Shane and wedding planner Kimmy actually have sex on screen for more than 10 seconds, and the interruption of someone looking to actually use the bathroom does not dissuade them from finishing.
We don’t get to see that though, because we cut to The L Word: Generation Q title sequence.
It’s the morning of the wedding, and Bette and Tina are getting ready together! Tina is drenched in sweat and making sure Bette put the wedding favors in the right place. Bette, on the other hand, is practicing her new era of immense calm and suggesting that Tina take a sip of water and a deep breath.
Their pre-marital anxiety rants are interrupted by Alice, who waltzes in to share the good news: the cake has arrived! In Alice’s book, her job is done. However, as Tina helpfully points out, Alice was also in charge of the booze, which it immediately becomes clear that she did not do.
In an effort to keep Tina from potentially spiraling even further, Bette and Alice engage in rather delightful mouthing of words and hand gesticulations behind her back, which I will do my very best to transcribe here
Bette: "Did you get the fucking booze?" Alice: "I was NEVER supposed to get the booze" Bette: "yes, that was your job!" Alice: "it was never!" Tina: *turns around and causes the conversation to end*
I absolutely loved this! The comedy that Leisha Haley brings to every scene is incredible, amplified by Bette only allowing her calm demeanor to fracture when Tina isn’t looking, and Tina’s own hot-flash induced spiral into Bridezilla territory.
Alice leaves the brides alone to go find alcohol, conveniently running into Shane just outside. Shane doesn’t understand why there’s no alcohol despite the fact that this was Alice’s job, reminding everyone that she “did their hair” and is thus exempt from any other duties, despite literally owning a bar. For those of you who aren’t watching, an important note here is that Bette’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail in the previous scene, indicating that Shane has not yet done her hair despite claiming to have.
She has, however, done the wedding planner, a fact which Alice clocks instantly. This never would have happened if they’d hired resident party planner / PR expert Dani Núńez!
Regardless of the fact that Shane and Tess are well and truly broken up, Alice insists that Shane call Tess to have her bring alcohol. It’s Bette and Tina’s big day and Alice won’t have any petty breakup drama ruining it. And no, that’s certainly not any foreshadowing at all
Across town, Tess (aka the only ex not invited to the wedding) is walking into Dana’s wearing giant sunglasses, a sign to even the least perceptive members of the audience that she’s still drinking. In case you missed it, she touches the temples of her hungover skull and then forces a smile when Finley bursts into the backroom.
In the elapsed time between episode 9 and episode 10, our dearest Finley has moved out of Carrie’s fancy home and into a sublet where she has to clap to “scatter the roaches” before entering the bathroom and whose kitchen does not work. Somehow, Finley pulled the trigger on this true nightmare of a place so quickly that it hasn’t even occurred to Tess that she needs to buy new furniture until right this very second, sending her into a bit of a spiral.
Finley offers Tess a spot at her apartment, but between the roaches and the toaster-cooked meals, Tess passes. At that moment Shane calls, presumably to request alcohol, although we cut away before Tess answers.
At the wedding venue, a bit of Sophie-Dani dialogue informs us that everyone pitched in to make the wedding happen. Dani’s job was the find the venue, which she managed to secure by virtue of knowing the owner’s family. Who is the owner, you ask? Roxy! And she’s here! All 14 Drani shippers (myself included) groaned aloud.
Somehow, Sophie got invited to the wedding despite not knowing Bette or Tina, and Alice not speaking to her “in like two weeks”. Sure, the show is on hiatus, but Sophie can’t shake the feeling that Alice is mad at her for running the finale without her.
Roxy chose to bring molly to the wedding (which, I suppose, explains why Dani couldn’t be working it) and convinces Dani to take some. I thought this was going to be the moment where Dani realized she needed someone down to earth and real, like Dre, rather than someone who would bring molly to a classy wedding, but no. Dani does the molly.
The Bette and Tina wedding anxieties are just beginning. In an effort to physically cool Tina down, Bette took her to the walk-in fridge, home of the aforementioned Alice-provided wedding cake.
Tina’s feeling better, so much so that she’s ready to acknowledge the fact that these two women WERE IN FACT ALREADY MARRIED as hinted at by the engagement in The L Word Season 6 and confirmed in The L Word: Generation Q Season 1. We find out that the first time around, Bette and Tina just got married at the courthouse, and all of their friends who were “on this very long journey with” them were “pissed”.
Obviously, this is a reference to the fans that were disheartened not to get a Tibette wedding in the original, and those very same fans who angered when the couple wasn’t in marital bliss at the start of this reboot. It felt a little heavy handed to me personally, but hopefully someone out there felt seen!
Unfortunately for those very same people who were no doubt excited to see a perfect day on film, Tina ends up pulling the walk-in fridge handle out of the wall when trying to get out, and the two find themselves stuck.
Emboldened by the women who opted to do molly at a daytime wedding, Sophie crosses the wedding venue to say hello to Alice. Her boss pretends not to hear her at first, but Alice eventually relents and turns around. Yes, Alice was pissed that Sophie ran the finale without her, but the network had the exact opposite reaction and wants to promote Sophie next season! I’m not 100% sure what Sophie was doing on the Alice Show, but it seems fairly difficult to promote her to a role higher than “plans and runs the entire show”. Maybe she’ll become an exec?
Regardless, Sophie is thrilled and Alice is not that thrilled, but Sophie does the right thing and appeals to Alice’s ego, stating “I would never want to let you down” and they make up. Water under the bridge!
Sophie goes off on a tangent about how ready she is to get laid, but Alice has already gotten distracted and ran away to say hi to a friend. It wasn’t for nothing though, because who is behind her but Pippa Pascale, renowned artist best known for having sex with Bette underneath an artwork installation of led lights. Truly, if Bette for one minute reflected on the number of her artists/students that she slept with (Nadia, Jodie, Pippa) I think she’d have more sympathy for Hendrix.
Pippa, as usual, looks drop dead gorgeous as she tells Sophie that her goal of getting laid sounds completely achievable. I agree, but only if it happens off-camera because this show hates to give us sex scenes!
The flirting is interrupted by Finley, who has rolled up to the wedding to ask Sophie for her toaster back. According to Sophie, she paid for the toaster and thus it’s property of the Bungalow, despite the fact that Finley maybe paid for half and definitely picked it out. You’d think that as someone who very recently had everything down to her seasonings taken from her by someone far richer, she’d just give the girl the toaster!
Props to Finley, because she puts her foot down and lets Sophie know that she will either have the toaster delivered or she’ll pick it up herself.
We then head over to the aforementioned, soon to be toasterless Bungalow, where Micah and Maribel are discussing baby names while holding a giant freezer canister that contains exactly one vial of sperm. I truly did not know that people purchase singular vials of sperm, but maybe for a home insemination they only have you take home one vial at a time?
Micah and Maribel do not at all seem like the type of people to do an at-home insemination, just like they also don’t seem the type of buy a mere $700 vial when the average price is $400-$2000 according to Google and they had more qualifications than reasonable, but we’ll take what we get!
Micah wants to name his future child something androgynous like Orion, but Maribel prefers Raph. None of that matters at this moment though, because before even unpacking the insemination kit, Micah pulls the sperm vial off ice and passes the blue liquid over to Maribel to warm it up. I did not know that sperm was blue! Truly the first thing that this show has taught me about the insemination process, as someone has only even been to the gynecologist once in my entire life.
I hope this haphazard strategy works for these hyper-anxious kiddos!
Back at the wedding, Tess has donned the pink glitter dress that she apparently saved for just this occasion and is busy stocking the bar. Shane goes over to thank her for coming, but Tess appears completely unbothered. In fact, she’s flirtatious and laughing. I truly do not understand how Tess was written this season. The second Shane walks away, Tess ducks behind the bar to take a drink, and this extraordinarily hot man wearing suspenders (?) sidles up to hit on her.
Tess informs us that this man is “her kinda guy” and heads out to his car with him. At this moment, I found myself asking aloud if Tess was bisexual, but we find out that this isn’t the case. Her kinda guy, it turns out, is someone with cocaine!
I hate this so much. Truly fuck a relapse storyline, especially a relapse storyline of an inconsistently written character who could have been given an exploration to non-monogamy storyline or a grief storyline or quite literally anything else! I love Jamie Clayton and she deserves better!
Down in the walk-in fridge, Tina is spiraling and shivering while Bette makes a charcuterie board out of the fridge’s supplies. Tina has HAD IT with Bette’s calm demeanor. She just wants her soon-to-be-wife to get her the fuck out of there! Bette states that she’s not an engineer, and this looks like a fight ready to explode when Alice and Shane appear in the fridge’s window.
She’s delighted by the fact that Bette and Tina were having sex in the fridge, and I would have been too— what a perfect opportunity for an homage to the elevator scene— except that’s not what they’re doing; they’re stuck.
Shane does her best to get them out, but proceeds to break the external handle as well, prompting Alice to call… 911
Was there truly nobody in the writers room who pointed out that calling 911 is a terrible idea? I thought this was going to be the moment where Shane or Bette taught her to call anyone else but NOPE they’re all on board with it. The L Word: Golden Girls reboot is going to spend 6 episodes apologizing for that through line.
With Alice and Shane occupied with their ill-advised phone call, Tina decides to return to the true issue at hand: why is Bette so calm? Tina thinks that yelling about being stuck in a fridge on their wedding day is a perfectly reasonable reaction, but Bette is afraid that if she lets out her emotion, she won’t be able to shove it back down and she’ll end up hurting Tina again. Honestly, this probably means that she hasn’t actually done all of the necessary work but I love this growth for Bette.
Tina lets Bette know that she loves the yelling part of Bette just as much as she loves the calm parts. At that moment, Shane and Alice come back to the window to share that the fire department has real emergencies to deal with and thus will not be showing up to unlock the fridge for a few hours. While this is bad news for our couple, it’s good news for Angry Bette fans, because she immediately acts on Tina’s acceptance of her angry parts.
Bette: "Alice! Alice! Call Tasha right now and get us the fuck out of here because I am going to marry the love of my life today if it's the last fucking thing that I do!" Alice: "yes ma'am"
Tina does a little happy dance while Bette yells and it’s really very adorable. More importantly, TASHA IS COMING BACK. I guess it’s assumed that she’s not working the fire in La Cañaca, but whatever I’ll take it because Tasha is The One for me.
Outside, the molly is hitting Dani hard, prompting her to aggressively sniff the wedding flowers while professing her love to Dre on the phone. I squealed with excitement at this. What made me less happy is that Roxy came over and took the phone from our beloved Dani.
Dani says that she’s not even feeling anything right now, she just loves Dre so much. I too love them. They better end up together.
Alice gets up onstage to inform the milling crowd that the wedding is delayed, and Dani begins dancing wildly as what Sophie describes as “elevator music” comes on. This is very funny and Arienne Mandi does a great job with this scene, but I’m still sitting here waiting for Dre’s return.
A strong second best is Pippa Pascale, who says goodbye to Sophie before leaving the venue.
Dani instantly commands Sophie to go after her, because while Pippa thinks Dani is the devil, Dani thinks Pippa is beautiful and amazing. Sophie runs after a woman that truly could be her One, and Dani starts sobbing because she’s so happy that her and Sophie can finally be friends.
Apparently, Pippa is leaving because she’s not happy enough for Bette and Tina to wait out the fridge unlocking team. In fact, she’s not exactly upset that Bette’s locked in the fridge! Sophie spots the “just married” golf cart and suggests that her and Pippa go for a little ride. Cute!
Guess who has arrived at the wedding! Angie! Accompanied by… Hendrix. This is what happens when you tell your 18 year old that she’s “too young to understand”, Tina!
Angie wants her parents to get to know Hendrix better, and Bette wants Hendrix to acknowledge the power dynamics. Despite the fact that Hendrix has made it clear all season that he knows there’s a power dynamic, he doesn’t actually want to confess to this. In fact, he doesn’t even really want to be with Angie at all. He’s moving to New York soon for his book and was just dating little Ang until the move.
I would like to point out that I have never once, in my 7 years of writing about books, heard of a publisher who couldn’t work with an author remotely, but I am not complaining at all. Angie instantly realizes that she’s being used and she yells at him, stating that she hopes his next book gets better reviews than the first one, “because YIKES”. Points for Angie!
As the only queer person in LA not invited to the wedding of the century, Micah is dealing with a lot of anxiety. What if he dies after? What if Maribel dies during childbirth? Do they even know if her “disability” makes her high risk? This felt like a very weird way for a serious couple to speak about the other’s disability, and I understand why Maribel was upset. Potential complications should be talked about, but the way they’re going about this— and the time Micah chose to bring it up— is weird.
It’s also very weird to me that the show chose to essentially use Maribel’s disability as a way to break up this couple, but we’ll get to that later.
For now, we have to head back to the only storyline that could possibly be more annoying: Tess doing coke with the hot man. She’s giggling and seeing flashbacks, and then we leave her as quickly as we arrived.
Over by the cows, Sophie and Pippa are chatting about their lives. Pippa was just given her first career retrospective, and Sophie shares that she started working on the Alice show after Alice herself saw one of Sophie’s social justice documentaries at Sundance. Pippa wants to know what Sophie’s next documentary is going to be about, and Sophie seems genuinely shocked that someone would ask her this, despite the fact that she described herself asa documentary filmmaker to Dre and very recently (and drunkly) applied for a grant.
Pippa encourages her to go for it, and she leans in for a kiss. Right before their lips touch, a cow moos and the moment is ruined. Not all hope is lost though, because Pippa agrees to stay at the wedding, touching Sophie’s face in such an intimate gesture that I nearly died.
It’s unclear how much of Dani’s actions in this episode are spurred by the molly, but she calls Roxy pretty and then leans and kisses her. Before it can go any further, Roxy spots her friend G, the famous pop-rock star G-Flip, who is at the wedding playing their real life self.
They’re there with their girlfriend Chrishell, who some of you might know from Selling Sunset. It makes sense to me that Bette would know some powerful people like this, and I kind of love how they’re seamlessly incorporated into the episode. Dani is obsessed with Chrishell, and she wants to know if Chrishell knows her ex, Gigi.
Finally, a reminder that Gigi does in fact exist!
Chrishell asks G-Flip what Gigi’s “fiancée’s name [is] again” and when they reply “Nat”, Dani fully dies. Apparently Bette and Tina aren’t the only ones choosing to more or less ignore the fact that they were already married once and have children together. I wonder if Gigi has agreed to be poly, or if that part of Nat’s identity is just being ignored. It doesn’t matter anyways, because it appears that both of them were written out of the show.
Dani runs over to a side table to collect her thoughts and also eat a piece of gum. Halfway through chewing, she realizes that “Gigi loves gum”, and that’s enough to make her certain that she’s over Gigi. I thought this would be the moment she goes to find the true love of her life, Dre, but it turns out Roxy bought a condo in Echo Park and she’s ready to date Dani.
They kiss, and I screamed.
Just in case I was in danger of shutting of the show completely, who arrives on scene but Tasha. She rallied a group of firemen to come down and cut Bette and Tina out of the fridge. I can’t help but wonder who owns the fridge, and if they should have started by calling that person, but nonetheless.
Tasha breaks Bette and Tina out and they both hug her and give their thanks. Tasha takes the moment to teach Alice a lesson: that’s how you greet someone when they save you. Or your kitten.
Back at the bungalow, Micah and Maribel are still fighting. Micah wants to know why they are having this baby when it’s risky for Maribel, and Maribel decides that the only thing to do is throw the sperm vial on the floor.
$700 down the drain!
Micah’s pissed, tells Maribel that she can’t treat him like that, packs a bag, and storms out of the house. In the car, he calls Max and asks to come over, and I’m glad at least their friendship is still going strong.
Other than that, I don’t really know what to say about this scene, I apologize.
Tasha is once again asking Alice to fill out paperwork, but Alice doesn’t want to put her phone number down, given the fact that she’s famous and all. She also doesn’t understand why Tasha is giving her an attitude.
Tasha, for her part, just wants thanks for saving the kitten. This becomes the starting point for them to rehash the entire relationship. Tasha states that she wasn’t upset about Alice being famous, she just didn’t want to be the plus one that was there to hold her purse. Even before Alice was famous, she was still in love with Dana. In fact, Alice “talked about her so much, [Tasha] felt like [she] knew her. In a way.”
Astute viewers and recappers who watched the musical episode 3 times will remember that these are the exact words Dana said to Alice about who her “one” is. I’m so happy that it’s Tasha! They belong together, they truly do.
Angie comes over to bring Alice into the ceremony, and Alice looks back at Tasha longingly as she’s pulled off.
Angie should have gone to look for Shane first, because after seeing Tess stumbling around the venue, Shane decided the best course of action was to have sex with the wedding planner yet again.
Shane tells the woman that her ex is here, so things are complicated, and the wedding planner says she’s not trying to marry Shane, just fuck her. In fact, she’s married. Her and her husband are ethically non-monogamous, and Shane stares at her like this is the first person she’s met to do that. This is just so unrealistic! How are you are queer person in LA RUNNING A QUEER BAR and you haven’t met anyone in an open relationship.
This was nearly a moment of enlightenment, but Tess spots the two canoodling and starts laughing. She calls Shane predictable, which is a bit ridiculous because they broke up so she can’t really be mad at her. We then cut to Bette and Tina, who are walking down the aisle together holding hands. Everyone’s smiling and in love with them. And then, Tess and Shane’s argument cuts through the beauty.
Tess says of course Shane fucked the wedding planner, and Shane wants to go talk in private but Tess is ready to air everything out right there.
Tess: "You think I'm mad at you? I'm DEVASTATED. You broke my fucking heart. And you fucking killed my mother" Shane: "Are you drunk?" Tess: "Jesus Christ. Yes, I'm drunk! You'd have to be to put up with all your shit"
Well. That’s a whole lot to put on Shane. We don’t have more time to reckon with it, because Tess spins around and runs straight into the wedding cake. Finley comes over to try to handle it, and Shane lets the two of them walk away.
Finley makes a valiant attempt to get Tess to a meeting, but Tess is in the phase of her relapse where she doesn’t want to be sober. When hot coke guy rolls up, she hops in his car and they ride away.
I’ll be honest, this moment soured the entire rest of the wedding for me, because it was impossible to be happy when all of that just went down, but for the purpose of this recap I will choose to ignore it from now on, because there’s not much else to do.
Alice, Shane, Bette and Tina are analyzing the cake which they picked up off the floor and attempted to reassemble. Shane apologizes for ruining the wedding, and they say they’ve all done worse. Shane left Carmen at the altar, Alice dated a vampire (which does not seem comparable but… okay), Tina left Bette for Carrie, and Bette had sex with Candace in jail.
Just like that, the wedding is back on!
It’s night time now, but luckily there’s a plethora of candles that could be arranged in such a way to make it beautiful. This time around, Angie is walking down the aisle as a flower girl, and I think that’s a nice touch that probably should have been included the first time around.
When Bette and Tina get to the altar, they proceed to give their vows to each other with no officiant.
It’s really very beautiful and impossible to capture in a recap; y’all should just go watch it.
Of note, Tina says that Bette is her first, second, and third love, and to that I would like to say Bette is in fact her first, third, and fifth love, because Henry and Carrie really deserve the shoutout.
During Bette’s vows, Pippa whispers something in Sophie’s ear and I imagine she’s saying that Bette once said the exact same thing to her.
Alice leaps in front of them and pronounces, with the power vested in her by ordainmefast.net, that Bette and Tina are married for life!
As Bette and Tina walk off, Alice sees Tasha walking away and runs over. She apologizes to her, for the first time in the entire duration of their relationship/friendship/ex-ship, both of the kitten and for the way she treated Tasha in the relationship. She asks Tasha to dance, and when Tasha agrees I squeal.
They. Are. So. Cute.
Bette and Tina dance, Alice and Tasha dance, and Angie and Shane catch up on the Hendrix debacle. Shane asks Angie to dance, but Angie is off to call Bella and apologize. Go young love!
Dani is coming down from her molly high and still trying to understand what is happening. Roxy shares that she’s planning on staying forever, and the two make out. If you are a Roxy/Dani shipper, please let me know in the comments because I don’t think one person is going to be happy about it.
Finley apologizes to Shane for yelling at her on Halloween, and Shane convinces Finley to dance with her. The second they go out to the dance floor, Shane ditches her to give Tasha a hug, and I die a bit for Fin but no worries, Shane goes back to her dance partner, and Alice and Tasha pull each other in tight.
Tina suggests heading back to the room, but thanks to Sophie and Pippa’s earlier joyride, the car is out of gas. Tina says she’d rather walk with her wife, and her wife agrees.
Sophie kisses Pippa, and suggests that they too get a room, but Pippa says it’s nice to have something to look forward to. They’re cute!
Dani and Roxy keep making out, and then Dre arrives and sees them kissing. Dre is looking HOT and my heart breaks for them.
Finley gets a call from Tess, and when she answers it’s the LA Police Department.
And then, we end the episode, with Bette and Tina walking arm in arm and saying that they hope all of their friends can feel like that someday.
And that’s the finale! Were it not for the Tess stuff, I would have truly enjoyed this episode, so I’m choosing to headcanon a sober Tess and hold onto the other parts. What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!
