Showtime Networks

Type	Cable television group
Industry	Pay television
Founded	1983 (1983)
Headquarters	New York City], United States
Parent	CBS Corporation

Showtime Networks, Inc. (SNI) is the corporate division of media conglomerate CBS Corporation.

The company was established in 1983 as Showtime/The Movie Channel, Inc. after Viacom and Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment (now MTV Networks) merged their premium channels, Showtime and The Movie Channel respectively, into one division. In 1984, American Express sold their interest in Warner-Amex to Warner Communications (now Time Warner) making Warner the new half-owner of Showtime/TMC. In 1985, Warner sold its half-interest to Viacom, making the company wholly owned division of Viacom. In 1988, the company was renamed Showtime Networks, Inc.^[1]

SNI along with CBS, The CW Television Network (formerly UPN), Viacom Outdoor, Spelling Television, CBS Television Studios (formerly CBS Productions, Paramount Television and CBS Paramount Television), CBS Television Distribution (formerly Paramount Domestic Television, CBS Paramount Domestic Television and King World), CBS Studios International (formerly CBS Paramount International Television), Simon and Schuster and other entities became part of CBS Corporation when CBS officially split from Viacom in December 2005. SNI managed the CBS, Robert Redford and NBC Universal joint venture Sundance Channel until 2008, when it was sold to Cablevision's Rainbow Media.

Cable channels currently owned by Showtime Networks[link]

Year in parentheses denotes when channel was brought into the Showtime Networks fold.

• Showtime (1983)
  • Showtime 2 (formerly SHOTOO) (1994)
  • Showcase (formerly Showtime 3) (1996)
  • Showtime Extreme (1998)
  • Showtime Beyond (1998)
  • Showtime Next (2001)
  • Showtime Family Zone (2001)
  • Showtime Women (2001)

• The Movie Channel (1983)¹
  • The Movie Channel Xtra (1999)

• Flix (1992)

• Smithsonian Networks (2007)²

¹Channel created by Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment prior to 1983.
²Co-owned with the Smithsonian Institution. Showtime Networks handles operations.

• Showtime Women, Showtime Family Zone and Showtime Next are digital cable services of Showtime and are not available on Dish Network. DirecTV does carry Showtime Women and Showtime Next in HD only.
• Flix is only available to DirecTV and other satellite systems. Flix was formerly carried on cable systems (as a premium service) in the early and mid 1990s. Flix is now considered a specialty premium service to satellite customers who subscribe to Showtime Unlimited. There are still cable providers that do carry Flix as a premium service with Showtime.

In 2008, Showtime Networks was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of Commercial Advertising on Personal Computer for the companion website to the series The L Word.

Unprecedented Campaign[link]

In one of the largest content distribution campaigns ever done to launch a new original series, Showtime Networks Inc. announced on January 12, 2009 that the premiere episode of United States of Tara is now available on more than a hundred multi-platforms, which translates into a reach of 170 million users - as part of the network's launch campaign to promote the series premiere on Showtime on January 18, 2009 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

As an added bonus, Showtime Networks made available the season premiere episodes of The L Word as it started its final season and Secret Diary of A Call Girl to all the participating platforms day and date with their January 18, 2009 premiere.

All three programs will be available online on the major entertainment, social networking and blogging destinations, including cable, telco and satellite affiliate broadband portals, on mobile phones, and on Free On Demand platforms. Example of these partners include: the largest entertainment portals such as TV.com, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN, Fancast, Veoh, EW.com, Blockbuster.com, CinemaNow, TVGuide.com and Netflix as well as additional sites via the CBS Audience Network; social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo; and top entertainment blogs such as BestWeekEver.com, Gawker, Pink Is The New Blog and PopBytes. The episodes will also be available on mobile phones through MobiTV, Joost's iPhone App, and on CBS Mobile on Verizon's V-Cast Mobile TV and AT&T Mobile TV via MediaFLO; and via podcast from iTunes and Zune. In addition, the first episode of United States of Tara will be available online in HD on SHO.com and TV.com.

There are 24 different cable, telco and satellite providers participating in the campaign, beginning with the first episode of United States of Tara on broadband and Free On Demand 10 days before its premiere. Among them: AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Insight, Mediacom, NCTC affiliates, RCN, Time Warner, Verizon and DirecTV. DirecTV will also air the episode on its linear channel Audience Network. In addition, the episode can be seen in HD on Free On Demand as well as on the Audience Network.

References[link]

1. ^ Variety June 7, 2001 25 memorable moments in Showtime's 25-year history

External links[link]

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are American illusionists and entertainers who have performed together since the late 1970s, and are known for their numerous stage and television shows. Their current Las Vegas show is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally does not speak while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard during their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks. More recently they have become associated with atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism, particularly through their television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

Career[link]

Penn Jillette and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer, and they performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on 19 August 1975.^[1] From the late 1970s through 1981, Penn, Teller, and Chrisimer performed as a trio called "The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act.^{[citation needed]} Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, Penn & Teller Go Public.^[2] In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Today, and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on Babylon 5^[3] (as the comedy team Rebo and Zooty), The Drew Carey Show, a few episodes of Hollywood Squares from 1998 until 2004, ABC's Muppets Tonight, FOX's The Bernie Mac Show, an episode of the game show Fear Factor on NBC, NBC's The West Wing, in a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's Home Improvement in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in 1996, NBC's Las Vegas, and Fox's The Simpsons episodes "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" and "The Great Simpsina" and the Futurama film Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder in 2009. They also appeared as three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and were thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.

Their Showtime network television show Bullshit! took a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.

On Bullshit!, the duo described their social and political views as libertarian.

They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic, explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and other drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.

The pair have written several books about magic, including Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn put it on Bullshit!: "Every night of the week ... except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau.^[4][5] He also hosted the game show Identity, which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.

Their new television series Penn & Teller Tell a Lie premiered on the Discovery Channel on October 5, 2011.

Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement^[6] and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section.^[7] According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes "there is no God" with his signature.^[8]

Off-stage relationship[link]

Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to them never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.

Tricks[link]

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack.^{[clarification needed]} Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other through small panes of glass and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth. They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.^[9]

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing this final part was omitted.^[10]

One of their more recent tricks^[when?] involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several apparently real nails into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to fire the nailgun into the palm of his hand several times, while suffering no injuries. His pattern builds as he oscillates between firing blanks into his hand and firing nails into the board. While performing he states that the trick is merely memorization, and explains that the fact that he does not flinch when he could be firing a nail into his hand should be a sign that the trick is not actually dangerous. A later revision to the trick replaced the false claims of memorization with a more open explanation, allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.^[11]

A trick introduced in 2010 is a modern version of the bag escape, replacing the traditional sack with a black trash bag apparently filled with helium. Teller is placed in the bag which is then pumped full of helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape, the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again, Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding it, still full of helium, above his head, before releasing it to float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London; however, it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010. In June 2011, Penn and Teller performed this trick for the first time in the United Kingdom on their ITV show Fool Us.^[12]

Filmography[link]

Television[link]

Books[link]

• Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)
• Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)
• Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)
• Sock 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)
• How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)
• When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid 2000, ISBN 0-922233-22-5 (Teller sole author)

Other Media[link]

Music[link]

• "The Horse You Rode In On" by Pigface (Penn Jillette only)
• "Spookshow" by Adil Omar (Penn Jillette only)
• "Penn & Teller Present: Music to Look at Boxes By" (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)
• "Never Mind the Sex Pistols" by Bongos, Bass, & Bob (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)
• "Tattoo of Blood" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
• "Money Feeds My Music Machine" by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)
• "It's Tricky" by Run–D.M.C. (Penn & Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of Run–D.M.C.)
• "Waking up in Vegas" by Katy Perry (Penn & Teller are kicked out of their hotel room by Perry and her boyfriend. They later kick Perry out again.)

Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole,^[16] and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.

Theater[link]

In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of Macbeth in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.^[17]

Video games[link]

• Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors 1995 – Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.
• Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: Spellbound 1998 – Simon & Schuster for PC – Voices for Drell & Skippy
• Desert Bus 2011 – Amateur Pixels.

The 1995 video game Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors featured an unusual mini-game called Desert Bus in which the player drove a realistic bus route between Tucson and Las Vegas. This mini-game became popular due to the fact that it imitated a real 8 hour bus ride. Once reaching the destination, the player gets 1 point and, if desired, can then drive the return route. The game was long and boring, but found a cult audience due to the dark humor and weirdness behind the idea.

The game has since been used in an annual charity called "Desert Bus for Hope" run by website desertbus.org. The site invites celebrities play the game streamed live online, with all proceeds being donated to Child's Play (charity). on November 14, 2011 an iOS port of Desert Bus was created and released in the Apple Inc iTunes store. The game was developed in conjunction with the Desert Bus for hope event and all profits from the game are donated to charity.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Penn & Teller

• Official website
• Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent
• A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!

The L Word is an American co-production television drama series originally shown on Showtime portraying the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their friends, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood. The show ran from 2004 to 2009.

Main crew[link]

The show was created by executive producer Ilene Chaiken (Barb Wire, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air).^[1] Other executive producers include Steve Golin (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Larry Kennar (Barbershop). Besides Chaiken, writers of the show have included Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, American Psycho), Cherien Dabis (Amreeka), and Rose Troche (Go Fish, Six Feet Under).

Production[link]

The pilot episode premiered on January 18, 2004. The original five year run ended with the series finale's airing on March 8, 2009. Outside the United States, the series is distributed by MGM Worldwide Television. The L Word was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, at Coast Mountain Films Studios, which was formerly known as Dufferin Gate Studios Vancouver, as well as on location in Los Angeles, California. The studio was once owned by Dufferin Gate Productions, the sister company to Temple Street Productions, the Canadian producer of the U.S. version of Queer as Folk.

Characters[link]

The main characters throughout the series, and the seasons in which they appeared and left:

Title[link]

The original code-name for the project was Earthlings, a rarely used slang term for lesbians.^[2]

Contemporary use of the phrase "the L word" as an alias for lesbian dates to at least the 1981 play My Blue Heaven by Jane Chambers, in which a character stammers out: "You're really...? The L-word? Lord God, I never met one before."^[3]

Historical use of "the L word" as code language can also be found in the sentence of a letter written by Daphne du Maurier to Ellen Doubleday: "By God and by Christ, if anyone should call that love by that unattractive word that begins with 'L', I'd tear their guts out." (Du Maurier, author of Rebecca and other works, was deeply conflicted about her attraction to and unrequited passion for Doubleday, as she would later be about her affair with Gertrude Lawrence.)^[4]

Season synopsis[link]

Season 1[link]

Season 1 premiered in the United States on January 18, 2004, on Showtime and featured 13 episodes presenting several entwined story lines. Set in West Hollywood, the series first introduces Bette Porter and Tina Kennard, a couple with a seven-year relationship who want to have a child. Tina eventually becomes pregnant through artificial insemination but has a miscarriage during episode 1.09: Luk, next time. Later in the series, Bette develops an affair with Candace Jewell.

The pilot introduced a coming out/love triangle storyline involving Tina and Bette’s neighbor, Tim Haspel, his new-in-town girlfriend, Jenny Schecter, and Marina Ferrer. Marina is part of Tina and Bette’s circle of friends, and owns the neighborhood café, The Planet, which serves as the group's hang-out and focal point for the show. The season also introduces Shane McCutcheon, an androgynous, highly-sexual hairstylist and serial heart-breaker; Alice Pieszecki, a girly, bisexual journalist looking for love in any way she can, and Dana Fairbanks, a professional tennis player who is still in the closet and torn between pursuing her career and finding love. In the first season, Dana falls for a sous chef named Lara Perkins whose sexuality is questioned by the group until Lara has an unexpected meeting with Dana in the locker room.

Season 2[link]

Season 2 began airing on Showtime on February 20, 2005 and featured thirteen episodes. It starts by unveiling to the viewers a secret Tina is keeping from everyone: she successfully became impregnated after a second insemination. Tina begins seeing Helena, while Bette’s life is portrayed as a wreck, with alcohol abuse, problems with her job, the death of her father in episode 2.12:L'Chaim, and being fired during the season finale. Tina and Bette reconcile during the final episode. The character of Louise was written out of the show, and the Planet was bought by Kit Porter.^[5]

Introduced in the second season are Carmen de la Pica Morales, a confident DJ who becomes part of a love triangle with Shane and Jenny; Helena Peabody, the daughter of a wealthy supporter of the arts who later becomes Tina's love interest; and Mark Wayland, a documentary filmmaker who moves in with Shane and Jenny. Mark makes them part of his latest documentary by setting up hidden cameras in the house to videotape them. During episode 2.09: Late, Later, Latent, Jenny discovers Mark’s tapes and also discovers the truth about Carmen’s true love.

Season 2 introduces a developing affair between Alice and Dana, which becomes public in episode 2.07: Luminous. It also presents insights into Jenny’s past as an abused child in episode 2.11: Loud and Proud, and reveals episodes of self-harm that reach their climax in the season finale.

Season 3[link]

The television show set up contest at the website FanLib.com where fans could submit a femme slash fanfic. The winner's story was incorporated into a scene of a third season episode.^[6][7]

Season 3 first aired on January 8, 2006, with 12 episodes. It begins six months after the birth of Tina and Bette's daughter, Angelica. New characters in this season include Moira Sweeney (a working class butch portrayed by Daniela Sea who is Jenny’s girlfriend for most of the season) and Angus Partridge (portrayed by Dallas Roberts), Angelica’s male nanny who later becomes Kit's lover.^[8] Sweeney starts the process of transitioning from female to male, switching his name to Max. Erin Daniels' character Dana Fairbanks starts in a multi-episode storyline dealing with a breast cancer battle and culminating with her death.^[9]

Notable of this season is that each episode begins with a short pre-credits vignette of two individuals meeting romantically or sexually. As the season progresses, lines from Alice's chart (see below) connect one member of each vignette with a new individual in the next.

Helena's character storyline was switched from being Bette's rival into a new member of the circle of friends. Her story arc for the season involves the acquisition of a movie studio^[10] in which Tina later works,^[11] and which further derives a sexual harrassment lawsuit^[12] that triggers her mother to cut her off financially in the season finale. Sarah Shahi's character, Carmen, ends her appearance in the show in the finale when Shane leaves her at the alter.

Season 4[link]

Showtime announced renewal of the series, in a February 2, 2006, press release:^[13]

On the heels of a year highlighted by industry recognition and critical acclaim for its award-winning original programming including Weeds, Huff and Sleeper Cell, Showtime has ordered a fourth season of its hit drama series The L Word.

The season premiere of the fourth season, Legend in the Making, first aired on January 7, 2007.^[14] The filming of the season's twelve episodes began in Vancouver, on May 29, 2006.^[14]

New cast members for the show's fourth season included Academy-Award winner Marlee Matlin,^[15] three time Golden Globe winner Cybill Shepherd,^[16] Kristanna Loken,^[17] Rose Rollins, Jessica Capshaw and Janina Gavankar.^[16] Karina Lombard reprised her role as Marina Ferrer for two episodes.^[18] Film and television star Annabella Sciorra guest-starred in several episodes as lesbian film director Kate Arden, chosen to direct the film version of Jenny's story Lez Girls.

Season 5[link]

Showtime picked up a fifth season of The L Word for 12 episodes, touting the show as "a signature franchise among our viewers". Production began in Vancouver the summer of 2007 and ended in Los Angeles early November 2007. The fifth season premiered on January 6, 2008, with episode LGB Tease.^[19]

Eva "Papi" Torres (Janina Gavankar), and Dallas Roberts' male token character Angus Patridge were both written out. Clementine Ford, reprised her role as Phyllis Kroll's daughter and began a relationship with Shane McCutcheon.^[20]Malaya Drew and Kate French were cast as guest characters for this season.^[21] Drew played Adele, a young fan of Jenny's work who gets hired as her personal assistant. French played Niki Stevens, an ambitious young actress and closeted lesbian who won the lead role of Jenny's character, Jesse, in the feature film production of 'Lez Girls'. She also began having a relationship with Jenny, who was directing the film. Elizabeth Keener joined the show as entrepreneur Dawn Denbo, who started a rival lesbian bar with her lover Cindi.

Season 6[link]

Showtime confirmed a sixth and final season for The L Word. Unlike the show's previous seasons, it only lasted 8 episodes to conclude the show with 71 episodes in total. Studio executives commented on the longevity of the show, with the Showtime president of entertainment Robert Greenblatt saying that The L Word has "surpassed its niche as a gay show". The sixth season premiered on January 18, 2009 and ended its original run on March 8 of the same year.^[22] Producers and writers of The L Word took viewers' opinions regarding the final season’s episodes. The main story of the season is related to the death of Jennifer Schecter and the rest of the season is a flashback from that point.

Before airing the show, Creator Ilene Chaiken denied reports of socialite Paris Hilton guest starring on an interview on gaydarnation.com.^[23] Ilene Chaiken said in an interview with the New York Post Magazine that she had offered DJ Samantha Ronson a guest spot in Season 6 but Ronson declined as she was busy.^[24] In July 2008, it was confirmed that Elizabeth Berkley would star as Kelly Wentworth (née Freemont) in a multi-episode arc of the final season.^[25] Mei Melançon also made guest appearances for the last season as Jamie Chen, a counselor from the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Youth Center who befriends Alice and Tasha and becomes their third-wheel crush.

Interrogation tapes[link]

Shortly after airing the final episode, Showtime began releasing short videos in which characters revealed secrets that weren't revealed during the course of the show. Each video showed the interrogation of one character with a new video being released each Monday after the final episode via the Showtime website. At some point in time Showtime's website ceased carrying the videos, but they can be found on YouTube.^[26] All episodes feature Lucy Lawless as Sgt. Marybeth Duffy and Sean Tyson as Det. Sean Holden who are investigating the death of Jenny Schecter.

Following the seven interrogation tapes (featuring Bette, Tina, Alice, Max, Helena, Niki & Shane), the same URL offered an interview with series creator Ilene Chaiken in two weekly installments.^[27] Chaiken discussed several aspects of the show's history and plotlines, but would only consent to reiterating that Alice went to jail for Jenny's murder while not necessarily being guilty of the crime. Ilene Chaiken and the cast have commented on different theories about Jenny's death.^[28]

Unaired spin-off series and film proposals[link]

Series creator Ilene Chaiken wrote and produced a 20-minute presentation for a possible spin-off centering around another lesbian group in a women's prison where Leisha Hailey's character Alice Pieszecki is detained. The Farm started shooting in December 2008, while the sixth and final season of The L Word premiered in January 2009. Famke Janssen, Melissa Leo and Laurie Metcalf were part of the cast.

Showtime's CEO Matthew Blank announced plans for the new show at the Television Critics Association press tour in July 2008.^[29] It was announced in April that Showtime declined to pick up The Farm as a series, which may leave the open-ended element of the series finale as permanently unresolved.^[30]

Chaiken has expressed interest in producing a film based on the series in an interview aired through The L Word's website, although according to her declarations, it probably would not emphasize any of the unresolved plot lines of the show and would simply continue the story of the characters' friendships. No official proposals or green-lighting related to an L Word film have been publicized.

[edit] The Real L Word

Chaiken continued The L Word franchise with the Showtime series The Real L Word, debuting June 20, 2010. The reality series followed the lives of six lesbians in Los Angeles. In an interview for the new series, Chaiken revealed Alice did not kill Jenny in the original series.^[31]

Music[link]

As of March 2008, The L Word has released five compilation CDs with the show's soundtrack. The music composer of the show is EZgirl. The music supervisor is Natasha Duprey.

All three of Leisha Hailey's bands have been referenced in the series. A song by The Murmurs, Hailey's first band, was used in a first season episode and included on that season's soundtrack. During the second season, the character Shane is sometimes seen wearing a t-shirt for Gush, Hailey's second band. Songs of Hailey's most recent band, Uh Huh Her, were featured during the show's fifth and sixth seasons; the character Tasha Williams is seen wearing an Uh Huh Her t-shirt during the sixth season.

The Chart[link]

A small portion of The Chart, covering some of the relationships established along the series through Season 6. Pink represents main female characters, blue represents main male characters, purple and green minor characters featured in the series (female and male respectively), and grey signifies characters that are only alluded to.

"The Chart" is a graph of the affairs that occur among Alice's friends and acquaintances; it is an undirected labeled graph in which nodes are labeled with people's names and the lines represent affairs or hookups. Originally, The L Word was to be based around a lesbian Kit Porter, and "The Chart" was tattooed on her back.^[2] When Kit Porter was changed into a straight character, The Chart was given to Alice instead.

The Chart is a recurrent element in the show's storylines, especially those related to its creator within the series.^[32] During Season 3, it also serves as a marginal storyline that advances through each episode and concludes in the season finale – as well as a way to track the characters and get to know how they interact within the lesbian community.

The Concept of the Chart was further exploited in Season Four. Within the series, the Chart evolves into an internet social network hosting profiles and provides the introduction for the character of Papi in Episode 4.01:Legend in the Making. At the same time, a real-world parallel project OurChart.com was launched.^[33] The website, which allowed registered members to create their own profiles and also hosted several blogs on the show, was fully operational until the launch of the Sixth Season, after which Ilene Chaiken announced through an online statement that OurChart.com had merged with Showtime's website.^[34]

Reception[link]

The show's first season was "broadcast to critical acclaim and instant popularity"; as an article from The New York Times pointed out:^[35]

Before "The L Word," lesbian characters barely existed in television. Interested viewers had to search and second-guess, playing parlor games to suss out a character's sexuality. Cagney and Lacey? Jo on "Facts of Life"? Xena and Gabrielle? Showtime's decision in January 2004 to air The L Word, which follows the lives of a group of fashionable Los Angeles lesbians, was akin to ending a drought with a monsoon. Women who had rarely seen themselves on the small screen were suddenly able to watch lesbian characters not only living complex, exciting lives, but also making love in restaurant bathrooms and in swimming pools. There was no tentative audience courtship. Instead there was sex, raw and unbridled in that my-goodness way that only cable allows.

But co-creator and executive producer Ilene Chaiken had some issues with the reaction:^[35]

I do want to move people on some deep level. But I won't take on the mantle of social responsibility. That's not compatible with entertainment. I rail against the idea that pop television is a political medium. I am political in my life. But I am making serialized melodrama. I'm not a cultural missionary.

While the show is seen as fulfilling lesbians' "obvious and modest representational need"^[36] or even the "ferocious desire not only to be seen in some literal sense... but to be seen with all the blood and angst and magic that you possess",^[37] the show has been criticized for various scenes which serve to "reify heteronormativity".^[38] The show has also been praised for its nuanced consideration (in the first season) of how and in what ways lesbians should stand up to the religious right, with the "Provocations" art show storyline being "a fictionalized version of what happened when Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Center booked a controversial exhibition of Mapplethorpe photographs in 1990".^[39]

Unlike its network predecessor Queer as Folk, praised critically for its ground-breaking material that was both well-written and well-acted, there have been complaints from critics regarding The L Word's watered-down, unrealistically glamorous characters and melodrama. Some reviewers (and fans) are put off by the theme song (introduced in the second season) and the "graceless, clunky dialogue".^[40]

Several shows have referenced The L Word, including South of Nowhere's first season episode "Girls Guide to Dating"; According to Jim; the medical drama House; the first season finale of Weeds, Jon Stewart's The Daily Show (July 24, 2006); Chapelle's Show: The "Lost Episodes"; The Sopranos episode Live Free or Die; the US version of The Office; Gilmore Girls fourth season episode Scene in a Mall; G4's Attack of the Show skit Lesbionic Women; The Big Gay Sketch Show; The Simpsons episode You Kent Always Say What You Want; and Family Guy episode Brian Sings and Swings. Also, movies such as Puccini for Beginners, I Can't Think Straight, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World have made mention of The L Word as to reference lesbians.

By the time the sixth and final season began, The New York Times was calling the show a "Sapphic Playboy fantasia" that has "shown little interest in variegating portrayals of gay experience. Instead it has seemed to work almost single-mindedly to counter the notion of "lesbian bed death" and repeatedly remind the viewer of the "limits and tortures of monogamy" while "never align[ing] itself with the traditionalist ambitions [for same-sex marriage] of a large faction of the gay rights movement".^[41]

Awards[link]

In 2006, Laurel Holloman won a Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her portrayal of Tina Kennard; the International Press Academy also nominated the show for a Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Drama. In the second season, Ossie Davis won a posthumous Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a drama series in recognition of his portrayal of the father of Bette and Kit Porter. The show received multiple nominations for GLAAD Media Awards and both Pam Grier and Jennifer Beals were repeatedly nominated for NAACP Image Awards.

In 2008 The L Word's companion website was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of Commercial Advertising on Personal Computers.

International broadcasts[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.