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Starring: jostle, aka Jocelyn, flavorpill queen and a true Lesbian Science Theater 3000 partner-in-crime; liser, aka me.

I leave our exchange fairly unadulterated (and promise to post something more substantive soon) so if you aren’t familiar with the show, we doth duly apologize.

jostle: guten morgen
jostle: i just ate a sprouted bagel with.. yeast!!!
jostle: which segs nicely into a lezbo discussion
liser: or concussion
liser: Ok, basically, we’re having an IM convo that wraps up Season 2 of The L Word, which we had, I think it’s safe to say, hotly anticipated
jostle: right up until we heard the new theme song
liser: exactly. someone let the fact they were getting some get in the way of taste when it came to using BETTY for the theme song
jostle: in what started to seem like every scene of every episode
liser: Betty was Where’s Waldo
jostle: i think Waldo’s cuter
liser: Better fashion, for sure
liser: Anyway, cheesy theme song….
liser: cheesy Season 2
jostle: yes, i think it took a little while to sink in, say about halfway through, but then we started to recognize that the show was in a serious sophomore slump.
liser: it got progressively worse the whole season
liser: we should disclose that we spent weeks before the new season began watching Season 1 on DVD. It got us through the February snow ambush and I do mean bush…
jostle: indeed
liser: so we were not inclined to acknowledge at first how crap the show got in Season 2
jostle: when the season commenced, we were all taken in by the wondrous transformation of Jenny Schechter, the sexed-up, annoying tree sprite to Jenny, the actually really hot, nearly lovable character, but that was about the only real exciting development
liser: yeah, Jenny didn’t suck for about three episodes
jostle: and then she headed into a self-reflexive women’s issue martyr role
jostle: i can’t remember. did she adopt some Christ-like poses during those final strip scenes? it seems highly possible
liser: you know, she’s a Jew so it was more like Survivor Syndrome chic than Christ at the Cross
liser: it’s like being jewish is the most exotic character trait ever seen
jostle: as you said, the fetishization of judaism
liser: But you’re right. it’s hard to remember now, but we had higher hopes in the beginning of the season
liser: Jenny had a spine
liser: Tina was pregnant and really mad at Bette so she had a spine while Bette was eating the crow
liser: which meant that Tina wasn’t just speaking in her weird, wheedling voice and Tina was!
jostle: Carmen was still almost hot
jostle: Alice wasn’t pathetic
liser: and Dana was still pathetic, just like we like her!
liser: Shane was still a lothario
liser: all was as it should be
jostle: one thing that occurred to me recently is that the primary problem was that they actually wrote themselves into a corner
jostle: almost all of the characters became one-dimensional
jostle: once out of the closet, what did Dana have to offer as a character?
jostle: judging by Season 2, nothing really. just someone who was uncomfortable with sex toys
jostle: once in a relationship with Dana, Alice lost all her humor and her spine, plus any confidante to reveal another side of her personality other than the co-dependent girlfriend
liser: they’d spend the whole of two episodes on Shane’s career and then drop it
jostle: yeah, what happened to the producer bitch?!
liser: and none of the characters related to each other anymore. It says a lot that neither of the two new characters had any dimensions
jostle: Carmen was never a character, more like a cardboard cut-out used to play other characters off each other. or a dj’ing vehicle
jostle: Helena began and remained a rich brat with a fetish for pregnant women
jostle: which didn’t change at all when she was confronted by her mother in what should have been a somewhat climactic scene
liser: the fetish for pregnant woman is so Remedial Freud
liser: Mommy wasn’t around. so…
jostle: I think they had the least well-hung cliffhanger i’ve ever seen
liser: i know. such dimension!
jostle: i mean, when Shane finally says i love you to Carmen–which was supposed to be huge–you have no idea why she’d even be attracted to her, nor do we ever get any kind of reaction shot from Carmen or hear anything from her!
jostle: weighty, dying father plot and all, Bette was the only one who really remained an interesting character throughout Season 2, and went somewhere
jostle: we’ll have to await Season 3 to see if they just blew their wad, so to speak, in Season 1
liser: their oh-so proverbial wad
liser: what makes it so much worse now? the show was still kind of bad, but it was enormously fun to watch and to talk back to
jostle: a) less sex!
jostle: i would say Season 2 had about 75% less sex
liser: b) too many plotlines randomly abandoned
jostle: ding!
jostle: how about? no real plotlines that stuck throughout the whole season?
liser: and the star cameos were nighmarish. they were just abrupt interruptions
liser: right
jostle: c) heavyhanded treatment of ISSUES
jostle: d) introduction of another lame and/or evil straight guy
jostle: guess what ladies? they’re not all bad, and it’s kind of boring to imply that
liser: ruth, you speak the truth
liser: it’d be a Better use of the straight guy if he was just a hapless but supportive sidekick
liser: like the gay man in romantic comedies
jostle: eggzachary
jostle: having ruminated upon it more, i think that the loss of Marina was a big blow to Season 2
jostle: she was sort of the Yani to Shane’s yang
jostle: and someone who wasn’t really in the inner circle, so to speak
liser: if you’re going to have more than a certain amount of main characters, it results in a superficial, soaplike treatment of all them. Better to have a limited amount and then some blatantly minor ones
liser: Marina was a perfect minor character
liser: interesting to look at and visit with but not as important so she wasn’t a competing plotline. They knew which cog she was!
jostle: the whole Season 2 played like they just hadn’t really mapped it out in advance, as if there were too many cooks in the Kitchen, all being really supportive of one another’s ideas in a really unhelpful, destructive way
liser: typical lezobots!
jostle: can i take this metaphor further?
liser: take it further, sister
jostle: the season two climax was all lesbian bed-death
liser: Shane:
jostle: it’s interesting. once she started to downshift out of Lothario mode early Season 2…
liser: she became almost as bad as Jenny
liser: she had this big freakout when her big studio boss tried to get with her
jostle: “everybody needs something from me!”
liser: and then she went to confession
liser: and then she was doing all the drugs
jostle: oh that was the WORST
jostle: the oxycontin freakout music?!
liser: SO FUCKING BAD
jostle: her character became so unmoored they had to start playing music that whispered SHANE SHANE SHANE in the background when she was fucking just to remind us where we were
liser: (the music in general:)
liser: (wet wet wet wet)
jostle: omigoodness i almost forgot about when she brought the twins home! twins! Twins!
jostle: (twins twins twins)
liser: i forgot about dem twins
jostle: (bed-death bed-death bed-death)
liser: that’s so hot!
jostle: it was like a porn soundtrack to heat things up when they really weren’t building them up properly
liser: we liked Shane before because she was a little tragic but had an understated wit about it
jostle: too true.
liser: maybe moving in with Jenny was a bad influence on her
jostle: Or Season 2 just ran her through the issue wringer
jostle: “have i ever really loved anyone?”
jostle: “where am i going with my life?”
liser: “has anyone ever really loved me….for me?”
liser: and
jostle: “what’s my fashion like?”
liser: “I LIKE TIES!”
jostle: “why don’t i wear glasses anymore?”
liser: the thing is, i don’t expect L Word to cover every issue and person in the lesbian community
liser: but i think that the L Word tries to
jostle: they do have a show to run and it ain’t ELLEN
jostle: if only it were.. then it’d be funnier
jostle: (worse dancing tho)
liser: it’s like a 14 year old who wants to tackle all the issues but you know like still be cool wrote this season
jostle: i think that 14 year old lives in Jenny’s pink room
liser: it had an unpleasant makeshift qualiity where if it was a liittle worse we could laugh at it and it if was a little Better we could relax into just viewing as lesbian Dynasty
jostle: well put
jostle: you knew it was bad when i looked up at the clock during the cliffhanger and was sad to see only 20 min. had passed
liser: it was like being held hostage at the bad play of a friend who is going to quit acting next year and go to law school in a few years so what’s the point of sitting through it in that drafty theater that smells like old cheese?
jostle: maybe shane should just get her own spinoff, like the hair salon she never had: SHANE
liser: i’d get my hair cut there any day
liser: if you catch my drift…
jostle: oh dear
liser: will we even watch season 3?
jostle: i think we have to see if it was just a sophomore slump, to see if they can pull it back together
jostle: really the end of Season 2 left me cold, but you never know
jostle: we know they’ve got new writers…
liser: yeah, but that’s what is weird. they always have good people connected to the show
liser: the directors list alone is nutso
liser: ernest dickerson, lisa cholodenko, etc
jostle: true
liser: yes, but the writing has a little too much Go Fish influence
jostle: INDEED
jostle: let’s put our heads together and lay on the floor and talk issues
jostle: i dug Guinevere Turner’s cameos on the show tho
liser: she’s a Bette-r actress than writer
liser: but i guess because she is a big old out lesbian and not uber gorgeous she ends up writing more than she acts
liser: but when she writes, lordy, the hand it is heavy
jostle: well, if Season 3 doesn’t pan out Dynasty is available on DVD now
liser: we could just turn off the sound and rename the characters with L Word character names
jostle: shane= blake carrington
liser: ok, final list
liser: different ways to spice up L word sex
liser: tantric sex
jostle: i think we’re in need of a friend three-way mayhaps?
jostle: Kit getting it on with a lady? mmmaybe Ivan is coming back
liser: Jenny should stay celibate from now on, though
jostle: she should at least let someone else remove her clothes once in awhile
jostle: i’m tired of the tit flash
liser: no more urine sex
jostle: HA! what WAS that???
jostle: no more shower sex
liser: ladies, in general golden showers are not so golden
liser: and on that note, my friend. i think we have put this baby out with the bathwater
jostle: baby angelica’s out of here!

Funny Ha Ha’s charm sneaks up on you in the same flatfooted, backhanded way as its characters do. Grainy, not even prettily unpretty, and superficially inarticulate, it draws less directly on Cassavetes’ cinema verité than on early John Sayles films like Return of the Secaucus 7 (the 1980 inspiration for better-known, worse-for-wear The Big Chill).

Like Sayles’ early movies, which no doubt draw in turn on Cassavetes (at that, the entire genres of reality TV and Dogme 95 should be laying wreaths at his grave), Funny Ha Ha ambles along with less of an explicit agenda than with a set of circumstances, ones that 24-year-old unemployed Marnie (Waking Life animator Kate Dollenmayer) idly nudges with her long, unmanicured toe. In Secaucus 7 especially, Sayles succeeded admirably at making plausible sexual desire between characters who, though not repulsive, wouldn’t necessarily be considered attractive by audiences watching them. That’s a lost art, for sure; a lost ambition, even, in this era when “would you fuck her/him?” prevails as the most urgent casting question (Shrek aside). And it’s an art resurrected by director Andrew Bujalski, who has captured in Funny the bloodless exchanges of a certain breed of Greater Boston-based recent grads. But that’s where the comparison between Bujalski’s and Sayles’ characters, also New England-based, stops. For whereas the Secaucus guys wring their hands over ideological questions and the wisdom of their choices, Marnie and her loose network of friends are just starting to arrive at the idea that commitment of any kind is required in life — if only in terms of committing to a clear sentence.

In his review, A.O. Scott shows his old-school colors when he describes the film as “a generational statement.” The movie’s “statement,” a term that may be too strident for this mumbling venture, is at once much more universal and much more specific than that. Specifically, it’s about the type of middle-class, recent grads who proliferate Neutered England. Basically nice kids (in Boston, you’re called kid until you die) who’ve got no play.

The film looks as if it were shot back in a Slacker ‘90s, when boys and girls alike donned the androgyne uniform of unflattering jeans and ripped, unironic tee shirts, but that’d be Bostonian twentysomethings in their natural habitat in any era, alas. It’s hard to imagine how these kids will get around to procreation (or doing the things required for procreation) until you realize that they’re infinitely patient with each other as they’re all, at least, similarly socially retahded. They slouch; they’re post-ironic enough that they apologize endlessly if even a little presumptuousness creeps into their tone; they barely meet each other’s eyes; and though you suspect their alma maters weren’t community colleges, they’re hard-pressed to formulate a direct thought or request, especially if it trespasses into the world of emotions or, God forbid, carnality. (In an NPR interview, Bujalski acknowledges that all the ums, likes and you knows that his nonprofessional cast utter all like you know pretty much derive verbatim from the script).

In any other film, for example, Alex, Marnie’s unrequited love, would be the hopeless sadsack rather than the glib Lothario who dances (awkwardly) in the face of Marnie’s wistful affections. He’s got small, shifty eyes, wears white sneakers with his jeans, and mumbles rather than fumbles once he gets a girl out on her porch in the middle of the night. If you know what I mean. Watching all these characters stumble around their desires is as excruciating as watching your seventh grade math teacher (the one in a short-sleeved button-down and a pen protector) putting the mack on a girl.

But that’s the charm of the film. There isn’t a soundtrack. There are no clever pop culture references. There are no montages. There are no big showdowns. There’s nothing, in fact, to mitigate the excruciating self-consciousness of one’s 20s, which is typically aggrandized without measure in both American and European cinema alike. In Marnie’s features and body, for example, you can glimpse an inkling of a woman who may one day be beautiful, but right now is inchoate and hopelessly floppy, a female equivalent to Linklater’s Wiley Wiggins. When she applies for a position as a research assistant, the professor who interviews her seems less stodgy than self-assured, insouciant compared to Marnie and her crew’s fidgety self-consciousness. Rather than wrinkled, his features seem, well, defined. And they remind us how, for most of us in the real world (the cinema verité kind as opposed to the reality TV world), one’s 20s are actually years to fast-forward through as rapidly as possible. The weight of the world-as-oyster is actually fairly intolerable.

When watching this film at Cinema Village, I was sure it’d just look like shitty public access if seen on a TV (not that CV’s screens are much better). But when I got home, it was playing on the Sundance Channel, and I settled in with a surprising degree of pleasure to watch Marnie float through a sea of bad parties and awkward encounters one more time. It makes sense, though: A lot of Funny‘s appeal stems from its rejection of typical filmic devices; dramatic moments that would typically escalate into either slapstick or confrontation merely devolve. At one moment, for example, while Marnie is waiting for Alex in his bedroom, she happens upon some other girl’s birth control pills. She puts them away, then fiddles with his tiny wrench to an effect that is sadly, slowly funny.

Made back in 2003 and only now hitting theaters in cities like NYC, Funny Ha Ha has taken its sweet time to gain any momentum — also like its characters — but it has finally accrued the kind of critical accolades typically only awarded European film these days. And it has a sort of European feel, in its closeups and blurred edges. Even the film’s ending, obstensibly the resolution of the film’s only dramatic conflict, is swallowed rather than spat. A welcome restraint.