‘The L Word’ is back—and Xtra is watching it with you

For six seasons, we lived and loved (and sometimes loathed) the L.A. lezzies of The L Word. Our dearly beloved and deeply flawed small-screen queers have been gone for a decade now (who can forget them walking out on us to a bongo version of the Betty theme song?), leaving us with much unresolved conflict, tension and confusion: Who killed Jenny Schecter? If Shane was a hairdresser, why was her haircut so bad? Why can’t Bette Porter just keep it in her pants?

But thanks to the gay gods (and Showtime), we’ll have answers—and a whole new L.A. crew to form a love-hate relationship with.

The L Word: Generation Q launches on Dec. 8, featuring a new (much, much more diverse) cast and the return of some OG characters—and *spoiler alert* we’ll be watching along with you.

For the past six weeks, we’ve re-lived the original run of The L Word in our podcast “Off The Chart” and all of its heartwarming queer couplings, early-aughts fashion, dark and depressing storylines—and yes, that god-awful theme song.

Now, we’re launching Season 2 of “Off The Chart”: Join Michelle Turingan and I as we navigate The L Word: Generation Q every Monday—helping you process the lives and loves of the originals and the new queers on the block.

Will the new series hold up to its iconic queer predecessor? Will the return of Alice, Shane and Bette reinvigorate the characters we once held near and dear—or will they crumple after 10 years off screen? Will our new characters compare to the cast of lesbians we came to love, even though they were awful a lot of the time? It remains to be seen—and we’ll unpack it all with you.

But here’s what we can promise: There will be a lot of throwbacks to the original series (as Jennifer Beals put it in a Variety interview, “There are so many instances where I’m like, ‘This feels familiar, but I’m not sure why,’ and then I go back and I revisit the show and I go, ‘Oh, that’s why. Because that happened’”). There will be even more conversations about much-needed diversity and inclusion on our TV screens. And—this is a big one—we’ll finally learn who killed that bitch Jenny.

So join us for some talking, laughing, loving, breathing and more on Season 2 of “Off The Chart,” launching Monday, Dec. 9.