I am a straight male and, like most straight males watching lesbian movies, I initially discovered this series looking for soft porn on the web. Thus you could say this is the review of another disgusting pig, and of course that has nothing to do with women producing lesbian movies, and consciously broadcasting them to men.
And that has nothing to do with Tucky Williams being a huge, huge tease... But in her case it is so superior and divine that I am not sure the term "tease" qualifies anymore. It is more like a yoga master tickling existential things in your spine that you didn't even know were there.
Well, guess what, it is not soft porn. You won't get the feminine curves under a soft light, you will get much less and much more than that.
But before describing the "serious stuff", let's examine a few minor aspects that you might miss if you concentrate on the lesbian aspect.
First, there is a poetry of the location. OK my English might not be sufficient here, but there is a "chant of belonging a peculiar place", the poetic transmission of the special atmosphere of Lexington, Kentucky. I don't know why, but the Middle West towns have often seemed to me to convey that sort of things better than the series shot in California, which strive to display a generic location that could be anywhere in the developed world.
Second, I want to thank the actors playing the baddies, the idiots or the straight. They were all excellent, and I must say superior to what Hollywood can offer at the moment. I admire them, it must not have been easy for them to play in a lesbian series, and they all did more than well.
Now, you want to know about the "serious" stuff ? You belong to the "pig gender community" too ? As I said it is not porn, because in graphic porn you only get the external aspects, and you don't get the "sexual tension between us", which, after watching this series, you will understand is all that truly matters.
It is the artistic representation of intense dating, of the anxiety and pleasure of surrendering to risky desire, of the pain of jealousy and potential loss, of the deeply human satisfaction of having true friends and raw communication. Of the solar strength and magnificence of fragile women in agony, and yet stronger than any man.
Yes, I admit it, those women emotionally raped me, and... I liked it and I am grateful for that, because they were in my life the revelation of the pathetic prospect of relying on the web for sexual gratification. They are like a coup d'état in the matrix, they reach for you, they knock at your mental door and make you understand there are real people with a real soul out there.
They even made me quit smoking. Yeah, they're that good. But I had to drink vodka to be able to watch the episodes till the end... I was like a little kid in awe.
Those women are actresses first, and lesbians second. They are superior artists. In every scene their eyes sparkle with wit, and the unexplainable joy of second-degree humor mixed with raw primeval desire. No wonder it is an indie series, the mainstream American audience would never have tolerated such a degree of natural intelligence and superior education.
Also, I admired the way the traditional aspects of soap were subverted in order to achieve very sharp and yet deadpan comedy. Like the Avery character, who sleeps with all the wrong people in order to create the most awkward situations. The writing in this series, let's face it, comes from a prodigious talent.
OK maybe I am being too nice here. So for good measure I will just "bitch around" the second season which I didn't like as much as the first one.
I viscerally didn't like the Bender character. I felt it was like "Hey, I am not an actress, but I am the president of the local lesbian committee, so I have the right to plant my little flag here". Sometimes I wonder if she even realized that there was a worldwide audience, and if she thought she was just playing a fun skit in her friends' private circle. This is particularly obvious if you compare her with the wonderful and very professional cold humor of the other new character Ling. I frankly wondered whether she had slept with someone in the crew to get the right to be on screen (oh.... hem wait... OK I didn't say that...). Or maybe deep inside I was jealous, her being the only true male character in the show... who knows... maybe I was hooked to that extent.
Another weak point of the second season is that there were two more assaulters, in addition to the one from the first season. And they both happened to be straight Christian males. Sincerely... I write from Europe... and straight Western males are really not the threat for lesbians at the moment.
Last, what can I say ? Because I am a male chauvinist pig I have a personal request. If you ever make another episode, I want to see Trista wearing a cowboy hat, and cooking for Susan. Yeah, you cannot make kinkier than that, can you ? Just joking, girls, just joking... But please...
