'L Word' lacks plot, still entices

In the billboard advertisements for its new drama, "The L Word," Showtime touts the series as the lesbian version of "Sex and the City," with the tagline: "Same Sex. Different City." But if you're expecting a show with "Sex and the City's" glib one-liners and relative lightheartedness, then you will be sorely disappointed. Despite its honest attempt to portray lesbians outside the stereotype, "The L Word" disappoints on several levels.

In the series' two-hour pilot episode, set in that "different city," Los Angeles, we are introduced to the almost all-female cast. The women break the "butch" stereotype of lesbians in that they are all skinny, coiffed and beautiful . . . almost as if they were actresses or something. There's Jennifer Beals from "Flashdance" as type-A Bette and her docile partner Tina (Laurel Holloman), a couple of seven years looking to have a baby by artificial insemination or, when that fails, an unprotected ménage à trois with a man they meet at an art show.

And there's plenty more sex: girl on girl, girl on guy, girl on guy on girl; the bases are pretty much covered. But whereas a show like "Sex and the City" manages to portray its admittedly gratuitous sexual situations with tongue-in-cheek comic timing, the sex scenes in "The L Word" are merely gratuitous. While the wide-eyed Jenny (Mia Kirshner), a new arrival to L.A. and the show's only heterosexual woman (at least for the first 20 minutes of the pilot) secretly watches her lesbian neighbors get it on in their pool, the sex scenes are both tedious and excessive. They add dreary length to the show without improving the plot.

The plot itself is rather flimsy. The first episode is an unoriginal introduction of the regulars: Apart from Bette and Tina, there's Jenny and her wholesome boyfriend Tim, who is pathetically oblivious to Jenny's attraction to the exotic Marina (Karina Lombard), the owner of the local café where the rest of the cast hangs out. There we meet Shane (Katherine Moennig), who has to dress in a lot of black leather to prove just how tough she is; Dana (Erin Daniels), a professional tennis player afraid to officially come out of the closet; and Alice (Leisha Hailey), a bisexual journalist who dedicates her free time to making giant charts that determine who's slept with whom. Given that there are no fewer than five different couples depicted having sex in the first episode, these charts will probably come in handy if "The L Word" can find enough of a fan base to stay on the air.

There is not much reason to keep watching. The "lesbians are people too" message is valid, but the show still needs good writing and compelling plot lines, neither of which it has, to maintain interest. Although the actresses are a talented bunch, they can do little to improve "The L Word's" perplexingly somber air. The show definitely lacks enough levity to balance out its overall seriousness. It denies the fact that it is little more than an all-female "Melrose Place" (it's even set in West Hollywood) but without the Spelling-esque cheesiness that made "Melrose Place" such a success. Perhaps if "The L-Word" stops taking itself so seriously it will become a more entertaining show.