You can tell we’re bumping up against the season finale when everything starts happening at once on The L Word. An on the edge of your seat trip, episode 11 “Lunar Cycle” was one not to be missed. By now, most people have learned the good and bad news. The L Word will be back for a sixth season next year (8 episodes), but it will be the final season. It is extremely sad as we’ve come to love this family of women, yet in a way I have to applaud the team that they are choosing to bring closure to the series while it is still at its peak. There’s nothing worse than a series that is wonderful and then slowly declines into mediocre before taking a half-hearted bow.
This week we see firsthand the fallout between Jodi and Bette. Quite an amazing set of scenes that really make evident Jodi’s heartbreak and desire to fight for her relationship and Bette’s change of heart. It is clear Bette feels love for Jodi but is no longer in love with her.The spark, passion, and intensity is uniquely Jodi and while it certainly brings closure to the relationship, it is sad nonetheless.
To me this whole episode was about the subtle and not so subtle ways we engage in self-sabotage. First off, the return of the past with Denbo busting in 
to proclaim that Ivan sold her 51% of The Planet. Now I realize a general partnership is about the worst kind of business structure you could use, but doesn’t Kit have to be involved in some way in this transaction? Doesn’t Ivan at least have a fiduciary duty to inform her business partner of the sale? I am no lawyer, but something seems fishy all around with this situation. This scene illustrates self-sabotage #1 which I would assert is Kit’s perceived lack of due diligence when she got into the arrangement to buy The Planet with Ivan. We all know how insecure and desperate Kit is (her vulnerability always speaking loudly in the face of her ongoing battle with addiction) and I believe that came into play in the initial transaction and certainly shows up later in this episode. Before I get to that, however, let’s talk about Jenny.
Jenny has a history of behavior and choices that play right into self-sabotage. We’ve seen her deeply troubled in the past and even though she has come a long way, those innate feelings of insecurity and unworthiness are still there, just beneath her pimped up new Hollywood persona. The guilty seek punishment and you just knew something bad was going to happen when Jenny and Nikki videotaped themselves in the tent having sex. Nothing good ever comes of this sort of thing, and certainly not when you have a super creepy assistant like Adele who has since day 1 been out for her own agenda. Max called it from the start which is what prompted Jenny’s “Max the Oracle” comment in this episode. So in one quick act of supposed fun, Jenny sabotaged her own dream – the film of Lez Girls which she had worked so hard to create.
In the self-sabotage waiting to happen category is Alice. While Alice is naturally flirty, her little connection with the designer featured on “The Look” was just a little too much foreshadowing for me. The question that hangs unspoken in the air is – so Tasha gives up her military career for Alice; will Alice remain true or screw this relationship up too? It makes me wonder if Dana hadn’t died how long it would’ve taken for Alice to stray even from her best friend and soul mate.
If that wasn’t enough self-sabotage going on, we come back to Kit. She is a woman scorned who happens to be a new owner of a firearm. She grabs her gun and heads off to She Bar to even the score once and for all. I find it interesting that they so prominently featured the car Ivan restored for Kit in this scene. A little subtle irony. Kit is just seconds from making the biggest mistake of her life when her cell phone rings (with the cutest ring tone ever). Talk about saved by the bell. There is such a thing as divine timing and Kit turns to leave to pick up Angie but not before Cindy and her lock eyes. Her comedy of errors doesn’t end there though. While all of us watching were exhaling a sigh of relief, little did we know how the show would end. There’s Angie playing with Kit’s gun. You could feel a collective heart in the throat gasp across the land when that happened. Now that would be a storyline. Instead, Kit gently gets Angie to “share” the gun with her. But here’s the catch, in yet another act of self-sabotage, Kit throws the gun into the dumpster. Hello!??!? The gun is registered in Kit’s name and now any roving psychopath can take it from the dumpster, use it in a crime, and the gun gets traced back to Kit. I can only imagine how this little detail will pan out.
We all know our core group of ladies on The L Word are good people. Yet this episode clearly illustrates how seemingly innocent choices lead down a path of self-destruction in big and small ways. All these choices stem from the common truth – we all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like or try to suppress and when we do that, we make choices and engage in behaviors that sabotage our best efforts. The key to overcoming these patterns of self-sabotage is to give attention to these parts of ourselves that we don’t like and express and experience these feelings in a healthy way. By learning how to be ok with who we are – warts and all – we become comfortable in our own skin and our propensity to get in our own way and sabotage ourselves no longer yields the upper hand.