(Screenshot from Xtra Magazine’s Youtube)
Mainstream LGBTQ representation on television in the early 2000s focused primarily on white gay men. When people would talk about the advancement of queer stories on TV, they would point to “Will & Grace,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Queer As Folk.”
In 2004, Showtime premiered “The L Word,” the first TV series to focus on the lives of lesbian and bisexual women, and it was a huge hit for the paid cable channel. The show ran for six seasons and then was rebooted in 2019 with “The L Word: Generation Q.”
Xtra Magazine, a Los Angeles-based LGBTQ digital publication, created a podcast in 2019 to revisit the groundbreaking series and examine the lack of queer women visible on television today. The podcast is now in its third season.
“Off the Chart” is hosted by Xtra’s senior editor Erica Lenti and managing producer Chelle Turingan. In the podacst’s first season, Lenti and Turingan did a season-by-season rewatch of the original six seasons of “The L Word.” In the following season, they recapped each episode of the 2019 reboot “The L Word: Generation Q.”
“The L Word is known best for pioneering a kind of television series never before seen in the early aughts. Most queer women I know have memories of seeing the loving, laughing, kissing, cheating and breathing between women who look and dress and talk like they do for the first time on screen,” Lenti said. “‘The L Word: Generation Q’ brings that visibility to a new audience, merging millennial queer sensibilities with our favorite L.A. lesbians of yore.”
Now in their third season, “Off the Chart” is examining the second season of “The L Word: Generation Q” and offering more ways to experience the podcast. Along with listening, “Off the Charts” is available now in text format and on video.
“Like other outlets, the pandemic has forced us to be creative in audio and video production—setting up home studios and shooting remotely—but, for us, that’s been a virtue,” said Xrta director of editorial, Rachel Giese. “Xtra has always had a scrappy, can-do, DIY ethos, which reflects the ingenuity and resourcefulness of our communities.”
“Off the Chart” premieres new episodes every Tuesday. You can watch, listen and read by going to OffTheChart.XtraMagazine.com or by visiting Xtra Magazine’s YouTube channel.
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