Episode 5 – Labels Recap

Hey, lesbians! Sorry this is late! I was on vacation so my schedule was a bit skewed but I’m backkkkk!! And I have no life, so the rest of the recaps will be posted promptly. Promise. 

Shane wakes up with The Luckiest Woman in the World. Yes!!! Finally! Hot I-love-you sex? Sort of. Shane rolls over and starts doing the Shane thing. You know, the Shane thing. We were all mystified throughout The L Word by Shane’s hip gyrations. Shane thrusts, women moan, as if…you know…things were happening…down there. Does Shane have a secret penis we don’t know about? Or did she just fall asleep with the strap? Anyways, sexy hip things. Quiara moans. This is all happening fast, but Quiara seems turned on, like she’s about to come. But wait! She’s got something to say. Of course! Shane isn’t even phased. Shane expects a proposal, because, I don’t know, maybe Shane is accustomed to proposals pre, during, and post orgasm? 
Does Quiara re-propose? Does she tip her head back and lose her thoughts in the big O?

NOPE! Instead she goes, I’m pregnant. 

Um. Whoa. If there ever was a one-liner to put a stark end to hot morning sex, that’s the one! Shane is not so favorably impressed. 

Quiara: I’m not asking you to be a parent.
Shane: WE’RE LITERALLY MARRIED. 

Quiara makes this comment like, we’ve never been traditional about things and I see a universe of possibilities in Shane’s eyebrow raise.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????

Sexy threesomes? Non-monogamous flings? Quiara is secretly the top? I need some clues here!!! I’m dying!!!

Nat, Alice, and Gigi wake up together. WHOA!!!! WHAT?!?!?! 

SO THERE WAS MORE HOT THREESOME SEX AFTER THE HOT THREESOME SEX?!?!
My brain is exploding. 

Alice is like, this is great. Nat is acting all coy, like she can’t believe this is happening. 

Nat: This is terrible.
Alice: You didn’t think so last night. What changed?

Sobriety? Sobriety tends to change things. At least…it does for me. 

Bette drops Angie off at school and Angie is like, oh my god, please don’t come to my school play, it’s so embarrassing. Oh my God Angie!!! Your super cool lesbian mom LOVES you!!! Be grateful! But then Jordi reveals that her hippie parents will not be gracing her with their school play presence. Aww. Sad. And Angie texts Bette, like, K fine, You can come. For her 🙂

EEEEEE!!!!!!

“For her :)”
Cute!!!!

Bette smiles at her daughter’s GAY ASS TEXT, then drives off to start her gay day. 

Tess walks into work and calls her sponsor. Imagine working at a bar as a recovering alcoholic. That’s like…working in a candy store with diabetes? Just…why?!
Tess’s sponsor tells her she needs to help someone. Really? Does helping people make you feel like not drinking? I help people at work all day and I always feel like drinking afterwards. But maybe it’s just me.

Tess decides to help Finley, who is trashy-passed out on the couch after presumably going ham in Shane’s boujee office whiskey cabinet. Tess offers to buy Finley breakfast. Finley seems thrilled. We have yet to see Finley pay for a single meal. Brilliant. How on earth does she manage this?!

After dropping her gay daughter off, Bette starts her gay day off doing campaign calls with her best gay friends. Alice reveals that she is possibly now in a throuple. Shane reveals that Quiara is pregnant. 

Alice: Whoa. Well, that’s bigger than my thing. 

Agree to disagree. Alice’s thing was wayyyy more interesting. 

Shane: She says she wants to be with me, but she doesn’t need me to raise her kid.
Alice: I think that’s what I do. 

Whoa. I love how Alice is just gleefully acknowledging that she doesn’t help raise her girlfriend’s kids. Maybe that’s why Alice is so thrilled about the potential throuple situation? Gigi and Nat can co-parent, and Alice can stop trying to play daddy and just stick around for the fun sex. I mean. Seems legit. 
By the way, Shane casually makes campaign calls in a fully-artificial southern accent. 

Shane: People respond better to Southern accents. 

Bad. Ass. See? I’ve been saying that for years, but no one believes me.

Dani’s dad delivers a lil wedding present to Dani and Sophie. A prenup! 

Dani: This is not cool!!!
Sophie: It’s fine I’ll do whatever I just want to have 9 kids with you. 

Dani seems surprised by Sophie’s 9-kids joke. Oh my god. Is this another thing they haven’t discussed?!?! You can’t just marry someone without discussing kids! If, when, how many, ETC. Am I crazy for thinking that?!?!

But anyways, the prenup doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Everybody rich should get a prenup. You can’t trust these hoes. But this prenup has a fucked-up clause: if Sophie gives birth to children, they can’t claim any of Dani’s family money. But if Dani has children, they’ll be part of Dani’s family’s trust. 

Damn. 

Yeah. That’s…wow. 

Also, I love that they cast Jillian Mercado as an immigration attorney. Casting a queer, disabled, Latina woman as an attorney is pretty rad. 

Tess and Finley bond over their drinking stories. 

Finley: I feel like I should apologize to the girl I’m dating… but I don’t know why?
Tess: Yeah, that used to happen before I got sober. 

Is this plotline going to result in Finley going sober and turning to Jesus? I hope not. Is that bad to say? I want Finley to stay wild…and maybe just, you know, ease up on the shots. Balance!

Nat, Alice, and Gigi embark in some throuple dialogue. HERE. FOR. THIS. *clapping hands emoji* Nat makes it clear that she doesn’t want for Gigi to get in the way of her true loveeeee with Alice. Gigi’s like, of course! Nat questions Gigi’s throuple readiness, like, why are you so willing to do this? and Gigi says, because...I would do anything to have you! So in sum, Alice is down for the throuple because she wants hot sexy throuple sex with Gigi, Gigi is down for the throuple because she wants Nat back so bad that she doesn’t even mind the extra person, and Nat’s down for the throuple because…well, she’s not really sure about it yet, but it’s working out so far. 

Here. For. This.

Shane breezes into work in her extremely well-tailored button up. It’s like, masculine, but also extremely well-fitted. Where does she get her button ups? Madewell? Allsaints? Ugh. Either way, they’re probably too expensive for my broke ass. 

Shane: Did you miss a liquor delivery?
Tess: You fucked my girlfriend.

Whoa. Saw that one coming. 

Finley makes it over to the preistess’s house to apologize for whatever she definitely doesn’t remember doing. 

Finley: Sorry…what did I do last night?
Priestess: You said I wasn’t a priest and then you told me you loved me.

Finley apologizes and seems sincere, but the Priestess dismisses her to “deal with her shit”.
Whatever.
I’m over their relationship anyways. The Priestess seems a little therapist-ish. I can’t picture her and Finley together because she’d probably always be giving out wise advice and provoking thoughtful, emotional conversations with sweet questions, like, how are you feeling about that? The Priestess says she’s trying not to try to fix people and I get that. I have this problem where I always attract women who want to fix me, but the thing is, we never agree on which parts of me are broken. Being cared for feels amazing, but being mothered or counselled isn’t a turn-on. You need to be on the same level emotionally with the person you’re dating. 

Finley calls her Dad only to find that her sister is getting married. Her dad rushes her off the phone before she can find out if she’s invited to the wedding. She chokes back puke and tears simultaneously. This is definitely the most heart-crushing scene that has happened yet in the series. We finally get a glimpse of Finley’s family dynamic: she might want a better relationship with her parents. But they push her away. Possibly due to the way their religious values force them to interpret her homosexuality. This is a reality for so many queer women. It’s no wonder queer women are at higher risk for alcoholism and addiction. It’s not uplifting, but it’s accurate. Audiences need to see this. Straight people need to see this. Queer people need to see this. So we can learn some fucking empathy. 

Sophie attempts to have a dialogue with Dani about what happened after she stormed into Daddy’s office and confronted him. Sophie pushes the conversation; Dani freaks out and says she’s not ready to talk right now. 

Sigh.

I just…yeah.

Micah and Jose are sitting on the couch talking about…

Micah: Of course he said yes 🙂
Jose: He liked my work!
Micah: Of course he did 🙂

OF COURSE WHO DID WHAT?!

Then Jose hits it with the, “Do you love me?” Micah says he’s been thinking about that all day, and Jose looks him in the eyes and says, “I bet you have.”

Okay, is it weird to say that I find Jose’s intensity kind of sexy? I mean, obviously you’re NOT supposed to say I love you to someone you just met, but every relationship is different. Imagine being with someone who just tells you how they’re feeling and doesn’t hold back. 

Jose: I’ve never been able to talk to someone like this before. 
Micah: Yeah, well I used to be a lesbian, so…

1. That’s tea, right there. I love dating women but one thing I’ve had to get used to over the years is that women never shut up. They want to talk about ALL the feelings ALL the time, which is FINE when you’re in a RELATIONSHIP but I’ve never actually BEEN in one of those and I’ve STILL had like 93 dramatic breakups and “what are we?” conversations okayimdone.

Micah: There’s something I want to try…but I don’t know if I’ll like it…or if you’ll like it…or what if you do like it? And then…?
Jose: What do you want to do?

*Sexy music plays*

OHMYGOD MICAH. DON’T GET PREGNANT. 

I live for these real-ass queer sex scenes. It was a weird transition from Micah and Jose talking about loveeeee to talking about some new sex shit Micah wants to try but I actually dig it. I feel like Micah needs to know that Jose can accept all of who he is and all his complex gender/sexuality shit before he can fully open up to Jose in other ways. That may sound shallow to some people, but as a queer person I totally get it. There’s gender/sex stuff of mine that I’ve never been comfortable exploring and I know that I’ll have to wait until I meet the right person. 

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, idk.

Anyhoo, Tess is back on the booze. That’s…probably not good. Finley shows up to cover Lena’s shift and reveals that she doesn’t know how to make drinks. This seems to make Tess want to drink more. Is she surprised? I’m not. Why would anyone ever ask Finley to cover a shift at a bar, ever? Finley has other talents. Responsible multi-tasking in a boozy environment is probably not one of them!

Bette runs off to break up with Felicity. Felicity reveals that she has her own apartment, which I’m guessing means that her marriage is over. I get that Bette and Felicity needed to end things, but I’m confused by this scene. It seems like Felicity is finally in the right place to be with Bette, and she understands that their relationship needs to stay private and is willing to work to keep it that way. And this is exactly the moment that Bette ends things? Of course. 

Felicity: What am I supposed to do?
Bette: You’ll get through this. 

Women like Bette exist to fuck you good, fix your finances, and then leave at the moment you least expect. With a lot of problems you’ll have to work through in therapy later. Worth it? Maybe. 

Alice, Nat, and Gigi are sipping wine and embarking on a game of what would you do if…? in order to plan future throuple issues. I live for these throuple therapy sessions. Are they really going to be public about their relationship?? Oh my god…can you imagine?? In order to picture this, I really need to know what Gigi and Nat do for a living. Alice runs a gay talk show, so her career will probably be fine. But what does Gigi do? I mean, there are only so many careers where you can be in an open polyamorous lesbian relationship, aren’t there?

Dani shows up at the office to work and take her mind off of her father. Bette is at the office, also working late. She ends up holding Dani in her arms as she cries. Awwwwwww. The Bette-Dani dynamic is really so cute. Dani is, like, a really strong and empowered lesbian woman, but Bette is ALSO a strong empowered lesbian woman. And Bette is probably the one person who could comfort Dani in this type of situation. 

Quiara shows up at Shane’s door, all, I don’t need you but I want you. She brought Shane expensive whiskey. Damn. Fancy chain, expensive whiskey…Quiara really knows how to treat a stud. She seems like a keeper, except for the whole running-off-to-get-pregnant-without-consulting-her-wife thing. Shane is like uh, yeah okay…wanna go to Angie’s play? I’M SO CONFUSED.

Guess who else is at Angie’s play? Nat, Alice, and Gigi. Eee!!! Throuple public outings? Already? I love it. Why do I love it?! Is it weird that I love it??

Alice takes Nat’s hand…AND Gigi’s hand. Bette raises her eyebrows, because that’s what she does. 

Angie did an uh-mazing job moving furniture in the play, and now she’s wearing a black button up looking SUPER GAY and smiling at Jordi. 🙂 AWWW!!! Uncle Shane pulls Angie aside for a little talk…

Shane: I think she likes you, too.
Angie: 🙂

!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, Tess and Finley are getting messy drunk and then they decide to have SUPER HOT SEX. 

Can’t wait to see how that works out. 

AAAAANDDD, for the dramatic finale, Bette is greeted outside the theater by Felicity’s crazy-ass husband and a billion reporters. Dude runs at Bette all crazy yelling, I KNOW YOU’RE STILL FUCKING MY WIFE, Angie steps in, trying to defend her Mom but crazy dude knocks her down! Bette then pushes him like BITCH YOU LAY YOUR HANDS ON MY CHILD! and the dude falls down the stairs and hits his head. Damn it!!! Really??? More bad press for Bette? I hope dude man doesn’t die, cuz, you know. That wouldn’t look so good on the news. 

Aaaaaaand, that’s it! Wow. So much has happened. I can’t wait for the next episode!