“The L Word”
Sundays at 9 p.m.
Showtime

3.5 out of 5 Stars

“The L Word” has taken camp and lazy plot twists to entirely new levels in its sixth and final season. But that doesn’t mean it’s not completely addictive. Case in point: Within the first five minutes of season six, the show's ostentatious bad girl, Jenny Schechter (Mia Kirshner, “Not Another Teen Movie”), is found floating in a neighbor’s pool. In a bizarre foray from its oft-glittery camerawork, the scene is shot with gritty realism that pays awkward homage to the opening moments of a "Law & Order: SVU" episode. As her horrified friends huddle together in the living room, Jenny’s corpse is unnecessarily wheeled past them, her post-drowning eye makeup perfectly intact.

Before viewers can even begin to wonder which of the core cast members killed Jenny, and why Lucy Lawless (“Xena: Warrior Princess”) has been cast as an empathetic police officer, they’re thrown back three months to where the fifth season left off in a classic insert-cliché-murder-mystery-writing-device-here moment. Viewers are forced to watch the rest of the season in flashback-mode, and they'll likely cringe as unforgivable dialogue like, “You’re dead meat, Jenny Schechter, dead meat,” saturates each episode.

In creator Ilene Chaiken’s version of West Hollywood, camp has never been an unfamiliar term. The history of “The L Word” is rife with the ridiculous. Past plotlines have included socialite Helena (Rachel Shelley, “Ghost Whisperer”) going to prison for involvement in an underground lesbian poker ring, which leads to a love connection with her tax-fraudulent cellmate Dusty. The two then escape together to a tropical island. Seriously. But where the show fails in credibility and its remote representation of reality, it succeeds in soapy fun.

Essentially, “The L Word” is a very colorful and melodramatic acid trip. There are regular plot holes, characters who disappear without a trace and a total abandonment of plausibility. But “The L Word” saves itself by winking and laughing with its viewers. Rather than attempting to take itself seriously, it often pokes subtle fun at its shortcomings. In the second episode, sardonic journalist Alice (Leisha Hailey, “La Cucina”) inquires wryly about Helena’s mysteriously absent children, who were once series regulars only to vanish without any sort of acknowledgment or explanation: “And don’t get me started on the kids, 'cause where did they go?”

“L Word” knows its audience in this way, but underestimates it in others. While it occasionally deals with real world gay issues through the exploration of commitment, same-sex families and vacillating sexual identity, it also engages in “Girls Gone Wild” frat-boy fantasy on a semi-regular basis. One of the later episodes in season five involved Jenny’s girlfriend’s dalliance with stadium-style, girl-on-girl lube wrestling. And then there’s the one and only straight character Kit (Pam Grier, “Jackie Brown”), an R&B singer who utters, “What’s up, baby girl?” at least once an episode.

But despite its flaws, there’s just something irresistible about “L Word.” It’s deliciously chock-full of free-for-all storytelling, and it spins an impossibly large web of telenovela-esque plotlines in which even the most devout fan can get tangled.

The series's addictive appeal is akin to the appeal of its notorious heartbreaker Shane (Katherine Moennig, “Young Americans”), a total trainwreck with whom every character inexplicably falls in love. To quote Jenny, who reveals herself in season six’s flashback as Shane’s latest reluctant groupie, “I think I’m in love with you. Now I’m just like all those stupid girls.” And reluctant groupies of “The L Word” will feel the same about this season.