A Plea: DVR ‘The L Word’ (While You Watch ‘The Wire’)

It’s with good reason that Vulture (and the world at large) is hopped up about the final coming of The Wire this Sunday. But just as The Wire advises that you need soft eyes to view all the pieces of a crime scene, so must you relax your vision to see the whole television grid. The L Word may not go down in history books as the Greatest TV Show Ever Written, but it will indeed receive its own chapter under the heading Social Drama of Great Import That Includes Hot Chicks Kissing. The new season promises many splendors: Celesbian (and celesbianish) stunt-casting continues with the sublimely hysterical Jane Lynch reprising her role as roguish lawyer Joyce (this season bedding Cybill Shepherd’s character, Phyllis), and Kelly McGillis steps in as Colonel Gillian Davis, a conflicted participant in the show’s continuing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell plotline.

We won’t plug him under the celesbian heading, but this season you’ll see Wallace Shawn playing the role of a billionaire hedge-fund manager who’s producing the evil Jenny’s movie based on her New Yorker short story “Lez Girls.� (Insidery New Yorker connections? And you thought The L Word was just about vajayjay.) Plus Pam Grier’s character wields a gun, as every Pam Grier character is lawfully bound to do. So set the DVR! After watching The Wire, you can flip to The L Word and imagine what would happen if detective Kima Greggs found love with killer butch Snoop and fled West Baltimore for West Hollywood and a life of $20 cocktails and $300 jeans. The American dream lives. —Caryn Brooks