Pre-pre-L: Three in, one (hopefully) out

As you might have already read over at Ye Olde AfterEllen Blog, Showtime announced that Jodi, Phyllis and Tasha will return for another season of talking, laughing, loving, breathing, fighting, fucking, crying, drinking, writing, winning, losing, cheating, kissing, thinking and dreaming on “The L Word.”

Marlee Matlin will be back to bring the battle for Bette’s affections we all know is coming to fruition, and this time she has been upgraded from guest star to series regular. Oh, it’s on! Season 5 is going to be all, “Oh, no you di’int, Jodi!” “Bring it, Tina!” At some point, and I’m not proud of this, I hope we get a little hair pulling. Cybill Shepherd will be back again as a guest star. What I think this means is that Phyllis will again be relegated to brief moments of over-the-top cheese and/or clunky plot exposition (seriously, can she possibly speak more of Bette’s subtext out loud?). Which is good -- when it comes to Phyllis, less is so much more.Rose Rollins will be back as Alice’s soldier girl (no word on whether she’ll be back from Iraq as well). This, of course, only makes sense since otherwise it would be the most dangly, most glaring of loose ends in the show’s long line of dangling, glaring loose ends. This also makes me all sorts of happy because Alice and Tasha together are cuter than a bowlful of kittens. But, possibly the best news is the news that isn’t here. No word on Janina Gavankar, which probably means that Papi will not be back to torture us with her playa posturing and bad hats next season. This can only mean that there is a God, and she loves lesbians.

EDIT I: Yes, yes, it’s an “i” not a “y” in Jodi, my bad. I will go flog myself with a dictionary (which of course is no help with randomly cutsie spellings of names anyway). But seriously, with the rapid and inexplicable growth of the cast of late, who can keep up with all the spellings of all the revolving characters? And who adds two new characters in one season and ends both their names with an “i” anyway?
EDIT II: Well, this certainly hasn’t been one of my more successful posts. First, I misspell the name of a character I’ve spelled correctly all damn season, then I have people on message boards rejoicing in another typo. For the record, I have no problems with Janina, she seems like a very nice young woman. But I have all kinds of problems with the one-dimensional writing that turns her into a caricature that’s all swagger, no soul. Anyway, this serves as another reminder why I shouldn’t post so late at night. Yes, folks, those time stamps are correct. And also part of the reason my sentences on occasion look like they were typed by monkeys with hammers. The other reason, of course, is that I am an idiot. Sigh.