-When the original "L Word" aired,
I was in a relationship with a woman, but not out.
-I was 19 years old when the original show came out.
-We would watch "The L Word,"
but I was in a place where I couldn't really appreciate it.
-My friend who is also gay -- she used to go rent the DVDs
and tell the woman at Blockbuster
that they were for me, as though the woman
at Blockbuster would, like, give a [bleep].
Oh, God, I don't know if I can curse.
Can I curse?
-I didn't think I identified with anybody on the show.
I wasn't in that community.
I wasn't those people.
-I was coming up then, like, as a writer,
a young writer in New York.
And it changed everything for me.
-A decade later,
and "The L Word" is back on Showtime.
So much has changed since the original show premiered in 2004.
Americans can get gay married.
Out LGBTQ humans hold elected office
and are running for president.
And the number of folks who identify as queer has shot up.
All this gay-rights progress didn't just happen.
It was the result of a long, hard fight,
one that included breaking barriers on TV.
When the show originally aired,
it was something truly remarkable.
It was a show by and for lesbians.
♪ Girls in tight dresses who drag with mustaches ♪
But "The L Word" also owed a lot to the pioneering
gay TV characters that came before it.
-I'm gay.
-Shows like "Will & Grace" introduced audiences
to what gay people with agency actually looked like.
-This guy, let me tell you. -They were welcomed into homes,
they laughed, they cried,
and they showed people that, hey, being gay is okay.
And while these characters showed a window
into a certain kind of gay culture,
the roles were pretty limited.
And then networks saw what could happen
when LGBTQ audiences flocked to a show, for example, "Glee."
-Which included, obviously, several LGBTQ characters,
but also, for "Glee" to be as big of a hit as it was,
it really made several other shows
kind of more willing to follow in its footsteps.
-You may kiss one another. -"Vida," "Special,"
"Steven Universe," "Pose" -- all these shows
created by queer people began to spring up.
They reflected our community for everything we are.
And people who identified with these roles --
queer actors playing queer characters --
actually began to get cast, and also not.
Despite the progress these shows brought,
queer characters are still showing up as tropes --
gay best friends, evil villains, sexual deviants, and sissies.
And they were buried and buried and buried.
But as networks began portraying queer people
in more positive ways,
gay audiences proved they would show up.
-If a network is willing to give a bunch of queers
this much money to go shoot a story about a bunch of queers,
it sends a very clear message that you are worth it,
we are worth it, our stories are worth funding and being told,
and that there's a huge audience for them.
-In 2019, a study showed there were 433 queer characters
across all television shows,
a huge leap from the 129 when "The L Word" ended.
-And I think that is parallel to kind of the story
of "The L Word"
and the reboot because we know that the reboot is inclusive
of a lot more identities than were in the original.
-So our writers' room is extremely diverse.
It reflects the cast.
So we have first-generation immigrants,
second-generation, Latinx.
We have black women.
We've got trans guys.
Like, everybody that's in the cast is pretty much in the room.
My job really is to set up Noah's Ark
and then sit back and just listen.
-There's no one person that has
to hold the mantle up for this one thing.
-The original "L Word"
represented only a small portion of our community.
-Yeah, you can. -With "Generation Q,"
Hicks and Ryan are hoping for something different.
-I talked to a lot of young people
that are in the community,
and they're hungry to see themselves on TV,
to feel like it's normal to be who they are and to feel valid
and to feel like they can be who they are
in kind of a safe space.
And I think this show will give them that.
-In 10 years, there's gonna be some 30-year-old punk
who's sitting across from me at my desk being like,
"You got it wrong.
Let me try."
And get to be like, "Okay," like, "You do it."