By: ABD1

Over the past few episodes, the meta-ness of the show has really come into focus. Of course any viewer would notice the show (or movie) within a show, with the former’s plot based directly on the latter’s, but I love how Riese and Carly have really spelled out how “inspired by real life events” different details and plot lines and characters are, it’s so interesting and fun to hear about. Riese has previously referred to how Ilene Chaiken based the concept of this show on the queer women’s community that Chaiken was a part of, centered on Spaulding Square. What really blew my mind though was hearing an interview with Chaiken where she stated that the idea for the show was based on an article she wrote for “Los Angeles Magazine” back in 2000 (or 2001) about that same community. Chaiken said in the interview that she wanted to write about this growing and changing community of queer women who were all connected and living in proximity and starting families. So this is a direct parallel of Jenny having a serialised novella published in “The New Yorker” which then gets turned into a movie. Just another level of show within a show, art imitating life (instead of the other way around), meta-ness that I thought I’d mention.

P.S. I’ve tried looking for the article that Chaiken wrote. I’ve tried searching for it, or at least a mention of what exact month/year the article was released. Luckily “Los Angeles Magazine” actually has a lot of full back issues of the publication available for free on Google Books but I’ve tried looking through some of the issues from 2000 and 2001 and couldn’t find it. Does anyone know what issue it was, or is there a copy of it somewhere online?