Review of Girltrash!

For an alternative to straight- or male-oriented genres, check out Girltrash! Launched in June 2007, this series appears on OurChart, a website created by Ilene Chaiken and other people behind Showtime’s The L Word. This social networking and entertainment site provides “a central meeting place just for us — lesbians, dykes, queer girls, gay women, high femmes, butches, drag kings, bois, transwomen and transmen — however we define ourselves.”

The three-minute episodes are written, directed, edited, and produced by Angela Robinson, who also directed D.E.B.S. and Herbie Fully Loaded. Alexandra Kondracke is the director of photography and executive producer. Angela and Alex, along with most of the cast, have worked on The L Word and other lesbian-friendly projects.

What if Thelma and Louise were out of the closet, and they were tough young LA women looking to have sex with other women in the City of Angels’ underworld…or to at least not be killed by them? In this comedy-drama series Tyler (played by Michelle Lombardo) and Daisy (Lisa Rieffel) are small-time partners in crime looking for a good time while trying to stay alive. Enjoying traits previously reserved only for men on screen, they drink, smoke, cuss, call each other “dude,” get into bar fights, and chase women.

The series begins with Tyler and Daisy in a very dangerous situation, and goes back in time to show how they got there. Their problems began when blonde temptress LouAnne (Riki Lindhome) seduced Tyler and framed both her and Daisy for stealing $2 million from a local mob boss (whose sister is played briefly by Margaret Cho). The series takes on a more serious tone in Episode 7 as Tyler and Daisy try to save themselves and Daisy’s (also lesbian) sister from the murderous Monique (Rose Rollins), who looks and acts like she came out of a blaxploitation film.

Girltrash! is fun for how it depicts tough sexy women, for the coarse comical dialogue, and for the hip music. It’s slickly edited and filmed in a gritty b&w style with some occasional shots in eye-grabbing color. With its estimated $50,000 budget the series does a lot with relatively little, and could translate well onto the big screen or premium TV. 

The website provides Girltrash! merchandise, downloads, making-of info, and forums. On the forums, viewers often discuss their favorite characters or ask for longer and more frequent episodes.

The barroom sequence early in Episode 1 is fun for mocking traditional masculine dominance.

LouAnne’s husband threatens to shoot Tyler for sleeping with his wife, but he soon loses control of the situation. The scene becomes a comical quarrel between Tyler and Daisy, who’s “sick and tired of bailing you out of bad situations in dingy bars because you can’t keep your hands off the ladies.” The husband becomes confused (and beside the point) as the women argue over who the bigger slut is; then they punch him out. You go, girls!

Another fun scene is in Episode 6, where Monique goes off on a guy in a laundromat who dares to take her clothes out of a dryer and argues that “your cycle was over.” One viewer praised this scene as “my filmic revenge” against her own “irritating laundry guy.”