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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
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| Apr 15 2008, 10:54 PM EDT | jainieg | 339 words added, 3 words deleted |
| Apr 15 2008, 10:26 PM EDT | jainieg | 63 words added, 41 words deleted |
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Shane with Jenny a.k.a. "Shenny"
Played by Katherine Moennig and Mia Kirshner
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LET'S GET TOGETHER
What is the state of their current relationship/friendship? Shane and Jenny are still roommates and best friends and their relationship seems to grow deeper and stronger with each passing episode. Even though the rest of the group resent Jenny for her mercilessly accurate, pitch-perfect fictional representations of them in her novella Lez Girls, Shane is the only one who did not take issue with the fictional representation of herself in Jenny's novella. While the rest of the group now only just barely tolerate Jenny's presence among them, Shane is just as supportive and attentive towards her best friend as she always was. Theirs is the strongest bond and partnership the show has ever seen.
Strengths as a couple: They accept each other for who they are, flaws and all, and love and respect each other unconditionally. They have bared the darkest parts of their natures to each other and accepted those without the slightest hesitation. The rest of the gang only see Shane's mistakes and Jenny's instability and pay more attention to gossip than their own eyes, where both of them are concerned, but when Shane and Jenny are together, that is when they truly shine. Although they have a wall and facade they put up when dealing with most other people, that defensiveness fades away when the two of them together. They're able to be their true selves with each other.
Struggles as a couple: They have yet to actually realize their feelings for each other, at this point. Jenny tends to be very emotional and vocal and blunt, while Shane is more reserved, neutral and sensitive. Plus, each of them have their own considerable demons to contend with, including the trauma that resulted from Jenny being assaulted by several boys from her schul as a very young child and Shane being abandoned by not just one but both of her parents at a very formative time in her life. They both have a very powerful self-destructive streak and very low self-esteem.
Reasons they should be together: They understand and accept each other, Jenny understands Shane on a level that not even her oldest friends do and knows things about her that Shane has evidently never felt comfortable telling anyone else. Shane helps to balance and stabilize Jenny and she helped her to find the confidence she was in such desperate need of after her affair with Marina and her marriage with Tim crumbled. Thanks to Shane, Jenny has become outspoken and strong and thanks to Jenny, Shane has finally felt compelled to be truly and sincerely involved in a friendship for the first time and open herself up to giving love and allowing it into her life in return.
Scenes fans might like to see:
- Shane and Jenny finally realizing that they are in love with each other and one of them finally getting up the courage to say so to the other!
- Shane and Jenny's first kiss
- Shane and Jenny going out on a first date together
- Shane and Jenny making love for the first time
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| THE BUILDUP Carefully follow Shane and Jenny's interactions through the seasons and record the evidence and quotes that point to a relationship.
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SEASON ONE
Even though their interactions in the first season are limited, there are moments where you can see Shane and Jenny naturally gravitate towards each other - as in "Looking Back" (episode 1x11), where the gang (minus Bette and Kit) pile into a van and go to the Dinah Shore weekend, held annually in Palm Springs, California. It's Jenny's first official outing, literally and figuratively speaking, as a lesbian and she thinks that she's ready for the experience, but once she gets a look at all the women milling around in the hotel lobby, she loses her nerve. Although Tina was the one to invite Jenny along because she felt sorry for the lonely writer, Shane is the one Jenny looks to for protection and guidance in this strange new world. The two of them share the fold-out sofa bed in the hotel room and when Jenny goes off on her own during the hotel-wide kick-off party, Shane breaks away from the group to follow her and seems disappointed when she sees that Jenny has found someone to talk to.
SEASON TWO
Shane moves into the room that Tim and Jenny once shared, while Jenny takes the other bedroom and the dining room is repurposed as Jenny's new writing room. The two of them get along with surprising ease and obvious chemistry and can be seen holding hands as they walk into the Planet together, sharing special 'signals' with each other when they're searching for a third roommate, walking arm-in-arm and sharing warm kisses and cuddly hugs. Shane is the one who does the honors and gives Jenny the short, pixie-ish haircut that ushers Jenny into her new life as a lesbian and does her best to help Jenny find her confidence and boost her self-esteem. Shane and Jenny get tangled up in a love triangle with Carmen and the two of them basically push her back and forth between each other over the course of the season, each unselfishly trying to make the other happy by giving up Carmen for the other's sake. Despite many attempts by Carmen to drive a wedge between the two of them so that she can have Shane to herself, Shane and Jenny's friendship only grows stronger with each passing episode and each hardship they help each other to overcome.
In season two, Jenny is still trying to hone her writing skills and her most colorful and nuanced writing sequence of the season, interestingly enough, features Shane, Jenny and Carmen as a single act composed of three different performers in a carnival side show. The story, entitled "The Ringmaster", is Jenny's attempt to make sense the triangle she and Shane are caught up in with Carmen and contains a great deal of powerful metaphorical foreshadowing about the future of Shane and Carmen's relationship. The story features Carmen as The Temptress, a Kali-like seductress dressed in Bollywood-style finery and sporting several extra arms. Shane is The Temptress Tamer, a bold hero with a turban, a soul-patch and a whip, whose job it is to keep The Temptress in line. Jenny casts herself in the role of The Silent Ballerina, a beautifully shy and delicate Harlequin tight-rope walker. After the Ringmaster (portrayed by Jenny's shrewd writing coach, Charlotte Birch) introduces them all, she steps aside and allows the act to begin. The Silent Ballerina watches from her place up above the audience on the high-wire platform as the Tamer approaches the Temptress with her whip. The Tamer gets too close and the Temptress' powers start to take effect and she takes hold of the Tamer, enchanting the Tamer so that she voluntarily disarms herself and lowers her whip - her only means of protection - leaving herself vulnerable. The many serpentine arms of the Temptress enfold the Tamer and the Temptress effectively captures her prey, who is so bewitched by her that she thinks nothing of her fate, leaning in to passionately kiss the Temptress. The Ballerina looks on in horror, swooning at the sight of the Tamer falling under the Temptress' spell and she teeters and falls from her high perch, the audience's shrieks of shock acting as the Ballerina's own screams of despair. This is the only writing sequence featured on the show where we've seen Jenny writing with Shane in mind, which makes it stand out all the more.
SEASON THREE
After Shane and Jenny's friend Dana loses her valiant fight with breast cancer, in a desperate moment, Shane proposes to Carmen and Carmen grudgingly accepts. At Shane's bachelor party the night before the wedding, Alice and Jenny stand and give a tag-team speech to congratulate Shane. Alice's bits are humorous (as would be expected), while Jenny's are considerably warmer and more heartfelt. As Jenny speaks, she makes a revealing slip, stumbling over the word 'friend' as she gazes lovingly at Shane. There's a 'present' from Carmen to her groom-to-be -- an embarrassing, inappropriate rap song about how to eat pussy, performed by a lesbian rap group -- and Jenny and Shane stand with their arms around each other, laughing and huddling close to each other through the whole performance. 
The next day, overwhelmed by her reservations, Shane ducks out on the wedding right before the ceremony, leaving Carmen crying crocodile tears as her hopes of having 'the unattainable Shane' all to herself once and for all evaporate right before her eyes. Jenny is left just as confused and heartbroken by Shane's disappearance as Carmen seems to be. Shane has abandoned her best friend without a word of explanation and she's left crushed, helpless and reeling, trying to comfort Shane's jilted fiancée even as she fights her own tears.
One of the first things that is most obvious this season are the opening credits and how they have changed since Carmen is no longer a part of the show. Originally, the end sequence with the cast gathered together in a sort of stylized imaginary art gallery included a shot of Shane, Jenny and Carmen all seated together in a chair right in the center of the shot -- with Jenny seated on the right arm of the chair, Carmen seated next to her in the chair and Shane seated on Carmen's left, also in the chair. However, in the season four version of the opening credits, only Shane and Jenny can be found in the chair at the center of the shot, now, with Jenny reclining in the chair with Shane, leaning against her as the two of them puff on cigarettes.
Jenny and Max return to the house they share with Shane and are confronted by all of Carmen's things, still right where she left them in Jenny's old writing studio. Jenny begins packing them up, saying that she'll leave it up to Shane to decide what to do with them. Although Jenny says that what Shane did was awful, she mentions the time that Alice took preparing the wedding and all the money Helena spent to pay for the whole do, but interestingly enough, never says a word about Shane actually leaving Carmen at the altar. Does Jenny fail to mention it because it's the most obvious of mistakes Shane has made in this whole fiasco and it merely goes without saying? Or is it because Jenny doesn't see Shane leaving Carmen as a bad thing? 
wheedle her out of her bad mood. At the basketball game, Shane and Jenny stand at the center of their gathered group of friends, Shane's arm draped over Jenny's shoulder while Jenny's arm is looped around her friend's waist, the two of them leaning on each other.
When the Lez Girls book is picked up by Tina's movie studio so that it can be made into a movie, some underhanded machinations take place behind the scenes and Jenny is unceremoniously fired from the project, leaving her hurt and confused and feeling like a pariah. But in a very sweet moment, Shane assures her that she's not and Jenny leans over and kisses Shane's cheek, telling her 'I love you' and Shane returns the favor, kissing Jenny's cheek in turn and telling her 'I love you, too'. Despite Shane's attempts to make Jenny feel better and pleas for her to join her for a drink, Jenny goes off on her own, her new puppy Sounder II yapping excitedly at her heels. Jenny disappears without a trace and it is only Shane who notices something is wrong when she sees Sounder II running around on his own on the beach. She manages to catch him and asks him where his mother is, but neither Sounder nor the rest of the gang know where Jenny has gone. Had it not been for Shane spotting Sounder, there's no telling how long it would have taken for anyone to even notice that Jenny had gone missing. 
SEASON FIVE
Although it's not mentioned explicitly in the dialogue, it can be assumed that Shane and Jenny have kept in contact with each other while Jenny was away, trying to see what she could do about getting fired off the Lez Girls movie. Jenny returns, triumphant, with a rich financier wrapped around her little finger, who is very eager to back the project, with Jenny attached again, this time as the director! 
Over the first four episodes of the season, it seems as though Shane and Jenny are closer than they've ever been before. There's a definite change in the air between these two and the once-subtle flirtations and intimacy they shared in seasons past have made way for openly affectionate exchanges when they're in the company of friends and crackling sexual chemistry when they're alone. Shane swears off sex in an effort to banish drama from her life and the benefits are very positive in surprising ways that don't reveal themselves right away. At least until one day, when Shane's hanging out in Jenny's room, trying to help her friend decide on what to wear to a club opening that night. Jenny stands in front of the closet in her bra, skirt and stockings as she sorts through her clothes and while Shane votes a big 'no' on one dress, a completely see-through number gets a very enthusiastic approval from her, along with suggestions that Jenny should wear the dress without a bra. PHOTO DOCUMENTATION
Screencaps and photos from the seasons.
 Jenny and Shane enjoying each other's company |  Shane comforts Jenny in a time of desperation. |
 Gazing into one another's eyes. |  A kiss to make Shane smile. |
 Jenny tenderly kisses Shane's fingers. |  Shane welcomes Jenny home warmly when Jenny returns from her six-month stay in Illinois. |
TALK ABOUT SHENNY HERE!
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