Women Seeking Women 196

For a series that's lasted as long as WSW, it's surprising to see it take a new tack with Volume 196. B. Skow has piloted a cast of mainly young, new talent, with a noticeable absence of MILFs or any big-breasted actresses.

The two marginal exceptions are Leah Gotti and Alex Coal, both stars and in Coal's case, she's older than she looks (or the characters she plays). But overall, the four vignettes collectively reminded me of the "alt-porn" movement of two decades ago that basically challenged conventional standards of beauty -as evidenced here by the anti-glamorous look of the entire cast. (Compare with any Dorcel video populated by an endless stream of beauties in the sexiest and most stylish of lingerie.) Coal has an odd scene where she returns home from a trip only to find a stranger (young Kitty Lynn) living in her living room. Alex explodes, but it turns out Kitty was invited to stay without permission by Alex's sister, with whom she is no longer regularly in contact. Once they've straightened all this out, Alex gets to feel sorry for Kitty and they make love.

Gotti is paired with Angel Windell, playing designers who reunite after some time, with Angel feeling guilty that they didn't keep in touch. They have passionate sex (loaded with smooching) and are once again thick as thieves.

A somewhat original situation is staged by Skow in a house rented for a shoot by a pair of young femme pornographers, played by Alex Kane and Natalie Brooks. Cleverly, we see the two of them switching from creators to actors in their roles: Brooks as a crime scene cop checking out Kane's corpse lying sprawled on a bed. Kane is very convincing as the dead woman, as Alex's checking her body reeks of fictional necrophilia, leading amusingly to Kane eventually breaking character when she proves to be ticklish. All's well, when the actual sex begins.

Least successful vignette was a bit baffling. I took it to be Skow overdoing the alt-porn "realism" by staging a very awkward, bordering on amateurish "meet cute" as neighbor Evie Christian visits punk-styled Lysagna DelRay who is mowing the lawn with an old mower while moving into a house (with unseen mom) that's been vacant for years. Their lengthy small talk "getting to know you" dialogue covers several subjects, like tastes in music and cooking, with some confrontational attitude thrown in. At one point Evie balks at Lysagna mentioning her cooking specialty "baked ziti", reacting as if that was some exotic term she's never heard of (the perils of having such a young cast). No problem, these two soon hit it off in the sack.