Desperate Housewives to Add a Gay Couple

Then Andrew upped the ante by seducing Bree's bisexual sex-addict boyfriend (Lee Tergesen). Bree packed Andrew's bags and dumped him off in the middle of nowhere. He appeared at the start of the last season homeless and apparently turning tricks when a guilt-ridden Bree brings him back home.

Since then, the writers seemed to have given Andrew a lobotomy and, possibly, castrated him. His role was reduced to the occasional one-liner over the dinner table or at Tom and Lynette's pizza joint where he works.

Cherry had indicated to me at last spring's Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Awards that Andrew might have a new love interest in Season 4 but would not elaborate and said the character was busy rebuilding bridges with his dysfunctional family.

"This is a guy who was kicked out of the house by his mother last season and had some rough experiences and now he's becoming a functioning member of the family," Cherry said then. "What I really worked on...was seeing him as a member of the family and it wasn't his gayness that came first, it was him as a son trying to re-establish his relationship with Bree. So this has been a year more about trying to get Bree and Andrew together as a family...and I'm sure something really awful is going to happen next year."

Was Andrew going to have a boyfriend? "I think that he'll have some interesting gay adventures," Cherry told AfterElton.com in April. "Right now we're just winding down Season 3, but in June the writing staff gets together and we'll talk about that. But you know, he's had such a tame year, it's time to kind of juice him up again."

On Thursday, Cherry again promised things will be different this season for the reformed troublemaker who may not be so reformed. "We're not doing much with him at the beginning of the year but in the third episode, we have a fun thing that happens," Cherry explained. Andrew will somehow become involved in Lynette's (Felicity Huffman) cancer storyline and revert to his former evil ways.

Cherry said Andrew's sexuality will not be prominently dealt with in early episodes, especially with the new gay neighbors shaking things up.

There has been some noise about Andrew going the bisexual route but Pyfrom professed to not knowing a thing.

"That's the crazy thing about this," he said. "You kind of go into blindly not knowing what you are going to be doing. It would be nice if I could get a nice, hot 19-year-old girl on there that I could fool around with, but you know what? I know they'll choose something great whether he goes bi or not, they'll make it interesting. Whatever they throw at me, I'm willing to take."

Cherry addressed the bisexual issue for AfterElton.com in April: "That's a debate I'm going to have with the writers. A lot of writers feel that sometimes young boys say 'bisexual' because that's 'a stop on the way to gay town.' But you know, I actually think it might be fascinating if Andrew experiments, as long as we have some interesting complications from that. I know that so many gay teenagers do 'try it' just to please their parents. So we'll see. Something shocking would happen as a result."

Pyfrom said at the ABC party that he wants to make clear that he has no problem continuing to play Andrew as a gay man.

"I've been quoted and misquoted many times on this, but here's the truth: being straight, it's uncomfortable having to kiss a guy but at the very same time I know it's a part of my job," he said. "I've done scenes where I've had to spit in Marcia's face and that was uncomfortable as well - you have to do things sometimes that are a stretch for you as an individual which is normally what you do in acting. I do it for the integrity of the character."

No matter what Desperate Housewives has in store for Andrew - good or bad - the arrival of a gay couple on Wisteria Lane means gay fans of the show will have a new reason to tune in this fall.