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There have been a few gay characters on network dramas this season who weren't villains. The mid-season ABC drama Eyes introduced complex gay character Chris Didion (Rick Worthy) earlier this year--but the show was pulled off the air after only five episodes, and didn't get renewed for next season. NYPD Blue had two gay cops--but that series ended in March and will not be returning next season. Every season, the franchise crime dramas like Law and Order and CSI feature a parade of minor gay and transgendered characters who are victims of brutal crimes--when they're not the perpetrators--but they never include any gay series regulars. There have been minor gay characters sprinkled across the network dramas, like the gay nanny on Kevin Hill, but we never get to know much about them.

There were two drama pilots with known gay characters in the works for next season, but neither made the cut. The one with the most promising known gay character--ABC's Book of Daniel, which featured a gay Republican struggling with the death of his brother and his own recent breakup--was not picked up by NBC when it announced its lineup earlier this week, and the other, CBS' Love Monkey, that didn't make the fall CBS lineup when it was announced today. Either show may yet get a mid-season pick-up, but that will happen months from now, if at all.

Gay villains are nothing new--they have been a staple of film for years, and have graced many a TV show in recent years. But in the last few years or so, there seems to have been a moratorium of sorts on such characters, in part because, as social tolerance towards homosexuality has improved, there has been increased pressure on TV networks not to perpetuate harmful gay stereotypes. But also because it's been done so many times it's not just not very original.

But the proliferation of gay characters on sitcoms and reality shows, as well as the spate of recent high-profile outings in real life of men like New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy and Spokane, WA mayor James West, appears to have led to a resurrection of the gay villain as a popular dramatic tool for TV writers (OLTF's Higley even cited McGreevy as inspiration for the current closeted gay killer storyline to TV Guide).

The increased visibility in recent years of gay men on reality shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Survivor, and sitcoms like Will and Grace and Half and Half, has created the false perception that gay men now have good representation on TV, when in fact, the number of gay characters on TV remains small and dwindling. Gay men on sitcoms and reality TV are also often reduced to caricatures, or only remain on as long as they stay in the competition, and are not equivalent to fully-developed, three-dimensional gay characters on a drama series, of whom there have never been very many.

The increased media attention given to public outings of closeted gay men in real life only makes this proliferation of gay villains on TV dramas worse: whether you turn on network TV to watch the news or your favorite drama, the depictions of gay men you see are overwhelmingly negative.

The argument made by many viewers of shows like 24, OLTL, and Desperate Housewives, are that gay men are not being singled out, because there are plenty of other bad guys on 24, OLTL, and Desperate Housewives, all of whom are heterosexual. This is true, but the moment you step back and look at these characters in the context of the broader network TV landscape, the double-standard immediately becomes apparent. While it is true that 24, Desperate Housewives and One Life to Live have a lot of villains and the vast majority of them are straight, these shows, and almost every other show on TV, feature hundreds of prominent, well-developed heterosexual characters who are not villains.

This is not the case for gay characters. The number of well-developed, well-integrated gay characters on network TV dramas who aren't killers, psychopaths, or weak, clueless terrorist-aiders currently amounts to...well, zero, besides Mark on One Life to Live. And he's now embroiled in closeted-killer Daniel's storyline.

Which means when it comes to network TV dramas, gay villains are pretty much the only game in town, now and in the near future, unless we get another "Is it because I'm a lesbian?" moment on one of the existing shows, and a long-running character unexpectedly comes out, or a character on one of the new dramas next fall is revealed to be gay.

Is it any wonder so many gay men flock to premium-channel shows like Six Feet Under and Queer as Folk, despite their flaws? With both of those shows ending their runs this summer, the future for gay men on dramas is looking bleak indeed.

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