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It's also hard to believe that Cherry, openly gay himself, would give us such a negative portrayal of someone that much of America will see as gay whether or not Cherry ultimately writes the character as gay. Yes, Desperate Housewives is a soap opera and most of the cast is pretty deeply flawed, a pre-requisite for soaps.

Bree is obsessive-compulsive at the very minimum. Felicity Huffman lies and manipulates to beat the band, but you know she loves Tom and the kids. Gaby is pretty skilled at getting what she wants as well, but isn't she really a gold-digger with the heart of gold? As for Susan, well, she isn't very manipulative. Just kind of klutzy.

Whatever direction Cherry chooses to take Housewives' gay storyline, there is no denying he is putting gay sexuality front and center. We have none of Melrose Place's 1994 pussy-footing around with a gay kiss that wasn't even shown. Six years passed before there was a kiss on Will and Grace in 2000, and even that was just between the asexual Will and goofball Jack staging a “protest” kiss. Not exactly steamy stuff here.

Network TV never really progressed much beyond that since then (cable, of course,
being a horse of a whole other color). A few more kisses followed, but the storylines were rather chaste and never really went anywhere. Not so on Desperate Housewives.

It's interesting to note the reaction, or rather, the lack of, by Middle America. A similar scene showing two men in bed together on ABC's primetime show thirtysomething 17 years ago made national news and got the network into hot water with advertisers. But
so far, there's been no real backlash to the Desperate Housewives scene.

Yes, there has been some outraged talk on the discussion boards at ABC.com. One
viewer predicted the show would lose 40% of its audience. Yeah, right. But
the usual suspects—Donald Wildmon at the AFA, Focus on the Family, and the rest of the wingnut crowd—have remained mostly silent about Desperate Housewives.

Perhaps the conservative Christians were suffering apoplexy-overload brought on by Brokeback Mountain and The Book of Daniel because thus far they have had little to say about the shenanigans on Wisteria Lane. Perhaps they recall that they already tried to protest Desperate Housewives before it even premiered on television. We all know how well that went over. Or maybe they learned how to read a Nielsen report and know that the Housewives are even more popular in the Red states than the Blue ones.

And maybe Andrew and his antics are part of that appeal. Despite the protestations of the religious, people like to be titillated. What is more titillating than watching Bree, the most proper women on TV, get her circuits fried looking at the nubile young flesh. Hypocrisy isn't confined only to Wisteria Lane after all.

Let's hope, however, that like all good soap character arcs, Desperate Housewives gives Andrew a chance to shine as a good guy for at least a little while. Otherwise, we'll end up feeling as unlucky as poor Susan.

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