It's March and the current TV season is more than halfway over. So far, there's been: a network sitcom about a gay man (Crumbs); a sex scene between a bi guy and a soon-to-be FTM transsexual (on The L Word); and a romantic gay kiss (on Will & Grace).

Queer visibility on TV these days is good—and so is TiVo.

But let's look a bit deeper.

Crumbs was one of several network midseason shows which featured a gay character. (The rest— Love Monkey, Emily's Reasons Why Not and The Book of Daniel—are reviewed a little further down.) On the show, the gay guy (Mitch, played by Fred Savage) was trying to keep an eye on his mother (played by Jane Curtin) after her recent released from a psychiatric facility. (Let's just say she didn't take the divorce too well.) Mitch's brother (Eddie McClintock) and dad (William Devane) were a wee bit nutso as well, leaving Mitch as the family's most normal member.

Considering how often queers are stereotyped as unbalanced in the real world, it was nice to see Mitch portrayed as almost boringly sane. Crumbs also handled Mitch's sexuality well: The show didn't hide his gayness, yet it didn't beat viewers over the head with it either. Had Crumbs not been put on “hiatus,” Mitch could have been a fine ambassador to the close-minded.

The decision to take the show off the air came at the worst possible time: right before the sixth episode, in which Mitch was going to come out to his mother.

So, why was Crumbs yanked? According to PlanetOut, the show had been doing well with viewers, but wasn't a wild success ratings wise. Nonetheless, the numbers didn't warrant cancellation. But ABC also wanted to use Crumbs' time slot to air repeats of Grey's Anatomy in order to capitalize on that show's huge success. ABC promised Crumbs would return, but unfortunately it hasn't been seen since.

According to The Globe and Mail, we shouldn't be holding our breath waiting for it to return either: “ABC originally announced the midseason sitcom starring Fred Savage (The Wonder Years) would only take a two-week break, but later admitted the show was on ‘extended hiatus.' ” Its return seems doubtful.

The Book of Daniel's Peter (Christian Campbell) was very similar to Mitch in the sense that he was the only normal member of a highly dysfunctional family. (For example, his father—played by Aidan Quinn—took Vicodin.) And like Mitch, Peter was not stereotypically gay.

But that's where the similarities ended—for Peter was not in the closet, as was Mitch.

This was good and bad. On the one hand, Peter knew his parents loved him for who he was, but on the other hand, Peter had to deal with his insensitive siblings. Adam (Ivan Shaw), Peter's adopted brother, constantly ragged on Peter for being gay, while Peter's sister, Grace (Alison Pill), used Peter and his ex-boyfriend as fodder for her comic art.

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