Best. Gay. Week. Ever! Sara Gilbert is NOT a Gay Poster Child, Laura Linney is Amazing and More!

If you liked my stream of consciousness style of the past two columns, then you'll love this week's as I'm in Los Angeles for the Television Critics Association (TCA) Summer Tour and there is all sorts of stuff going on. Oh, and we also relaunched the site yesterday!

Hopefully, you're enjoying the new look and if not, you'll get used to it. We promise! We are interested in your feedback and have a forum thread where you can report bugs, share your thoughts and anything else that comes to mind. We will be tweaking the site over the next couple of weeks and appreciate your patience. One complaint we are currently working to fix is making it so that when you click on a comment on the front page, you are taken directly to the comment and not the first page of the article.

It's still early in the TCA, just day two, so I have yet to gain any real weight (look out chocolate fountain!). So far I've asked CBS prez Nina Tassler about her network's second consecutive F from GLAAD ("We're trying! It's haaaaard!"),  found out about a new gay character on The Whole Truth (ABC), as well as on Episodes (Showtime) and The Good Wife (CBS) and talked with the actors on 90210 who might be playing the character coming out of the closet this season.  

Anthony Ruivivar as Alejo Salazar on The Whole Truth

CBS got a lot of publicity out of their announcement about the gay characters they are adding to their lineup, much of it giving the network much more credit than I think they deserve. At first that annoyed me, but perhaps the positive press will encourage the network to take more than baby steps next season. Oh, and I have to say it's always weird when a question you asked someone at the TCA gets picked up all over the place.

Speaking of folks who picked up on the news, Maggie Gallagher's evil twin Michelle Malkin featured a post on her website mocking the news and claiming that CBS' token efforts prove who really controls Hollywood. Yeah, that's us 'mos! The post also said to look for Sh*t My Mullah Said because having shows featuring minorities is so mockable. 

I briefly chatted with Gossip Girl writer/executive producer Josh Schwartz about what might be in store for Eric on the hit CW drama. To nutshell it for you: more of the same. Basically, his storyline will stay enmeshed with Jenny's. As for his Eric's romantic relationship, Schwartz says it won't be "anything revelatory, but will continued to be handled in a honest way."

As for the rest of the CBS/CW lineup, I asked TPTB about gay characters on Blue Bloods (Tom Selleck), The Defenders (Jerry O'Connell), Hawaii 5-0 (Scott Caan, Alex O'Loughlin), and Mike & Molly, and got the stock answer "Well, we're certainly open to that..."

If I had a quarter for every time...

New CW show Hellcats doesn't yet have any gay male cheerleaders amongst its cast, but show creator Kevin Murphy did let it drop that Gale Harold was going to have a recurring role playing a lawyer named Julian Parish. Let the squeeing begin.

Even though ABC hasn't presented yet, they've been making the news anyway since ABC president Steven McPherson abruptly resigned this week. Given how gay-friendly ABC has been under McPherson — Ugly Betty, Modern Family, Brothers & Sisters — a change in leadership could potentially be alarming. Fortunately, the new ABC prez is likely to be Paul Lee, the man who managed to make ABC Family not only successful but pretty gay friendly.

As for McPherson, not everything he did was completely gay-friendly. Aaron Barnhart of TVBarn sums up McPherson's tenure but also recounts how back in 2006 McPherson killed off Welcome to the Neighborhood — a reality show which featured a gay couple — for some pretty muddled reasons.

Showtime gave us the first look at their remake of Shameless from the UK and not only did it look pretty good, it also made no bones abut the fact that Ian is gay. Trust me, CBS still won't have characters like this ten years from now!