WAIT A MINUTE! THE YEAR ISN'T OVER YET! ARE YOU CHEATING US?
Normally, I wouldn't be posting the BEST.GAY.YEAR.EVER! until next week, but for a reason that should be obvious if you think about it for a minute, I'll have something a little different next week instead of the usual BGYE! Any guesses?

Some of our more long term readers will probably note that this year's BGYE is a little different than years past. What I've done previously is to go through almost every single piece of our content and to link back to each item month by month in a twelve page column that made my eyeballs bleed by the time I was done. 

But it's been a long long year and when I contemplated doing that again, I started twitching and foaming at the mouth and was actually mistaken on the street as — shudder — Maggie Gallagher. After all of the wonderful comments you guys have posted on the site, I just know you wouldn't want me to go completely bonkers. So I've taken a slightly different approach this year, but one that I hope is actually more fun and informative for you to read.

So what kind of gay year was it? Like most, it had the good, the bad and the ugly. Here are some things that stood out for me.

Editor's note: It's seven o'clock, I just finished the column and it's ... twelve pages long. Someone shoot me now. Oops, I'm so so fried I miscounted. It's thirteen. Pull up a chair.

The good, the bad and the really really ugly on the inside

THE YEAR IN TV 

DON'T GET TOO ATTACHED!
Raise your hand if you're still pissed off about Ianto's death on Torchwood: Children of Earth. Yeah, me too. I understand that part of what makes for good drama is the knowledge that life is tenuous, nothing lasts forever and that characters — including gay ones — sometimes have to die. But the fact of the matter is that there are still so few fleshed out gay couples on television that losing half of one of the most beloved is a bitter pill to swallow. And it's especially bitter when it happens in such a stupid thoughtless way.

Jack: No hard feelings about your dying like this, eh, Ianto? True, I didn't exactly have, you know, any kind of plan when I told the 456 humanity would never surrender. I honestly don't feel I'm to blame because it seems like it isn't me doing these things; that there is some power outisde of me making these idiotic decisions. Ianto? Ianto? Oh, crap. We're in for it now RTD...

BTW, if you'd rather laugh than cry over the Torchwood fiasco, check out this dark, but brilliant riff.

And something tells me you Nuke fans might have a thing or two to say about the topic of bitter pills.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, MAYBE THE JAPANESE HAVE THE RIGHT IDEA
I'm given to understand that until the 19th century, many Japanese believed that a child wasn't fully human until they reached the age of five. I'm guessing part of the reason for the belief is that so many children used to die before reaching the age of five that dealing with their deaths was perhaps a little less traumatic by thinking of them this way. 

With that in mind, I'm instituting a new policy that a gay or bisexual TV character isn't "officially" real until the show starts its second season. Maybe that way I won't be so disappointed when some intriguing new gay character comes along only to ride off into the sunset faster than you can say Jay Leno.

This year that would have spared me the frustration of getting excited about Prince Jack on Kings, Tyler Briggs on Trauma, and Manny Rodriguez and Val Orlovsky on Virtuality (which technically never got past the pilot stage). I thought each of these characters was different, intriguing and really could've added something to the pop culture landscape if given a chance.

Virtuality, Kings

And if it weren't for TNT, Officer John Cooper would have been on that list as well. Even better, thinking this way means that Ariel from Miami Social was never a real "character"!

Next page! Reality gets it right — mostly!