Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (May 30, 2008)

Men In Trees. After ABC’s cryptic, on-again, off-again scheduling patterns with this show, it’s finally gone for good. So we’ll never get to see if Mario Cantone gets to move beyond a barely-there/kidney-donating supporting player to a more major character. But the bright side is this frees Cantone up. I love the guy and would love to see him commanding a more central role on another TV show.

Desperate Housewives. Following on the heels of Brothers & Sisters’ gay wedding, the househusbands had their own, which was nothing more than an elaborate set up for comic hijinks involving the increasingly unwatchable harpie housewives — which is pretty much how the couple functioned on this show all season.

Kevin Rahm & Tuc Watkins as the insufferable "Lee & Bob"

Is it wrong that I think I’d rather not have a gay couple on this show at all if it’s going to be these two? At least we’ll get to see how Andrew winds up in five years. My guess: he’ll be the bestselling author of his own Running with Scissors-like memoir.

Reaper. Reaper introduced two of the most surprising gay characters on TV this year with its demon couple, played by Michael Ian Black, who I’ve loved ever since Viva Variety, and Ken Marino, who I loved on Veronica Mars. And while at season’s end, one had been admitted to heaven while the other was earthbound, I’m hoping those two crazy kids find a way to work things out next year and join Sam and his friends the way Buffy’s Anya teamed up (and occasionally sang along) with the Scoobies.

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE
With Poison and Swoon, Todd Haynes and Tom Kalin helped kick off the celebrated New Queer Cinema movement that emerged in the early 1990s. Haynes went on to direct such acclaimed films as Safe and Far from Heaven, both of which starred Julianne Moore. Now Moore appears in Kalin’s first new film since Swoon, Savage Grace, based on real-life events involving heiress Barbara Daly Baekland and her gay son who, from the sound of it, had the kind of relationship even Oedipus himself would consider dysfunctional. A love-it-or-hate-it shocker at Sundance, it opens in limited release this weekend.

Julianne Moore & Stephen Dillane in Savage Grace

Also in limited release, the low-budget independent comedy The Foot Fist Way, a mockumentary about a down-and-out tae kwon do instructor from the budding comedy trio of Danny McBride, Ben Best, and Jody Hill. It’s from Will Ferrell’s production company, and given how his own comedies manage to handle gay characters, there’s hope this might be a laugh-out loud dimwit comedy without the dimwitted gay panic that often comes with the genre.

Other than Sex in the City, the only major film release this weekend is horror flick The Strangers starring Liv Tyler, which doesn’t have anything specifically of gay interest, other than the fact that Scott Speedman co-stars and you might, like me, consider anything with a tangential connection to Felicity to be of automatic gay interest. Also, for once it looks like the psychos tormenting the nice suburban straight couple aren’t Leopold and Loeb knock-offs.

Shelter, the oft-dubbed “gay surfer film” and a flick you might have heard mentioned around here, oh, once or twice, is just out on DVD this week. And next week brings the DVD release of the third season of Weeds, which memorably kicked off with a character literally coming out of the closet.

Maulik Pancholy as "Sanjay" on Weeds

Also out, the third season of Dante’s Cove, so you can rewatch it and catch all the nuances of character and plotting you might have missed the first time around.