Last week, Dennis posted about the gay content (or lack thereof) on Hulu, the new site where you can see tons of episodes from new and old TV series. I decided to give it a try, and by pure chance, unearthed an ancient artifact.

It's an episode from the short lived 1990 "re-imagining" of Adam-12. The original show was one of the most popular cop shows of the 70's...the remake, not so much. It lasted less than a season in syndication, and it's easy to see why. Bad writing, hammy acting, and cheap production values doomed it. The show revolved around two hunky young cops, played by Peter Parros and Ethan Wayne (a quick check of IMDB.com reveals that he is indeed the son of John Wayne).

The episode I watched was called Gay Bashing, and it had the boys in blue investigate a series of assaults on gay men (with side stories about stripped cars and...a nudist club). What surprised me was that the show went out of its way to be as sensitive as possible, not resorting to stereotypical gay characters (for the most part), and having the leads remark repeatedly how wrong and unfair the assaults were.

Unfortunately, that's about the only good thing I can say about it. Because it was a half hour show, the scenes were disjointed and abrupt, and the score was recycled, generic "80's cop show" (if you close your eyes, you'd swear it was an episode of Hunter). The best part was a particularly hilarious poolside arrest scene, which, with just a little tweaking, would make a classic porn scene (Copping a Plea, Part IV!).

Speaking of which, I found these pictures from the original featuring Kent McCord and Martin Milner. All I can say looking at that second pic is "Gentlemen, start your slashing!"

Martin Milner, Kent McCord

You can see entire episode (without commercials, it's just over twenty minutes) after the break. It's been almost twenty years since it was made, do you think it would be made differently today?

Hulu.com officially launched last week, and for those who may not be aware, it is the online distribution channel developed as a joint partnership between NBC and FOX. The site contains clips and full episodes from television shows both old and new. Like YouTube, users can freely embed content from Hulu.com anywhere else on the web (the clips that follow are examples). Unlike YouTube, the site won't host any user-generated content, and each media clip has short advertisements at the beginning and/or the end.

In addition to material from FOX and NBC, Hulu also offers content from their many media partners such as Bravo, the Sci Fi Channel, FX, Sony, the USA Network, E!, and others. (Unfortunately, ABC, which among the major networks has the best LGBT track record, does not participate in Hulu.)

Despite having a lot of titles to choose from and uniformly excellent video quality, I was a little disappointed by how Hulu's content was presented and its scattershot coverage.

For instance, you missed a recent episode of Bravo's Make Me a Supermodel and want to catch it. Too bad they only have one full episode from this series online and, predictably, it's not the one you want. Aargh!

The only available Supermodel episode (108):

Or, you might see they have Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the list of available titles. You click through and start scanning the Buffy offerings to discover that Hulu only offers the season 1 episodes. Boo!

Since searching by show title wound up being so frustrating, I checked out the other methods of browsing their catalog. For instance, you can search by genre. Under the genre listings you'll find: Comedy, Horror, Family & Kids, Lifestyle & Fashion, etc., but "Gay & Lesbian" isn't listed anywhere.

Striking out in my hunt for gay content there, I decided to run a word search. I was a little curious what would pop up if I searched for “gay.”

Predictably, much of the “gay” material that floats to the surface is from Bravo. Near the top we find a clip of Kathy Griffin hosting the Gay Porn Awards; or Patty Stanger of Millionaire Matchmaker giving her dimwitted opinion on the mechanics of gay dating:

I'm all excited because this morning in my mailbox I finally got my Hulu.com beta password. Hulu is a video site/service from the folks at Universal/NBC and was set up as a sort of alternative to YouTube - allowing NBC and its partners to broadcast their content library online. And in addition to clips, Hulu allows users to embed entire episodes wherever they like.

I thought this would be a great asset to our blog because we could go back and highlight some older television content of interest to the LGBT community. Admittedly, a lot of the available content seems pretty uninteresting. I mean, I'm not sure if old reruns of Simon & Simon or WKRP in Cincinnati are of much interest to the gay community (or any community, for that matter).

However, after perusing their online catalog I did find a few things that might be interesting to our readers. Just for example, two years ago the FX channel ran a show called 30 Days, which was a reality series hosted/produced by Morgan Spurlock. The premise? An individual is inserted into a lifestyle that is completely different from his or her upbringing, beliefs, religion or profession for 30 days.

I confess, I missed this series when it was playing on FX but the premise of the fourth episode, "Straight Man in a Gay World" had a 24-year-old conservative red state homophobe living in the heart of San Francisco's Castro district for a month. That certainly caught my eye (and had me wondering if the kid maybe moved to the Castro permanently after filming stopped).

Anyway the episode, all 45 minutes of it with limited commercial interuptions, appears after the break. I'm very curious what readers think both of the episode and of Hulu. So if you check it out, please share your thoughts in the comments.