Hey, guys! Grab your little dog Precious, pop some popcorn, and settle in: It's creepy gay killer week on NBC!

If you tuned into Saturday Night Live this past week, you're obviously not just a serial killer, but a masochist, to boot. Nothing else explains why anyone would suffer through 90 minutes of watching Christopher Walken read cue cards to a cast that seems openly terrified of him. Yes, I do kind of love the guy, but this was painful.

Aside from the general unevenness of the episode overall, one skit in particular stood out as legitimately creepy: the office party skit. In the scene, Jason Sudeikis is leaving his job and his office throws a party for him. One co-worker, Eric (Walken), seems to be a little too fond of the departing colleague despite the fact that they've never officially met, and in the end (after giving him a mix CD and a painted portrait) goes out to choke the man to death in the parking lot ... out of "love".

Christopher Walken in a different, though equally painful, skit from SNL

Best-case reading: That creepy guy in your office is probably secretly in love with you, bro. Worst-case reading: Gay guys aren't capable of understanding love if it doesn't involve throttling a straight man to death after giving him gifts. Um, can we have Target Lady back, or something?

Maybe on its own it wasn't that bad. Uninspired? Sure. Predictable? Yeah. But come on, we're talking about SNL here, the same show that later aired the THIRD agonizing installment of "Laser Cats". It's not like we're expecting miracles.

But last night's Medium offered the second gay predator of the week for the network, this time a publisher who used one of his author's books on seducing hot young men to lure unsuspecting hunks to their increasingly violent deaths.

Never mind that the plot twist (we're supposed to think it's the author herself, guest star Rosanna Arquette) makes absolutely no sense whatseover given the setup. What, were all of these victims gay? Otherwise, how were they seduced by a man? And if they were gay, why were the cops holding a female possible perp under suspicion in the first place? But even more ridiculous is the fact that the gay character shows up literally in the last 5 minutes of the episode to hit on a straight detective, unwittingly reveal his leering, gay-flavored guilt (in the longest elevator ride in history), and be put away.

Rosanna Arquette totally didn't kill that gay guy

To their credit, there's no big deal made out of the fact that the killer is gay within the world of the show, meaning that the detective doesn't kick into gay panic mode when he gets hit on by the leering gay executive. But come on ... why did there need to be a gay twist in the first place? We learn the identity of the killer literally seconds after the detective finishes saying,  "well, all the women at the publishing company have alibis, so...", so it's not like there's any real suspense here. The fact that the killer was gay was utterly inorganic to the story and the arc of the episode, and seemed to be added for completely exploitative purposes.

You might read the above and think I'm nuts for getting upset about a skit in a show nobody watches anymore and a three-minute scene at the tail-end of a wildly ridiculous supernatural cop show. But when you compare it to the number of positive gay representations on NBC in the past week (none), these two killer queers are worth noting. If we're to believe NBC chief Ben Silverman's claims that gay visibility will be improving under his watch, we need to see some proof.

If you want to watch the Medium episode (to see the former Susan-Seeker do some pretty hot vamping, more than anything), you can check it out in its entirety here. Interestingly, the office party skit is not available on NBC's video streaming site, Hulu, although several other skits from this week's episode are. Maybe they liked it as much as we did.

(Big thanks to reader Ed for posting about the Medium ep!) 

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:

Last night's 30 Rock had another gay subplot building on the antics of Will Arnett's gay executive Devon Banks. In the episode, actually titled "Cougars", a cute young coffee delivery guy (there are coffee delivery guys? Can I have one, please?) named Jamie shows up at the Girly Show offices and catches the attention of both Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) ...

and Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander).

After Jamie leaves once he's finished delivering the coffee, Franks says:

"That guy is adorable. Maybe I am gay — for that little peach. I wanna kiss him on the mouth. I wanna hold him. I want Jamie."

The other day we reported on how NBC had hired Isaiah Washington for its new Bionic Woman show and how genuinely pleased they seemed with themselves (and oddly so) for hiring the freshly-scandaled actor.

Well, the fabulous Maureen Ryan over at The Chicago Tribune just updated us with some further discussions that took place with the show's creative team at NBC's TCA panels, and they're just about as encouraging as co-chair Ben Silverman's comments from earlier in the week.

Question: Do you think that the casting of Isaiah at this time shows any disrespect to the gay community?

Jason Smilovic: Absolutely not. We embrace the gay community. We are hoping that they are going to watch the show, and we are in no way making any judgments or statements or assignations about what was said or what was done. This is about making a television series. It's about making some great entertainment, and we found a great actor to do that.

Ryan caught up with series writer David Eick at the conference when he was being asked a few more questions about the "faggot" situation:

David Eick: You guys are going to hate me but I don't really know what he said. I'm sorry whenever they're picking a jury for a high-profile murder case, I never know how they get 12 people who didn't hear about who did it. But like that guy who didn't hear about O.J. I knew there was some controversy, honestly I was so busy, I was trying to finish the Bionic Woman pilot, I had another pilot at Fox this year, and Battlestar was going, I didn't know, I don't know what he did.

Please excuse the pun, but the three month trial over $65 million for the licensing of Will & Grace has left many puzzled. The sitcom creators, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan sued NBC Studios for failing to properly negotiate licensing fees with the NBC network as well as representing less revenue than actually accrued.

The Hollywood Reporter reports that members of the jury confirmed that they had granted Mutchnick and Kohan $48.5 million before hearing of the settlement (that pays for a mighty fine brunch!). The settlement was announced on Friday moments before the judge was to decide on a mistrial. NBC had discovered that the jury foreman Dean Hartwell had a website that spoke negatively of large corporations including NBC. He was kicked off the jury because you know, most people don’t have a distaste for large corporations and they thought this was unfair.

Hartwell's online article in question was simply stating how the media concentrates on general interest pieces and misses out on more important issues. The precise quote which states NBC is at follows:

"How can the corporate media [...]miss all of these stories and annoy us with phony ones? Consider the sources: (The Walt Disney Company owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS, General Electric owns NBC and News Corporation owns Fox). The executives who make the decisions on what to air receive huge tax cuts..."