ICK. That was my initial reaction to the first half of this Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode, called "The Closet". It was tawdry, sleazy, and tasteless (which ordinarily I like), but it was so cliched and obvious, I was groaning before the first "dun-dun" stopped ringing in my ears. The second half of the show more or less redeemed the episode, and there were some bright spots throughout, but there was a lot of...ICK to wade through in the beginning.

The episode starts with a harried gay personal assistant discovering the body of his dead boss, Jeremy, and soon our favorite detectives, Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay), and Chris Keller Elliot Stabler, (played by Christopher Meloni) are on the case. The corpse is discovered in bed wearing pajamas and with mouth agape, and it's soon discovered why. A bag containing a red leather ball gag, satin restraints, and chaps is discovered. After some interrogation, the assistant admits to finding the body with ball gag attached, and removing it and dressing the body (I hope he got time and a half). Btw, the "corpse" in the show is played, in a strange bit of casting, by one of our favorite reality show stars, Jack Mackenroth from Project Runway!

"Designers...this week's challenge is to DIE for!"

After the break, meet the closeted quarterback, and find out whodunnit!

Work. It. Out.

In a continued effort to bring you all that is important in the world of gay entertainment and ensure that you are being spoon-fed images of gorgeous, commoditized manflesh, we present the newly-minted AfterElton Briefs. Following the usual assortment of carefully-selected news items, interested readers can find a refreshing pic of a hot man in underwear after the jump. Yes, we're serious.

• People has the first look at Project Runway winner Christian Siriano's guest stint on Ugly Betty.

• Lapsed Scientologist Jason Beghe (I remember him fondly as the oft-nude star of the killer-simian thriller Monkey Shines) spilled the dirt on the group, including that they once blamed his having a gay friend for a near-fatal car accident.

• Singer Jason Mraz chatted with Out about his gay support network, "keeping his options open", and "a couple of random, random, quick gay club experiences."

• Gay Episode Alert! Next week's Law & Order: SVU features a gay football player who is forced out of the closet when his partner is murdered. The boys at OutSports have the scoopage, from the source. The actor playing the footie, Bailey Chase (Saving Grace, As the World Turns), is above.

• Ask Neil Patrick Harris Anything: Oh my. This could get real ugly, real fast...

And today's Briefs are brought to you by...

Last week, our sister site gave offered a list of the actors they'd watch in (almost) anything, which ties nicely into something I've been thinking about: mediocre-to-bad shows I wouldn't have watched if not for one of my gay icons.

Mary Tyler Moore and Madeline Kahn
made me watch New York News

It sounded promising before it debuted: a fast-paced newspaper drama with Mary Tyler Moore as a tough editor-in-chief and Madeline Kahn as the gossip columnist. (And apparently 80s studmuffin Gregory Harrison was also a part of the cast, according to that picture.) That bit of casting was so genius the rest of the show had to be amazing, right? Eh, unfortunately not. New York News' stories were entirely forgettable and while Mary brought what she could, the show never made her character as tough as she could have been. Kahn, meanwhile, occasionally got a good storyline as a woman with a very misplaced set of priorities, but most episodes focused on the younger characters who weren't my reason for tuning in.

Margaret Cho
made me watch All American Girl

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Back in my college days, Margaret Cho was the one comedian who we could never get enough of seeing and the idea of her having her own sitcom was too exciting. Unfortunately, the show failed to live up to her talent ... even then I caught every episode I could, I figured with a talent like Cho chances were good that once All American Girl was canceled, we wouldn't see her on TV again for a long time.

Lynda Carter
made me watch Law & Order: SVU

I know the long lasting franchise has its fanbase but its tendency to stick to formula can really drive me crazy. But I made an exception when the mothership and Special Victims' Unit held a cross-over that included a guest-appearance by Lynda Carter (whom we don't get to see on television often enough). Unfortunately, the first part turned out to be one of the ickiest hours of television I've seen in ages. In one of those way-too-complicated-to-take-seriously schemes, Carter played a con artist pretending to be estranged from her daughter (Estella Warren), herself a con artist who would date high profile men, slip them a date rape drug and... uhm, harvest material to sell in a high-end sperm bank. Bobby Flay had a cameo role as one of Warren's victims, but we never see the SVU detectives telling him he might have been victimized, as if that didn't matter. Carter was fabulous, with the kind of strong presence that made her perfect as Wonder Woman, but the rest of the story left me wanting to stay away from SVU.

Madeline Kahn
made me watch Mister President

Madeline Kahn with someone other than George C. Scott

Yes, Madeline Kahn gets two entries on this list; she was one woman I was willing to watch read the phone book and the then-fledging Fox network certainly got my attention when they added her to the cast of Mister President as George C. Scott's ----. While Kahn delivered on the laughs, Mister President was a quietly serious dramedy before her arrival and the addition of her broad comedy made the show a confused mess. Fox would have been better off canceling Mister President and giving Kahn her own vehicle. It's not like Oh, Madeline! was that bad.

Last night's Law & Order ripped its plot threads straight from the headlines ... that is, the headlines from the newspapers lining your cat box from several months or even years ago. When three Manhattan yuppie roommates are found shot dead in their apartment, the detectives are sent on a chase that manages to involve soldiers in Iraq, closeted gay politicians, crooked fundraisers, and a ruthless, manipulative lady senator with her eye on the Presidency.

What, did Fred Thompson ghost-write this episode?

After the three yupsters (well, two yupsters and one Iraq vet) are found riddled with bullets, detective Green (Jesse L. Martin) and Billy Chenowith (Jeremy Sisto) notice a subscription copy of a gay magazine on the coffee table and wonder if it might have been a gay love triangle. Naturally, because gay = multiple murder ... always, harder, and more often. 

The look into this and find out that only one of the roomies, environmental lawyer Josh, was actually gay. So maybe the soldier was a homophobe and shot him because he was gay ... and then shot the other roommate (the vet's childhood friend) because ... he had a gay roommate? They talk to the vet's ex-fiance and she says that doesn't seem likely.

They then notice that the gay guy has several more bullets in him than the straight guys. So they start investigating his personal life, and find out that he was having an affair with a married politician who had recently voted against gay marriage, which upset the gay guy greatly. Now, I'm not sure just how much righteous indignation a guy who is having an affair with a married man has the right to have over such behavior, but so be it. They find out that Senator Larry Craig the closeted politician stays at a flea-bag hotel across from Hellmann's department store (bring out the Hellmann's and bring out the best!) because it has the cruisiest bathrooms in the city. What, no one goes to Bloomingdale's anymore?

To Catch a Senator! They of course send Billy Chenowith, the newbie, in to catch the creep in a little bathroom stall Riverdance duet, and we actually see, in close-up, the whole toe-tapping thing first-hand. It's beyond silly ... and their shoes are atrocious. They arrest him (the real police, not the fashion ones) but find out that he had an alibi the night of the murders: some other chicken that he was shacking up with. My God, when I moved to this town I couldn't get a date to save my life, and this married closeted guy is getting his ticket punched in Junior Petites on a daily basis. Guess I should have done more shopping ...