Todd Grinnell

Regular readers might recollect that several week's ago in my BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER! I mentioned that Desperate Housewives had cast Todd Grinnell in the part of a gay plastic surgeon. Well, on last night's episode, a twist at the end revealed just how Todd's character was going to fit into the show. Find out how and watch the clip after the jump! Warning: It's a spoiler!

                      
Tuc Watkins and Kevin Rahm search for a decent storyline

This past Sunday’s season premiere of Desperate Housewives saw our fab ladies leap five years into the future with decidedly different results.

And while the show was its usual witty self, AfterElton.com is about the gays, and Wisteria Lane's fellas were nearly nonexistent this episode. Aside from a nearly silent Andrew and an admittedly perfectly-timed bit from the gay couple Bob and Lee (in a scene featuring Gale Harold in boxer-briefs), our resident gays were kept largely in the background during the heavily-hyped opener.

A year ago, openly gay writer/creator Mark Cherry generated a great deal of excitement when he announced that some gays would be moving to Wisteria Lane, leaving the show’s gay fan base abuzz thinking of what shenanigans our new gays would get themselves into. Would we be seeing a bitchy gay equivalent of Heather Locklear to throw our Wives into a frenzy? How about a hot bisexual stud to give the ladies (and some of their husbands) a run for their money?

Alas, the point is virtually moot since the gays we got seem to amount to little more than some diversity window dressing for the show.

Shawn Pyfrom and Ryan Carnes kept gay fans' attention a few seasons back

Tuc Watkins and Kevin Rahm’s Bob and Lee are a perfectly stable, perfectly attractive, and ... well, perfectly boring onscreen couple, and too often they’re shifted to the background to act as foils for some of the larger characters on the show.

Even Shawn Pyfrom’s Andrew, once the promiscuous gay badboy of the show (who once even slept with his mother’s then-boyfriend!) has been thoroughly declawed into a boring, asexual shadow of his old self. Long gone are the days of Andrew’s delicious villainy and his even more delicious man-capades with the likes of Ryan Carnes, having been sadly replaced by robo-Andrew in a suit, acting as Bree’s manager with nary a boyfriend or potential love interest in sight.

Housewives also all too often also ignores the complexities of gay relationships in the rush to portray the stoic Bob as “husband” and the slightly more fabulous Lee as “wife“, particularly in a cringe-worthy 2007 subplot in which the couple fight and are sent to opposing camps (Lee with the wives and Bob with the husbands) for advice.

While a great deal of network execs are patting themselves on the back due to the new GLAAD media report about gay characters on television, it seems somewhat counterproductive that while there are more gay characters on television than at any other time in history, they are too often asexual background caricatures, which is unfortunately what our two gays on Wisteria Lane have turned out to be.

"We're here! We're queer! We're boring!"
 

So what’s the deal here? Obviously the network that has embraced gay marriages and transgender extramarital affairs in its other soapy dramas doesn’t suffer from prudishness, so I’m going to chalk this one up to that common dramatic problem of too many characters, too little time. The show is called Desperate Housewives, so the title characters will always be the main focus, but is it too much to ask for the gay characters to at least be allowed to mix it up as well as the regulars?

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that gay audiences are sick of sacrificing good writing, direction, and acting in order to stomach the few shows that exist that put us in the thick of things (I’ll never tell, but feel free to guess). It’s unfortunate that a show as gleefully camp as Desperate Housewives can’t or won’t allow its gay characters to engage in the same over the top antics as its leads.

Some say the revolution has begun with the increasing ubiquity of gay characters on television, but I say it will be complete when our gays are able to backstab and bed-hop with the best of them. I’m waiting for that day to dawn on Wisteria Lane, but judging by the Season 5 premiere, it’ll be a long time coming.

After all the sturm and drang of the tornado that hit on the December 2^nd episode, Wisteria Lane has been awfully quiet. The writer’s strike will probably cut short the current season to ten episodes, which is too bad because Marc Cherry said in a pre-strike interview that this season viewers would be seeing much more of gay teen Andrew Van De Kamp (Shawn Pyfrom). Just our luck, right?

The show has only one more episode in the can, which will air January 6^th. Fortunately, it will give our Andrew some screen time.

*** Spoilers ahead…. ***

After the tornado demolished their home, Bree and family are staying with Susan. Bree finds out about a much-in-demand gay contractor named Walter Bierbitch and, desperate to get her house quickly rebuilt, she tries to play matchmaker between her son and Bierbitch.

I don’t know about this storyline – from the press stills released by ABC, the contractor (played by character actor J.C. Mackenzie) looks to be in his mid-forties. That seems way too old for Andrew.

If Bree really needs to pimp out family members to get her house rebuilt, she should be fronting someone more age-appropriate – like her husband Orson (Kyle MacLachlan).

***SPOILERS***

It doesn't exactly count as gay character since it appears to be a one episode gig (or a very occasional appearance) but gay fans of Desperate Housewives were treated to a nice performance by Richard Chamberlain on last night's episode.

Chamberlain played Lynette's stepfather Glen Wingfield, a man Lynnette believed to have divorced her mother Stella (Polly Bergen) because she was a drunk who cheated on her. But it turned out that the truth was more complicated than that. In fact, Glen had left because he was gay. Turns out he had a longterm relationship that lasted for more than twenty years until his partner died the previous year.

The show handled the revelation quite nicely with Lynnette being surprised, but not angry. I especially loved how Stella believed she was so unpleasant as to have turned Glen gay, a notion that Lynnette quickly dismisses. And in another nice touch, Glen invites Stella -- who needs a place to live -- to move into his extra bedroom. Yet again we see families come in all different shapes and sizes despite what the Pat Robertsons of the world would have us believe.

Fans of Desperate Housewives' Andrew (Shawn Pyfrom) also had a little reason to cheer last night.

Orson and Bree have been very wrapped up in their new baby and Bree has been especially absorbed in the idea that she not make the same mistakes again that she made with Andrew and Danielle. Several times during the episode Andrew had to listen to Bree make disparaging comments about him and he finally decided to move out.

But rather than do it in a pique of anger, in a touching scene in his new, crappy apartment, he actually tells Bree he appreciates the "tough love" she used to get him on a better path (he also chastises her for not noticing the new him). Fortunately, this does not include his being straight and as I reported earlier, Andrew is going to get another same-sex love interest down the road. While I personally enjoyed "bad" Andrew I have missed seeing him do much of anything good or bad. I hope DH creator Marc Cherry keeps the new Andrew as having him go bad yet again will make him seem schizo.

While I appreciate Chamberlain's appearance and Andrew's turnaround, I really hope the show does something more with Andrew and the gay househusbands Bob and Lee, otherwise this season will be a bit of a disappointment gay-wise.