My favorite television commercial these days is the one on HGTV featuring a series of vignettes of people watching a real estate show, probably House Hunters.

One viewer wonders which house a couple will choose. Another comments on a kitchen, or the landscaping.

And in the last, a guy looks at the woman he's watching with and plaintively says, "I thought he was his brother."

The woman looks at him pityingly. "They're not brothers."

And that is why I love my big gay home decorating network.

Three years ago, HGTV introduced America to Design Star, a reality competition show for interior designers that went on to become its highest-rated show ever. The out gay winner and breakout star of that first season was David Bromstad, who has gone on to host HGTV's successful Color Splash and inspire legions of fans to fix up the family room and hit the gym and/or tattoo parlor because hello: David Bromstad has some nice arms, yo.

The second season of Design Star featured two out gay men as contestants, Josh Johnson and Scott Corridan, although they both were eliminated fairly early in the competition.

AfterElton.com just got word that Season Three will also feature two out gay male contestants, marking yet again a bold new incursion of gay men into the previously straight-dominated world of interior design.

First is 23-year-old Michael Stribling of College Station, Texas. He's the competition's youngest finalist, and HGTV tells us that he "attributes his success as a designer to his fresh and youthful approach to style."

Michael's audition video is on the Design Star website. He is both fabulous and awesome, and we know it because he says so.

The second out gay contestant is Matt Locke, 38, from Los Angeles. He's the son of an architect dad and artist mom who "provided him with a wildly creative home where he was allowed a great deal of artistic freedom. By age 6, Matt had planned his first bedroom and by age 27, he had built his first house. This Princeton grad also studied fine art and industrial design at the university level and for the past five years has operated his own custom furniture, lighting and interiors company. Matt describes his design style as warm and modern and looks to the great architecture of the world for inspiration."

You can check out Matt's audition video over here. He clearly knows his way around power tools, and don't tell anyone, but Brian has a little crush on him already. (Ed.: I'm quite sure I have no idea what she's talking about, and my testimony will reflect this.) And given that his favorite HGTV show is Divine Design and his favorite film is 9 to 5, I might have a little lesbian version of a crush on him myself.

We'll be cheering for Dale Levitski to win in tonight's Top Chef finale and the anticipation got us thinking about other gay reality TV winners. Here's a quick list of six winners that come to mind, hopefully Dale will belong on this list by the time Steven Frank is done liveblogging the finale:

Richard Hatch
Winner of: Survivor (season 1)

Richard Hatch looms large for having won the on the first season of Survivor, the show that started the reality TV craze. Not only did Survivor set America's appetite for reality TV, Hatch was a role model that many reality TV wannabes tried to emulate in terms of his style of gameplay and personality, and few reality TV villains have managed to escape his shadow. Hatch's use of alliances became such a common reality TV strategy that it's become a punchline. In January 2006, Hatch was found guilty of tax evasion over his winnings on Survivor.

Reichen Lehmkuhl and Chip Arndt
Winner of: The Amazing Race (season 4)

While The Amazing Race has never shied away from including same-sex couples among its competitors, the fourth season gave us Reichen and Chip, the first gay couple to be identified as married on the show. After the show, the two had an amicable break-up as Reichen pursued his acting dreams (you can see him on current season of Dante's Cove) and could be frequently seen as Lance Bass' date after Bass came out. Chip, meanwhile, has focused on LGBT causes. He is currently trying to raise $100,000 for HIV/AIDS and to put together a traveling memorial to victims of anti-gay hate crimes.

Jay McCarroll
Winner of: Project Runway (season 1)

The debut of Project Runway brought a new kind of reality show to television. For once, talent was the key factor to the competition and the show's sense of drama was equally driven by personality dynamics as well as the tension of seeing young designers challenge themselves. With his quick wit and flair for the dramatic, Jay was a great reality TV personality. However, Jay also showed a stunning sense of design. While he didn't win, the "Chrysler Building" dress he offered in the Banana Republic challenge still gets Runway fans buzzing and his Fashion Week show made it hard to deny his victory. McCarroll refused the winnings of Project Runway, however, unhappy with the baggage attached to it and has struggled to find his path in fashion since the victory, wanting to be able to succeed on his own terms.

It was really hard for me when HGTV decided to do a reality competition show last year. I kind of hate reality TV and competitions make me horribly anxious, and yet, if you don’t count my Xena: Warrior Princess DVDs, HGTV is pretty much the only reason I have a television. In fact, the first blog post I did here was all about my big gay home decorating network.

I got over my internal conflict and watched the first season of Design Star. And I loved it, because it was backstage drama-lite and design-heavy, and of course, it brought the world David Bromstad as the first out gay design star. And when I heard there were actually two out gay contestants on this season’s show, I was bouncing up and down going “Me! Me! Pick me!” when AfterElton.com was looking for someone to interview them. When I turned in the interview, I said to Michael in a really offhand way that if he’d like someone to recap the show I might possibly be willing to consider it.

The original Design Star was set in New York, a place actually famous for design, art, and culture. The current season is set in Las Vegas, which I find somewhat terrifying as a design concept, but so far hasn’t impinged noticeably on the content of the show. (Next week it probably will, as they’re designing wedding chapels.)

The first season was also less about the drama and more about the design, a ratio that’s been a bit altered this season, and not for the better. I may be in the minority, but I don’t actually like seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I could live the rest of my life happily without ever again seeing a designer shed tears or indicate in a quavering voice that they have failed to do their best.

Some people, when dumped by their lover, fired from their job, or stricken with some hideously disfiguring skin condition, watch reruns of old sitcoms. Others tune into the “All Law and Order, all the time” network. Still others watch classic films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

But me? My “comfort TV” has, for many years now, been that warm and welcoming respite from reality known as the Home and Garden Network (HGTV).

I’m not sure why AfterElton.com hasn’t covered the gay gay gay gay gay HGTV universe in depth, nor why it took a dyke – albeit an extremely fabulous dyke with a thing for shoes and interior design – to make what is apparently only the third mention ever of the gayest network on TV today, barring, of course, Nick at Night.