Did Last Night’s "The Good Wife" Help CBS Get Out of the Gay Doghouse?

Julianna Margulies and Dallas Roberts in last night's The Good Wife

So a few months ago GLAAD called out CBS for not having any Kevins, Scottys or Kurts on its schedule. And cancelling that gay Super Bowl ad for the gay dating site didn’t help either. CBS responded by adding three gay characters to its shows this season.

Last night viewers met one of those characters on The Good Wife. We were introduced to main character Alicia Florrick’s long lost brother, math professor Owen Cavanaugh, played by Dallas Roberts, who some of us know as Jonathan from A Home at the End of the World, the “manny” on The L Word and fewer of us know as Miles on Rubicon.

If you’re under 57 and don’t watch The Good Wife, you should. Even without the gay bro, it’s an entertaining legal procedural.

Julianna Margulies plays Alicia, whose husband, state attorney Peter Florrick, gets caught in a sex scandal. She stands by her man but goes back to work as a defense attorney at a fancy Chicago law firm. This season, Peter is out of jail and campaigning for his former job, with the help of a Eli, an advisor played by Alan Cumming (straight character but gay actor! Well-played, CBS).

The latest episode was plenty gay. Not only did we get gay brother Cavanaugh, but also Dreamgirls’ Anika Noni Rose and the gay guy who went on a date with Charlotte on the last season of Sex and the City. Those count, right?

No doubt CBS hopes so since the rest of their line-up is so hetero.

Last night’s drama centers on a political controversy accidentally started by Owen, who lives in Oregon but is in town teaching at Chicago’s DePaul University for the semester.

Math geek Owen, who loves his sister “more than the golden ratio,” tells a student in class that he doesn’t visit Alicia because her homophobic politician husband doesn’t like gays. Oops! It turns out a student was taping it on his smartphone and uploads it to a site called, I kid you not, VidTrope.

Um, CBS, even most old people know about YouTube by now.

Watching the clip online, campaign manager Eli basically chokes on his lunch, (the only thing a gay actor can choke on during network primetime). Eli confronts Alicia, tells her about her brother’s comments, and she laughs and walks away. “It’s just Owen,” she says. “He just talks.” You know, as us gays are wont to do.

Still, a chatty gay brother is bad for politician Peter, who needs the Chicago gays to give $800,000 in soft money to his campaign. “The Chicago gay population is small but it’s powerful. It has money,” Eli informs Peter.

The lesson: thank God gays have money, otherwise no one would care about offending us!