So here’s why Dancing With The Stars is so nefarious. Two weeks ago, being the dutiful son that I am, I stopped by to visit my mom (aka to make sure she hadn’t died over the past month and that her brood of cats hadn’t been feeding on her dead body) only to discover I hadn’t been as dutiful regarding my own welfare. My visit coincided with the new season premiere of that show where celebrities whose careers have tanked go to die at the speed of a two-step. Mom, of course, was thrilled to see me. I could tell by the affection in her voice when she said, “Get out of the way, I can’t see my show.”

The plus with visiting moms during Dancing With The Stars is that the show steers her conversation away from her medication regime. She hasn’t a clue as to who the celebrities appearing on the show are each season. And expects that I do. I’m not sure if most of those celebrities’ agents even know who they are. So I make up fake bios for the majority of them, never quite sure which of the two in a dancing couple is the dancer and which is the star. I’m right about half of the time. Moms on the other hand has an infallible sense of gaydar and identifies which of the celebrities are gay during each season. Like most, she assumes all of the show’s regular male dancers are.

This season she bestowed the ‘That Little Gay Boy’ title on some over-the-hill-was-once-a-teenage-heartthrob whom I didn’t recognize but who was so busy emoting his ass off that moms recognized him as a player for the pink team quicker than his partner could say, “No, you’re supposed to lead.” Huh. Moms is good. A week later I saw on the internet that he is one of those celebrities everyone in Hollywood knows is gay but no one says so. At least in his case he was until one of the judges mentioned during an interview that he was. Ooops.

Being outed on national TV used to be the kiss of death for an actor’s career. But then your career can’t get much deader than signing up for a stint on Dancing With The Stars. Besides, John Travolta just had a new movie come out so that proves American audiences are ready to accept gay men in mainstream movies. But that wasn’t what the nefarious part of the show was. The network’s trumpeting of its new season’s shows during the commercial break was. Granted, most people take a break and head for the ‘fridge during commercials, but when you are forced to watch Dancing With The Stars it’s usually better to schedule your away from the TV time during the actual broadcast. And I had to check up on moms’ cats anyway. Just to make sure they’d been fed. She doesn’t move as quickly as she once did and could easily fall victim to a pack of hungry felines even while still breathing.

So I’m sitting there watching a commercial for some car and trying to figure out just who it was that decided having your car instead of the driver decide when to brake was a good idea – although admittedly that might come in handy when Tony Stewart is behind the wheel – when a promo for How To Get Away With Murder came on. It was short, and told you nothing about the show. Other than Viola Davis must be in it ‘cuz she gives viewers a ‘I’m gonna fuck you until you scream for mercy’ look and then uses the title of the show as her punch line. I don’t know who wrote that commercial but they deserve an Emmy. Watching it, I’m sure that even that over-the-hill-was-once-a-teenage-heartthrob and no longer closeted used to be a celebrity felt a mild tug in his gonads. I know I did.

With the exception of poorly timed visits to moms, the last time I watched network TV was when Will & Grace was on. Okay, there’s the Olympics coverage too, but that doesn’t really count. A few years back thinking I’d missed out on something I shouldn’t have, I rented the first season of 24 on DVD. After sitting through an excruciating three episode stint of extremely bad acting I was reminded again that you should always stick to your first impression. Kinda like with that guy you swiped left on on Grindr and then went back, hooked up, and discovered he really was the dud you originally assumed he would be. Or the bar boy who tucked his cell phone in the front of his shorts who at first you passed on offing and then against your better judgment offed anyway and found out that good things really do not come in small packages.

Nonetheless I couldn’t get Viola Davis promising to teach me things I’d only fantasized about from looking at Tom of Finland drawings out of my mind, and by the time Tommy Chong came on to prove aging ex-felon Latino stoned comedians can be sexier than closeted over-the-hill-was-once-a-teenage-heartthrobs, I’d noted the date and time How To Get Away With Murder would air and began immediately planning on the excuse I’d use to keep my boyfriend away from the house that night so that he wouldn’t catch me watching ABC. Okay, so I didn’t actually watch the premiere. I DVRed it. As did a lot of other gay men who couldn’t face the stigma of being known as a network television viewer. The first episode of How To Get Away With Murder was the mostly highly DVRed show in history. But that’s probably only because they didn’t have DVRs back when Janet Jackson flashed her nipple during halftime during Super Bowl XXXVIII.

But thanks to said boyfriend’s reliance on taking Ambien whenever he sleeps over at my place for some strange reason, I did manage to sneak in a viewing, and caught the show’s second episode too. The good news is that every time Viola Davis looks into the camera my crotch gets all warm and fuzzy again. The bad news is that the show has decided to use a wonky plot device that shows you the end of the season first, and then tries to throw in hints to prove you’re too stupid to get it while they slowly work up to that scene over what may prove to be too long of a viewing season. Which usually means the plot isn’t worth following anyway. But there is Viola Davis promising the unmentionable often (even though I already mentioned it) and the unexpected joy of a whole lot of gayness going on too. Plus a few male stars I’d do and who I’m sure won’t be appearing on Dancing With The Stars for at least another ten years. Overall I’d give the show a big, well-lubed thumbs up.

Now if I could just get the vision of that thumb belonging to Viola Davis out of my head, I’d be a happy camper.

Viola plays a scummy defense attorney sans either ethics or morals – which would make you think the show is reality TV, but it’s not – who uses her part-time job as a college professor to lure students into joining her firm as unpaid interns, which is the American version of sweatshop labor. Only cheaper. The students win brownie points by coming up with a defense that will help win Viola’s clients a Get Out Of Jail card, even though everyone one of them is obviously guilty as sin. Fortunately her students commit a few sins of their own in their effort to get Viola’s thumb . . . well, you get the point. And one of the first sins committed in pursuit of Viola’s thumb – because gay guys are more familiar with the joys of anal thumbing – is the character played by Jack Falahee seducing an Asian nerd to help him hack into . . . eh. I forget. The important thing is Jack and the Asian nerd get naked and have gay sex on network TV.

Besides being the show’s title, How To Get Away With Murder is also Viola’s name for the class she teaches, and in a bit of a twist, also where the plot is going ‘cuz ‘someone’ kills Viola’s husband at the end of the season although since we’re relying on that wonky plot device we already know he gets murdered at the beginning of the season. It’s also what the American Family Association thinks about the show’s producers idea of sneaking in gay sex scenes that are not played for laughs on a network television show. You might think a gay sex scene – well, two now ‘cuz the show is batting 2 for 2 – might not be all that, but the Supreme Court was gonna take up the gay marriage issue this judicial season and just decided not to (thereby allowing same-sex marriages to become the law of the land in five states) because Justice Scalia watched How To Get Away With Murder and figured if it’s already on network TV there’s not much he can do other than to judiciously allow The Gays to take over America just like the Tea Party warned everyone they would.

And on ABC, The Gays rule the world. Or at least the American version of it. Not just on How To Get Away With Murder, but let’s not forget Dancing With The Stars too. Which must really piss off the Duck Dynasty homophobe clan ‘cuz one of their daughters is on this season’s Dancing With The Stars and ABC not only snuck in a gay no-longer-a-celebrity on that show, but then used it to promo another show filled with gay sex. And that’s what proves America is still great. But let’s get back to the important thing: the gay sex on How To Get Away With Murder.

It was gratifying to see a gay man get some for a change on network TV, even more so that he did while having an ulterior motive ‘cuz usually our ulterior motive is just about getting some dick. It was also gratifying to see a gay nerd get some, especially from a hottie even if that never happens in real life. And it was even more gratifying to see a white gay guy get some Asian dick – although technically it was Asian ass – ‘cuz white/Asian sex is seldom seen on television and now that it has been and was gay we can assume that all future Caucasian and Asian pairings on the networks will be gay ones. Kinda like all the Law & Order and CSI spin-offs. As it should be. It’s also gratifying to hear that the show’s producers intend on continuing this trend and that there will be lots more gay sex on How To Get Away With Murder even though the gay characters act like regular guys instead of like the visibly gay gay characters that Ryan Murphy likes to include in his shows because America has always been more comfortable with queens. Which only proves when Viola Davis gives you that ‘I’m gonna fuck you until you scream for mercy’ look you really can get away with murder. Or even nationally broadcast gay sex.

But gay sex alone does not a hit drama make, even though it should, and since the producers decided to scrap the idea of a plot they’ve instead went with a cast of hunky male characters. And not so hunky but still doable ones too. Harry Potter fans will be happy to see Alfred Enoch who didn’t play one of the after-the-fact gay characters in that franchise but then since he was filling the race card you couldn’t expect him to fill the gay card too. And since he’s already had a shirtless scene in How To Get Away With Murder, we’ll give him a pass. Charlie Weber, on the other hand, did recently play a gay character on Warehouse 13, and was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer too. Which is kinda gay. Charlie also started his career as a model for Abercrombie & Fitch. And you can’t get much gayer than being in front of Bruce Weber’s camera.

I wrote Matt McGorry’s character off because there was much better eye candy on parade, but have now discovered that his gay tie-in is that he was on Orange Is The New Black, a tranny prison show on Netflix, and is a former body builder to boot; which of those two is gayer I’m not gonna call. And for DILF fans, Billy Brown plays Viola’s Davis’ sex toy, which may not be gay but requires him to be shirtless a lot and since he was in both Star Trek and Starship Troopers 2 nerds have a reason to rejoice too. As if they needed another since the aforementioned gay Asian nerd gets his thanks to Conrad Ricamora, the out Filipino actor who gets to play with Jack Falahee’s naked body on camera. Which as cool as it is would be even cooler if the show was on HBO. ‘Cuz then we’d get to see Filipino dick too. Which, as you know, was made for the small screen.

And there’s the rub. Even if it is on network TV for all to see. When even a supreme court justice recognizes that The Gays are here to stay and gay rights and equality are a foregone conclusion, when even Cheerios – The Breakfast of Champions – is running commercials with gayness in them, when even being outed on Dancing With The Stars fails to make headlines, it’s a shame that finally seeing two gay guys do what gay guys do – without either being a comedic, effeminate, campy queen – on network TV is newsworthy. I don’t know whether How To Get Away With Murder will make it to a second season or not, or if they will develop a plot for Season #2 if they do. But it will go down in history as the show that broke the normal gay guy having sex on screen barrier for network television. And the gods only know what that means for next season of Dancing With The Stars.

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