The most glaring example is Fox's "The O.C.," a hot primetime soap with a big youth following. The Feb. 10 episode featured a lesbian kiss on the beach between two beautiful characters, Marissa and Alex. But not to worry. The actress playing Alex insists that the multi-episode same-sex fling is not a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Instead, "it's healthy, showing it as a mature and natural progression of a relationship," she told USA Today.
This ratings trick is getting so old that TV Guide carried an online article on Valentine's Day on TV's "Top Twenty Same-Sex Kisses."
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is, naturally, thrilled. GLAAD boss Joan Garry loved the Alex character: "To see a strong, confident, well-adjusted bisexual young woman -- particularly one who's navigating the rocky terrain of relationships -- on a show like 'The O.C.' can be a lifeline for teens and young adults who are asking the same questions and dealing with the same issues."
The Feb. 10 "ER" on NBC had a more political and anti-religious flavor. Their lesbian doctor character, Kerry Weaver, meets her birth mother, who gave her up at 15. NBC explained "their budding relationship withers when Weaver confesses to her mother -- an evangelical Christian -- that she is gay."
The repressed-Christian storyline also comes through in reality shows. The Feb. 9 "Wife Swap" on ABC broadened the definition of "wife" a bit, exchanging a lesbian "stepmom" with a materialistic, conservative Christian mom to watch the fur-flying catfights. At the end of the "swap," the Christian mom makes the lesbian cry by saying, "I think you are, according to the word of God, depraved, and I don't want anyone depraved near my kids." That leaves everyone in the audience thinking, correctly: then maybe you shouldn't have volunteered to go on "Wife Swap," dummy.
The Feb. 9 "Law and Order" on NBC carried a lesbian murder plot. A conservative talk show host is murdered. Detectives discover the man was the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit (ripping from the Bill O'Reilly headlines), but the killer is a lesbian involved with the conservative's wife.
Sweeps month is always the time to ramp up the "edgy" factor, which is the perpetual problem. How far will the networks have to go to locate the frontier of "edgy" for the next sweeps period? Primetime TV is no walk through the maple-sugar factory.