Transexuals turn up on television shows

Screen writers are turning to transexuals to add shock to shows.

By ROGER CATLIN

HARTFORD COURANT

Gay people on TV are old hat.

By now, Entertainment Weekly reports this week, 61 percent of college freshmen, who grew up with “Will & Grace,” approve of gay marriage. The finding in the national poll is up 10 percentage points from a decade ago.

A turn around the dial will bring you gay story lines in daytime soap operas, same-sex dating on MTV shows like “Next” and “A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila ,” and prominent gay characters in ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” and several cable shows — FX’s “Nip/Tuck,” HBO’s “The Wire” and Showtime’s “The L Word.”

Suspected of being gay is no longer the guaranteed laugh it was on TV anymore, even on macho shows like “Two and a Half Men.” And characters like George on “Grey’s Anatomy” or Barney on “How I Met Your Mother” can be credible as virtual Lotharios, though they are played by gay men.

No, to add shock to TV shows in 2007, writers have turned to transsexuals.

How surprising was it last season on “Ugly Betty” when Alex, the long-lost brother of Mode magazine editor-in-chief Daniel Mead, returned as Alexis, who was not only a woman but a woman who looks like Rebecca Romijn (exactly like her, as it turned out)?

A story line over the summer on “Entourage” involved Johnny Drama trying to get in good with the mayor of Beverly Hills by hooking him up with what appeared to be a beautiful woman at a trendy bar. Her pre-op secret was revealed in one of those skirt flash shots the paparazzi so love. But the mayor (Stephen Tobolowsky) decided he liked his exotic new acquaintance anyway.

Another politician on a TV series who decided to stick with his transsexual is William Baldwin’s Patrick Darling on ABC’s “Dirty Sexy Money.” Though a married New York state attorney general running for U.S. Senate, he is determined to continue his illicit relationship with Carmelita, despite entreaties from his family lawyer.

Carmelita, a sultry blonde with a very low voice, is notable because she might be broadcast TV’s first recurring transsexual character who actually is played by a transsexual. She is played by Candis Cayne , whose previous credits include “Wigstock: The Movie,” “To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” and an episode of “CSI: New York.”

A transsexual story line also occurs early on another new ABC series, “Big Shots,” in which divorced cosmetics CEO Duncan Collinsworth, played by Dylan McDermott, hooks up with a transsexual prostitute at a rest stop — a tryst that threatens his career when the story gets out.

A more normal depiction of a transsexual life comes as a small part of the FX series “The Riches,” about a family of grifters, whose youngest son prefers to dress in women’s clothes.