Apr 22, 2005  |  By: Brian Moylan  | COMMENTS     

DURING THE PAST several Sunday nights, it’s been strange watching Bree (Marcia Cross) try to reform her recently out son, Andrew (Shawn Pyfrom), on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.” In the post-”Will & Grace” world, it’s easy to get used to gay characters on shows being blithely accepted by everyone around them.

That’s why Bree’s anti-gay reaction was so striking. Not only did she pull her (drug-using, car-crashing) son out of an all-male reform camp, she even called in a priest to try to “convert” him.

Bree still tells her son, “I would love you even if you were a murderer,” which, ironically, he is. It’s the same line gay “Housewives” creator Marc Cherry heard from his own mother when he came out.

But I digress.

THIS WHOLE, “I love you, but change” approach that many parents have when they learn they have a gay child demonstrates just how little television has changed during the last 25 years, when another son on a popular nighttime soap opera came out.

Steven Carrington (Al Corley), the sexually confused son of Blake Carrington (John Forsythe), tread in these same waters on ABC’s “Dynasty” in 1981, when the show debuted. The first season of the classic drama was released April 19 on DVD.

On the first episode of the series, Steven returns from New York City to attend his father’s wedding. Daddy Blake tells him, “I can find a little homosexual experimentation acceptable as long as you don’t bring it home with you. But don’t you see son, I’m offering you the chance to straighten yourself out.”

Though Steven replies, “I don’t know if I want to,” he quickly leaves his boyfriend and gay life in the Big Apple to move into his father’s Colorado mansion and work on an oilrig. (Steven Carrington sure was a butch one.)

Portrayed as a tortured misfit by Corley (who was replaced in the third season by actor Jack Coleman) in all 13 episodes of the season, Steven only smiles once. And that was because he was eating a cookie.

Season 1 culminates with Steven being framed for sabotage by his homophobic co-workers, having an affair with a married woman, the murder of his New York lover and alienation from his family.

Over the show’s next eight seasons, he marries two women, gets cut out of his father’s will for being gay, and witnesses a second boyfriend’s murder.

BUT EVEN WITH the dour Steven, the first season of “Dynasty” is still a lot of fun. The infamous Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins), whose bitchy antics made her a gay favorite and catapulted the show to No. 1 in the ratings, doesn’t appear until Season 2, which is to be released on DVD later this year.

On these DVDs, Alexis’ daughter, Fallon (Pamela Sue Martin), a real chip off the old block, provides plenty of slutty antics to keep viewers entertained. Several of the episodes feature commentary by show creator Esther Shapiro, whom you might have seen when a made-for-TV movie about “Dynasty” aired earlier this year. One track also features a chat with Corley.

It’s nice to hear Corley, who’s straight, say on the DVD that he wished they’d made Steven more comfortable with his homosexuality because it would have been a more interesting character and better for the show.

He’s right, of course. The problem with Steven was, instead of being bisexual; he just seemed completely unaware of what he really wanted. “Housewives’” Andrew, on the other hand, firmly states that he likes both “vanilla and chocolate.”

In all those years since “Dynasty” was a hit, it seems gay and bisexual characters have earned the right to decide who they are without apologizing for it.