Queens of the closet: middle-aged men who don't know they're gay are all the rage this season.

It has been almost 30 years since Jodie Dallas sashayed out of the closet on the series premiere of Soap in 1977, and you'd think that the upcoming crop of primetime television offerings would feature more than just a few closeted fags begging the world to think they're straight while preening around in pink argyle sweaters, right? It is 2006, after all.

Guess again. Two of the precious few new gay characters on TV this fall are not just back in the closet, they both actually think they're straight.

First is the curious case of ABC's Help Me Help You. The first time we meet the character Jonathan (Jim Rash), he sports a bright pink blazer and makes his entrance with a subtitle reading JONATHAN: DOESN'T KNOW HE'S GAY. Change the channel and catch the second half of Veronica Mars, people, because you already know everything you need to know about Jonathan.

Nevertheless, over the next half hour we watch him wear pink and shriek in fear at a loud noise, wear pink and inadvertently malign female genitalia, and wear pink while pretending to love basketball just so he can flirt with a male coffee shop barista. Oh, and in case we had forgotten that Jonathan is effeminate, please note that his character does spend quite a bit of time in the color pink.

Even less successful in its portrayal of a closeted gay character is CBS's The Class, featuring an even more flaming nancy boy. But get this: According to the network, he is straight. We first meet loving husband Perry (Sam Harris) as he prances onto the screen and busts out a karate move so threatening it looks choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Later he expresses a love for Oprah, and through it all he could not be wearing more pink. Like Jonathan, Perry seems oblivious to the incredulous stares that greet him when he walks into a room and spontaneously blurts out something about being totally, totally straight.

CBS has sternly gone on record that Perry is not in the closet and that the joke is that he's straight with many effeminate characteristics. Interesting, then, that the last time we see him in the pilot he leans in, ostensibly to kiss his wife, but at the last second he pulls her hair out of a bun and quickly restyles it. Presumably a straight man, no matter how nelly, would at least kiss his wife, even if her hair wasn't "just so."

The problem with the characters in both Help Me Help You and The Class is that they are such reversions to the myriad cliches associated with gay men. Without the ability to have these characters walk on the screen and announce "I am gay," the shows rely on stereotypes to fill in the blanks. Portraying a closeted--or, more accurately, oblivious--gay character is no crime, provided the character is written with a modicum of nuance that reveals his motivations for remaining trapped in the closet. Maybe when a show finally gets the pain and conflict of life in the closet completely right, it will be clad in just a little less pink.

Blau has written for America's Next Top Model and is a staff writer for the Web site Television Without Pity.