Question by plattersby: Were there any interesting storylines surrounding the gay kid in “Desperate Housewives?”?
I never watched the show until a few re-runs I saw recently. I notice one of the women (Bree?) has a gay son. Did the writers ever create any drama (or comedy) around this guy, or was he always just a sidelight?

Best answer:

Answer by Trey M
Andrew Van de Kamp was a fairly major player in the show. He had all kinds of problems with his parents’ divorce and became a problem child during that process, first angry with his mother and later with his father, because of his father’s wild adultery. During this time, he ran down Carlos Solis’ mother while drunk and put her in a coma. He also got caught smoking pot so Bree had him kicked off the school swim team. He eventually got expelled from school so they sent him to boot camp, which is where he first told his father he thought he was gay, but Bree walked in on that and immediately wanted him removed from boot camp since she feared boot camp had made him that way.

They tried to get him “Christian counseling,” but that didn’t work either, and he became more and more angry as his father died and his mother remarried and that new husband died too (he later learned that Bree stood by and watched him die when she could have saved him, and he used this against her).

Eventually, Bree became so humiliated by him that she put him in the car and dumped him somewhere far away so that he became homeless! I’d say that was quite a story in itself, but it was because Bree couldn’t handle his being gay and was still trying to keep it secret from the neighbors and he kept doing horrible things to her because he was so angry with her for not accepting what he was.

Andrew’s anger was understandable, but he mishandled it and took it to extremes. When he discovered that his mother’s current boyfriend was a sex addict, he tried to get his sister to seduce him, and when she wouldn’t, he did it himself. So when Bree found them in bed together, that was the last straw.

That’s when Bree lost it and took him far away and dumped him at a gas station. Then she happened to see him on TV months later on a news report in which they were interviewing homeless teenagers. She was just on her way to begin her honeymoon with Orson, her current husband, but instead went to find Andrew. They have eventually reunited and gotten to be on reasonable terms.

With the help of Orson, she has learned to accept that Andrew is gay, but she is far from perfect about it, and they still work at it. Andrew is now Bree’s personal assistant and she is helping him plan his wedding with his fiance, who she knows did gay porn. They’ve come a long way in 5 seasons.

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