TV Fall Season Trend No. 2: Trannie Hookers

We’ve already examined the fall season’s most winning trend: Nerds with paranormal powers presented blithely. Let us now examine trend No. 2: Transvestite whores.

Two new ABC series, “Dirty Sexy Money” and “Big Shots,” offer such as a plot point in their pilots. “Dirty Sexy Money” stars “Six Feet Under’s” Peter Krause as the reticent family attorney for a moneyed dynasty of spoiled boors – think the Hiltons, if you’re focusing on the brat angle, or the Kennedys, if you’re considering the political angle.

One of said dynasty’s young boobs, played by Daniel Baldwin, has political aspirations (forced upon him more than anything) but is an unrepentant partier and finds himself entangled with a sweet young thing who’s young enough but hardly sweet yet just might qualify in the “thing” category, as it appears she in fact has one.

Meanwhile, in “Big Shots,” Dylan McDermott stars as Duncan, one of four fairly successful yet fully emasculated men living in tremulous fear of the women in their lives (his compatriots are played by comedian Christopher Titus, former “Alias” co-star Michael Vartan and erstwhile Aaron Sorkin repertory player Josh Malina). Duncan’s a cosmetics CEO who is still sort of hot for his ex-wife, has a contentious relationship with his teen daughter, and whose entire career could be trampled if the media learns of his tryst with a road-stop trannie.

Hence: ABC believes it’s found the lynchpin to mainstream success, via a conduit that’d quease out both astringently heterosexual males and heterosexual women sweet on Dylan McDermott – a wide swatch of humanity, I’m led to believe. Said subplot has no doubt been explored on “Boston Legal” (and likely every other David E. Kelley series), and “Desperate Housewives,” if it hasn’t already, is no doubt itching to explore a similar angle. (It would’ve, moreover, been a natural for “Grey’s Anatomy” to contrive an organic storyline-related reason to kick Isaiah Washington’s character out the door.)

Here’s wagering the creators of ABC’s “Cavemen” sitcom are kicking themselves for not cooking up this narrative stratagem, as it would’ve allowed them to save that golden comic nugget, the breakdancing caveman, for episode two before they could’ve waved the white flag of aesthetic surrender.