Neil Patrick Harris Is Still the Man

Embedded below is the promo for next week’s “Glee” in which Neil Patrick guest stars as Will Schuester’s (Matthew Morrison’s) nemesis. It’s got some things worth seeing: early ’90s fashion, NPH in a mullet, and a cover of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” (Because the theme of the episode deals with failing to achieve one’s dreams, you see. Apparently, “Glee” takes its obvious musical cues from the handbook for writing romantic comedies.)

Harris is also brought up in this Newsweek article claiming that openly gay actors can’t play straight characters.

While it’s OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback Mountain), it’s rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse. [Portia] De Rossi and Harris do that on TV, but they also inhabit broad caricatures, not realistic characters likes the ones in Up in the Air or even The Proposal.

Whoa whoa whoa. Did someone actually claim that NPH’s Barney Stinson is less realistic than the characters in The Proposal? The same Proposal with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock? The Proposal where an attractive woman and her attractive subordinate aren’t attracted to each other until they fake an engagement so she can get citizenship and he can get a promotion? And then her BlackBerry gets stolen by an eagle? THOSE characters are somehow more “realistic” than an attractive womanizing businessman who won’t settle down because his ego’s too large? Yeah, who’s ever heard of someone like THAT?