The portrayal of transgender characters on television these days seems to be sort of a glass-is-either-half-empty-or-half-full situation. For years television has presented a steady stream of “transsexual” prostitutes, murder victims, and other assorted minor characters that usually appeared for one episode and were portrayed as little more than a collection of stereotypes to advance the plot or get a cheap laugh.

A recent example of that aired this past summer on HBO’s hit show Entourage. In the episode “Sorry, Harvey” a secondary storyline centered on Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) trying to get the sad sack mayor of Beverly Hills (played by Groundhog Day’s Stephen Tobolowsky) hooked up with a beautiful woman in order to curry his favor. At a bar to which he takes the mayor, Drama thinks he has succeeded with a woman named Anika — at least until he learns that she is actually transgender.

The mayor turns out not to mind, but the show portrays this as due more to his being so pathetic rather than a message of acceptance. This impression is further underscored by the main characters’ clearly being repulsed at the idea of a transgender person, and by the episode’s big “reveal” when Anika’s male genitalia are shown during a panty-less Britney Spear’s-type incident.

On the “half-full” side of the equation there is ABC’s Ugly Betty. Last season the hit dramedy included Alexis Meade, a transgender character portrayed as self-accepting, not desperate for the approval of a man, and who wasn’t a prostitute. Audiences loved the character.

Already the most diverse network when it comes to LGBT representation, ABC deepened their diversity with two new transgender characters introduced this fall, one each on Dirty Sexy Money and Big Shots. Neither are regulars at this point, and while the Dirty Sexy Money show continues to build on the progress of Ugly Betty, thus far Big Shots is a throwback to more stereotypical portrayals of transgender women. (There are no transgender men – female to male – characters currently on network TV.)

Despite setbacks like the recent episode of Entourage, Mara Keisling, Executive Director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, believes things are improving when it comes to transgender representations on television. “I’m really, really optimistic. Things are changing so much so fast. Oprah has had so many sensitive shows. Montel has done some good shows. Larry King does show after show, and that’s just really educating the public.”

As to what is driving that change, Keisling stated, “It’s just natural that as there are more and more trans people visible in public, that’s going to be reflected in popular culture.”

That includes Dirty Sexy Money’s Carmelita (Candis Cayne), a transgender woman having an affair with Patrick Darling (William Baldwin), a wealthy man soon to be a U.S. senator. Though their affair is illicit, Darling does seem to love Carmelita and they are even shown in bed together after having made love. The fact she is transgender is not treated as a punch line or “revealed” as something disgusting or shocking.

While Carmelita’s character is clearly a cut above most transgender characters on broadcast television, the portrayal isn’t entirely without some stereotypes. At one point in the first episode, Carmelita arrives uninvited to a family dinner displaying ample cleavage, whines petulantly about not seeing enough of Patrick, and then makes a sexually suggestive comment to him. Later she threatens to do something drastic to herself if he ever leaves her, giving the impression of a somewhat unbalanced character desperate for a man in her life — a bit of a cliché when it comes to female transgender characters.