“Will & Grace’s” long lost charm is back... or something like that. That’s what TV Guide has said prior each season premiere of “Will & Grace” since their fifth, but I’m not necessarily buying it.
Since the show’s premiere in 1998, much of the cast’s original steam has evaporated. The ‘live’ eighth season premiere (and I use the word ‘live’ in the loosest sense, since anyone intelligent can already tell this gimmick is at least 92% fabricated) spends most of its duration trying to recapture all the fun and glory of the olden days of “Will & Grace;” Jack is back, Karen is back, Will is back.
However, Grace is only half there.
This episode feels as if the show’s writers have forgotten that Debra Messing is still playing an eponymous character. These days, Grace feels more like an ornament to an already enchanting cast, hooking limbs with her cast-mates (as pictured above) while edging far from the centerpiece and closer to irrelevance. Her latest stabs at humor are also too trite and cliché for such a refreshingly charming show; one might suspect that, were she not a title character, she would have skipped town by now to go live in Los Angeles with Joey.¹
That’s not to say that the show doesn’t want Grace. The season premiere goes out of its way in the first half to reveal her character as the webbing that connects all the others together, but then quickly goes back on it’s word in its second half by forcing her into redundancy. ‘Gals’ (gay pals) Will and Jack are at their best once Grace is pushed into the background - quipping mid-to-high brow jokes off one another and making it look easy - and the writers obviously know this. Karen (Megan Mullally) gets a lot of her old flare back too, this time sauntering around on a Rascal Scooter due to a fictional (or perhaps autobiographical) toe-webbing-removal surgery.
If Debra Messing was the webbing keeping everyone together at first, then Megan Mullally’s webbing-removal surgery side-story proves that the rest of the group doesn’t need Messing anymore in order to appear funny.
With that said, Mullally is going to have to pull most of the weight around this season in Grace’s stead. The live premiere’s story revolves around Karen’s reaction to some news – her late husband has seemingly re-awakened from the dead after a two-year government protection stunt pulled off by Will’s boss, Alec Baldwin.
It just goes to show that no matter how brainless or unrealistic NBC gets, Will & Grace will always have an audience on their channel. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. Shooting the premiere live proved to be a successful gimmick, allowing space for a few unscripted (but also completely scripted) non-sequiturs. With luck, Grace will catch up with the rest of the crowd before the show’s impending ending in the face of it’s rapid decline.²
Will & Grace airs weekly on NBC Thursdays, 8:30 p.m. EST.
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1.It’s no surprise that irrelevance doesn’t make for good TV; “Joey” was cancelled after two short seasons in 2006.
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2.“Will & Grace” screeched to a stop with a dismal series finale six months later, so I feel this criticism is valid. Grace managed to stav off complete irrelevance midway through the season by getting pregnant by country singer/actor Harry Connick Jr.
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michael alahouzos
2005
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