I thought that Will & Grace decided at their previous meeting that to move on with their lives, they had to stop seeing or even contacting each other. They really had a co-dependant relationship that wasn’t good for them, as they just couldn’t move on with the other person being around them. When they finally had to get together again when their children got together, they fell right back into the same co-dependant relationship.
Much like Jack at a rest stop, it sucked long and hard.
It did stay true to the formula- Grace does something wrong. She and Will fight. Then, she forgives Will and everybody is happy again. The fight was massively contrived. So, Grace is getting back together with Leo. So, this means Will won’t be the father figure. I don’t see Grace or Leo having any objections to Will being a live-in (or five minutes away in a much more stylish place) uncle who is there for every milestone, and who the kid loves just as much as mom and dad.
Frankly, I would have preferred an episode in the present based on financial hijinks. It turns out that Leslie is not gay, but actually a butch lesbian. She’s been impersonating her brother (who died on an expedition to find the treasure of the Incas) in order to prevent Walker Inc from taking over the family business. Jack is more disgusted than ever. Karen is a little turned on. Grace, while rubbing butter on her child’s burned arm (crockpot accident) is unable to control herself and eats the child. Vince botches the case. The notoriety allows him to quit the force, and become the next Martha Stewart. Will is horrified. After a screaming match, Grace forgives him. The show ends with Karen telling her sister “No matter what, you always have family.”. Ginny reveals she isn’t really Karen’s sister. Karen asks her to prove it. “If you were really my sister, would I do this?” the two then begin a spirited bout of Sapphic lovemaking, which is uncensored and lasts for thirty minutes.
Oh, and Bernadette Peters should also sing some Sondheim. Oh! After the sex is over, she can do Nothing’s Gonna Harm You.
Damn. I can’t wait for the DVD!
Don’t forget Six Feet Under’s final scenes of all the main cast’s deaths. This was a fitting end for the show (it was long in coming). Of course in 50 years Will & Grace will look like a gay minstrel show.
That’s kind of my take on it. I scream with laughter at Karen and Jack, but W&G really is the Amos & Andy of the 90s/00s.
I agree with JayJay. The celebrated male/male kiss was between Will and Jack and devoid of sexual or romantic feeling. When did they show Will kissing Vince? When did they show Jack fondling the buttocks of one of his many sexual partners? When Will and Grace go to friends’ (Joe and Larry?) commitment ceremony, where is the kiss showing these men’s lifelong love for eachother? When we see Joe and Larry’s adopted daughter at her birthday party, do Joe and Larry kiss once?
Show me a gay character on Will and grace that was more than a cardboard cutout stereotype. Even the intelectual and serious owner of a gay bookstore gets turned into Stepin Faggot with “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for the Bold And The Beautiful. I become a raging bitch without my stories.”
They showed us Karen groping other women. They showed us Grace and Karen in sex scenes with men. Where was the scene of shirtless Will lying atop a shirtless Vince and kissing him passionately?
Ayup.
They showed Will kiss [Taye Diggs’ character- name eludes me] once. On the lips, but not passionately. You LITERALLY saw racier stuff in the CREDITS of Queer as Folk. This show was about as edgy and groundbreaking as Laverne & Shirley, which was “the first show ever to have brewery workers with their names in the title!” (When the show premiered it appeared in 6,421 articles and for a while I actually thought the name of the show’s star was “Eric McCormack Whoisstraightinreallife” (Polish? Chinese? Not sure).
Now Queer as Folk, which is nothing more than a softcore primetime soap/melodrama, really IS truly groundbreaking. The acting and the writing and the storylines range from downright bad to pretty good, but the fact that you see gay sex on there so much you speed through it to get to the plot. On Will and Grace they never showed shirtless Will and Vince cuddling or even Jack in bed fully clothed with one of his thousand referred to but rarely seen boyfriends, but on QaF you knew which characters were tops, which were bottoms, what they did, there were plotlines about cheap v. top drawer lubes, a hilarious episode about Viagra abuse, etc… I don’t think it gets as much credit as it deserves.
None of which is to imply that I never watched or even sometimes enjoyed W&G, I just think it should be a little more buried and a little less honored by the critics and network.