I like Will & Grace. I must have been in the US while it was on the air, I remember quite a few episodes. I liked it, it made me laugh. (It is oddly like Big Bang Theory in a way I cannot put my finger on.)
I see that they are going to shoot another season. Big mistake, the rule in show business is always leave them wanting more, but then again nobody asked me.
But what about the Jack character? Looking back on his behavior, he seems by our (my) modern standards to be a Gay Stepin Fetchit, “an embarrassing and harmful anachronism, echoing and perpetuating negative stereotypes.” (That was copied from the Fetchit article on Wikipedia.
What think you?
Even when it was a hit show, I always thought it had an over-rated reputation for being progressive.
Yes I watched it occasionally and the cast and the one liners could be pretty hilarious (although only small doses - it’s frenetic slapstick wore thin pretty quickly), but it did bother me how the show got so many accolades for being so ‘groundbreaking’ when, as you said, Jack was a shrill rehash of stereotypes that we’d seen since the 70’s at least on sitcoms.
Will was perpetually celibate. Either that or he had awkward first dates where his date was always standing no less than five feet away from him so that there was no chance they might, y’know, touch hands god forbid. Meanwhile, Grace was hopping into bed with a new man practically every episode.
At the same time, the show “Ellen” – which got accusations of being regressive and too tentative in its portrayal of gay life – did show its her get a girlfriend, go to bed with said girlfriend, and show women actually kissing each other passionately. Go figure.
I found this about Fetchit,
‘The core problem with trying to appreciate Fetchit is that he seamlessly inhabited a racist archetype, in the last minute before it became an historical impossibility.’
-=Link=-
I still have friends on FB posting Karen Walker quotes. She’s actually the first person I think of, not Will & Grace.
Karen seemed to tap into what made Ab Fab funny in its first run, but like Ab Fab, I wonder if that schtick will still be funny. That Ab Fab movie they made was just embarrassing and sad.