DAY TRIPPERS
‘Will & Grace’ revisits a bygone era
T HE reboot of “Will and Grace” has been so successful that its producers have given fans a Christmas present — a bonus episode that airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. Titled “A Gay Olde Christmas,” the half-hour follows the show’s quick-witted quartet as they romanticize a bygone New York after they can’t get into a trendy restaurant for their traditional Christmas Eve dinner.
Cue the whining. Will (Eric McCormack) leads everyone outside before Grace (Debra Messing) has had a chance to use the ladies’ room. The quartet ends up in the Immigrant Historical Society (which keeps unusual nighttime hours), wondering if Grace can use the facility. The owner won’t let her unless the group takes a tour. They have no choice.
Karen (Megan Mullally) thinks “it’s going to get ugly” as old New York was a time “before facelifts,” but Will, leafing through a book of photographs, is more optimistic.
“Imagine how great New York was back then,” he says, dreaming of horse-drawn carriages and carols sung by candlelight.
He’s in for a rude awakening. They enter the fully preserved tenement of Irish widow Karolyn O’Sullivan as she faces a povertystricken Christmas, circa 1912. O’Sullivan is played by Mullally, who, dressed in an apron, spectacles and a frumpy skirt, wakes up to a roomful of hungry children. “I had the nicest dream,” she says in an Irish brogue. “None of you were here.”
“Will & Grace” creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan work their political commentary on this country’s policies on immigration, the poor and gay life in a series of deft and funny scenes in which Karolyn meets a new boarder, sailor John Patrick McGee (Hayes), who sympathizes with her plight when her smug landlord Billem Van Billiams (McCormack) shows up to collect the rent and his eyes take a walk all over McGee’s muscular form.
Sensing the landlord’s secret nature, the sailor convinces the desperate widow to let him seduce the landlord in exchange for the month’s rent.
The jokes, many of them clever and sexual in nature, come fast and furious, delivered by a smart cast that keeps getting better and better. When Karolyn feigns great shock that her boarder has “lain with men,” the sailor responds, “I’ve had sex with men, yes — but only on a boat.”
On his second visit to the apartment to collect the rent, the landlord brings his sex-starved wife, Fanny (Debra Messing), who is festooned in a massive gray velvet cape. The widow borrows a page from Karen’s book and says, “1888 called and they’d like their drapes back.” Fanny is shocked that the O’Sullivan children hide in the closet to avoid the landlord’s prying eyes.
“What’s wrong with living in the closet?” the landlord says.
When the quartet ends the tour, rose-colored glasses removed, they realize how good they have it in 2017. Grace launches into a horrifying rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” for which she is rewarded with a snowball, thrown off-set, smack on her forehead.
To celebrate the show’s success, the producers show outtakes of the actors blowing their lines and goofing around on set. Nostalgia may not work when touring a tenement museum, but it’s served NBC well. Reviving “Will & Grace” is one of the best ideas any network president ever had.