Revived ‘Will & Grace’ is funny, relevant (mostly)
Popular culture is lousy with remakes and reboots and reimaginings — with everything, it sometimes seems, but original ideas.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that “Will & Grace,” the funny and groundbreaking comedy that aired on NBC from 1998 to 2006, would come back.
What is surprising is how funny the revival can be. And at times, if not as culturally trailblazing, still relevant and even moving.
After the first episode, that is. That one’s kind of a mess, an extension of sorts of the campaign short that got the whole revival started. “Will & Grace” has always been broad, but this dips into stupidity. But don’t fret; things pick up from there.
David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, the show’s creators, got the cast back together during the 2016 presidential campaign toreprise their roles in support of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump. That effort wasn’t successful, at least on the political front, but the 10-minute short they made was well-received. The next step was almost a given. In an era with so many platforms, new episodes of any popular show from the last 20 years start to feel more like an inevitability than a necessity. Looking at you, “Fuller House.”
So here we are, 11 years after the show ended. Or, “ended.”
The show dives right back into its world, and things are familiar, if not
identical, to how they were before. Will (Eric McCormack) is living in a spiffier apartment, still a lawyer and, at least for now, roommates with Grace (Debra Messing), his best friend and a successful interior designer. Jack (Sean Hayes) still lives across the hall, and Karen (Megan Mullally) is still married to the rich Stanley, still boozing and still dropping in to stir things up.
If you never saw the original, Will and Jack are gay — which, it’s satisfying to report, is not now the lightning rod for controversy that it was when the show debuted.
Of course, if you’re going to watch this, you know that already. You also remember the finale, in which Will and Grace have become estranged, but their children (with other people) grow up, meet and get married.
If you don’t recall all that, don’t sweat it: The show pretends it never happened. In fact, the characters go out of their way to make sure we know that this was all just some sort of drink-addled dream of Karen’s or something (there’s a joke in which all the less-successful elements of the finale are discussed and dismissed).
Once we’ve established that, the episode proper begins. Will is emailing a Republican congressman whose politics he hates but who, unbeknownst to the rest, he’s attracted to. Karen, the sole Trump supporter of the bunch, finagles a gig for Grace to redecorate the Oval Office, which Grace decries and then, naturally, accepts. Jack accompanies Will on a visit to the Rose Garden to see the congressman speak and runs into an old lover working for the Secret Service. Most all of the Secret Service is gay, it turns out.
The episode is aimed as squarely at the antiTrump base as the president’s remarks about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem are aimed at his. It’s too onthe-nose, too broad — funny, sort of, but in such an obvious way that it mutes the laughs eventually.
The second episode, in which Will and Jack both date younger men, is much better, funnier and registers as more relevant. Both men are terrified of looking older — and of getting older. (Never mind that no one in the cast seems to have aged a day since the show premiered nearly 20 years ago.)
It’s funny because McCormack and Hayes — like Messing and Mullally — are so good, and so comfortable, in their roles. And then it becomes something more. Will’s date doesn’t know Stonewall from Stonehenge (literally). Shutting down his physical attraction to the younger man, Will lectures him, about the struggles gay men and women have fought through, about the advances they have made so that the next generation might have it easier (his date’s divorced parents both threw him coming-out parties), and about how far they have yet to go, particularly now. There are laughs — as Jack says, Will always has to follow a hug with a slap — but there are also heartfelt feelings. It’s the best scene in the revival, and it leads into a terrific Will-and-Jack Madonna dance party.
It’s a great reminder of how funny, and how good, this show once was — and, surprisingly, still can be.