Why Will & Grace will forever be TV's original LGBT show
With the Will & Grace cast doing a 10-minute special episode on the upcoming American Presidential election, hopes are high that the hit foursome – Debra Messing (Grace), Eric McCormack (Will), Megan Mullally (Karen) andSean Hayes (Jack) – will return for a reboot of the massively popular series that wrapped 10 years ago.
The short episode is classic Will & Grace. The actors haven’t aged a day and the script cackles with the campy humour that made Jack and Karen such an irresistible pair. The original series ran from 1998 to 2006 for a total of eight seasons, and like Friends, it came to define a new genre of comedy on American TV that was personal, conversational and side-splittingly funny.
Will and Grace are childhood friends who live together in a New York that is instantly recognisable for its tastefully done but too-small apartments. Will is a lawyer and Grace an interior designer. Will is also gay and one of his best friends is Jack, who has professionally done everything under the sun but likes to call himself an actor.
While Will is staid and uppity, Jack is flamboyant. He ticks all the stereotypes of gay men – he is into opera, he is lusty, he has "gay voice". Finally, there is Karen, the most interesting character of the lot, married into wealth but working as Grace’s assistant to pass the time and regale the audience with her quips.
At a time when LGBT characters on television are a dime a dozen, it is worth noting that Will & Grace was one of the first shows that included two out gay men as the main characters. Critics, even at the time, took issue with the portrayal, but by refusing to be politically correct, the show showed a slice of gay life that is all too real.
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| Transparent’s third season, currently streaming on Amazon, has academics for characters who swing between their politics and their passions. |
To this reviewer, at least, before the debate over portrayals came the sheer primacy of the show. To most gay men, Jack represented the extreme as well as the truth of everything about us – our effeteness, our joys and frustrations, and of course, our anxieties.
While Will and Grace could pass for a straight couple (Grace is straight at any rate), Jack epitomised the quintessential gay lifestyle. Wrapped in comedy, the show did not shy away from exploring, say, why Jack remains defiantly single.
Do gay men shun traditional romantic structures because they are different, or are they different because they do so? As America came of age on LGBT issues, Will & Grace put forth these questions – in its unique exaggerated style – before the audience.
The America of today – and the American television of today – are entirely different beasts than they were during the show’s telecast. LGBT issues are mainstream and gay marriage is legal. Some of the most popular shows include storylines involving LGBT characters – and representation has become diverse. For every effeminate boy mulling how to come out (Jude and Connor on The Fosters), there is a merciless gangster who is also a tender gay lover (Omar Little on The Wire).
Indeed, the conversation has now shifted to bringing LGBT stories to the heart of narratives. Transparent, about a man transitioning in his 60s, has trans people on its writing staff in order that the series best represents the struggles of the community.
That said, some of today’s shows can also be weighed down by needless political correctness. In the clamour for acceptance, the danger is that the richness of the storyline might be sacrificed.
Transparent’s third season, currently streaming on Amazon, has academics for characters who swing between their politics and their passions. While this makes for engaging TV, it does not necessarily represent the real conflicts of LGBT lives.
Will & Grace, should it return, will therefore be a welcome addition to LGBT television. Gayness is different enough – and by showcasing it for what it is, the show heralded a new freedom for writers to imagine LGBT characters.
In some ways, today’s television is a cultural beneficiary of shows like Will & Grace and The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which did not strive to make gayness normal but merely acted as primers on the topic. Jack, in all his wonderful campiness and his essential difference, is a model for us all.