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eichy815 · 8 years ago

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‘Will & Grace’...Saving Face?

Millions of sitcom fans fondly remember the 1998-2006 NBC multi-camera comedy Will & Grace – exploring the platonic friendship between a gay male and a straight female. Needy lawyer Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and self-centered interior designer Grace Adler (Debra Messing) bounced off of each other as they endured a comedic roller-coaster of heartwarming camaraderie offset by resentment and miscommunication. Their misadventures were punctuated by the constant presence of their scene-stealing mutual friends: flamboyant wannabe-thespian Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) and egotistical socialite Karen Walker (Megan Mullally).

Last October, creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan wrote a ten-minute “mini-episode” reuniting Messing, McCormack, Mullally, and Hayes as their original characters. In the “webisode,” Grace, Will, Karen, and Jack deal with the controversies of the upcoming 2016 Presidential Election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The “reunion episode,” filled with plenty of social commentary and familiar quirks from these four classic characters, was a big hit with viewers – and, apparently, with NBC. The Peacock Network has green-lit a “limited series” revival of Will & Grace, to air ten episodes sometime during the 2017-18 season.

Many observers are anticipating that NBC will air the rebooted version of Will & Grace sometime during the fall, rather than holding it over for midseason. I personally think NBC should schedule Will & Grace in its old time slot of 9:00 PM (Eastern/Pacific) on Thursday nights. It could air during the ten weeks leading up to NBC’s mid-November premiere of Thursday Night Football; and, its companion sitcom (in the 9:30 PM time slot) could be The Happy Peppers, a new multicamera sibling-based comedy starring Genevieve Angelson (House of Lies) and Jon Rudnitsky (Saturday Night Live). Mutchnick is also a co-creator of The Happy Peppers.

But, in spite of the plethora of TV series “sequels” that are being revitalized across the television landscape, others have asked the question: can a sequel to Will & Grace actually be any good?

In November 2016, entertainment writer Marc Berman (commonly known online as “Mr. Television”) expressed skepticism and concern over whether a sequel to Will & Grace could actually be interesting or relevant in the modern era. Berman cites his desire to see a Will & Grace reboot return to the ambience and writing style of the show’s first few seasons – and he slams what he felt was “lazy writing” from its later seasons. He points to what he views as an overuse of gay jokes, crass humor, and unnecessary (in his mind) big name guest stars.

According to Berman, there are some improvements that the ten-episode Will & Grace sequel could hypothetically bring to the franchise: Karen’s sharp-tongued maid, Rosario (Shelley Morrison), being utilized more frequently; developing Jack’s professional life; and disregarding the flashforward from the May 2006 series finale.

I agree with Berman on his first point, as I love me some Rosario! And more personal development for Jack would certainly be welcome – although Berman seems to conveniently forget that Jack was indeed employed as a cable network TV executive during Will & Grace’s last couple of seasons.

But on his final point, I believe Berman is absolutely dead-wrong.

Like it or not, the flashforward to 2026 – at least, in some iteration – is part of Will & Grace’s canon. I hate it when any TV series completely disregards past canonical developments in its storylines, as that is a true sign of “lazy writing.” Of course, when TV writers want to negate a past plot development, there are other creative ways of “retconning” the storyline so that the established canon isn’t 100% contradicted.

This is what the upcoming Will & Grace revival should strive to do. Entertainment writers Tierney Bricker and Chris Harnick recently co-wrote a speculative piece speculating how Mutchnick and Kohan might conceivably accomplish this.

Some of Bricker’s and Harnick’s suggestions are rather tongue-in-cheek – such as doing a crossover with NBC’s time travel sci-fi/actioner, Timeless (which may not even be renewed for next season), or making the revival into a dark comedy spoof in the spirit of NBC’s The Good Place.

Others of Bricker’s and Harnick’s ideas are more plausible. One of their proposals would be to give Will Truman and Grace Adler totally separate storylines, using an Arrested Development-esque model of having Jack and Karen serve as the “ambassadors” between Will and Grace, on behalf of the viewing audience. This technique wouldn’t disrupt the show’s continuity, but it would pose the obvious drawback of preventing McCormack and Messing from interacting on-screen together.

Another proposal from Bricker and Harnick would be establishing that the series-ending flashforwards from 2008 and 2026 were all just a dream. Presumably, this would have been from the singular perspective of either Will, Grace, Jack, or Karen. This would allow Will and Grace to heavily interact in a “reset” while not entirely negating the presence of those flashforwards.

For those of you who don’t remember the series finale: Will cuts Grace out of his life after she inexplicably gets back together with her ex-husband, Leo (Harry Connick Jr.), who’d cheated on Grace back in Season 7. The timeline jumps forward two years, to 2008: where Will is back with his ex-boyfriend, Vince (Bobby Cannavale). Grace and Will, both in happy relationships, reunite temporarily – but, once again, they determine that their rekindled friendship can’t really sustain itself.

Then, the timeline jumps ahead once again – to the year 2026, where, through a twist of fate, Will’s son and Grace’s daughter cross paths as new college freshmen; romantic chemistry is implied between Will and Grace’s kids (both of whom are presumably heterosexuals). Obviously having missed each other during their time apart, Grace and Will finally make a genuine effort to reconnect as friends; the final scene shows them watching old syndicated episodes of ER together while they discuss their kids’ upcoming nuptials.

In light of this canonical glimpse into Grace and Will’s future, Bricker and Harnick additionally float one idea that’s rather intriguing: to have the Will & Grace revival be, essentially, a multi-camera comedic version of NBC’s popular new hit, This is Us – where Will and Vince’s son, Ben (Ben Newmark), and Grace and Leo’s daughter, Lila (Maria Thayer), reminisce about their parents’ adventures back in their younger days. This would sort of be a blend between the storytelling technique of This is Us as well as the approach of flashforward scenes driving the narration as in How I Met Your Mother.

Of course, the flashback/flashforward reminiscing of Ben and Lila wouldn’t really work unless the original actors who portrayed them were available to appear at least on a part-time basis. Newmark has been a behind-the-scenes Executive Producer of assorted other series, while Thayer is an on-screen series regular on TruTV’s comedy Those Who Can’t (and, since TruTV is affiliated with NBC’s owner, Time Warner, they could very easily arrange to film around Thayer’s schedule). But I really dislike when either sitcoms or dramas abruptly recast characters with actors who look or sound NOTHING like the original (the alternating Beckys from Roseanne was a little different, because the in-jokes to the recasting where actually interwoven into the scripts themselves). And yes, I realize that they recast John Slattery with Steven Weber as Will’s brother, in Season 8. It doesn’t change my (and other viewers’) aversion to any “miscast recasts.”

My own solution would be go with some variation of Bricker and Harnick’s Arrested Development / How I Met Your Mother hybridization for Will & Grace’s ten-episode sequel – with a little bit of retconning to actually force continuous interaction between Will and Grace themselves.

Here’s what they could do: set in 2017 or 2018, Jack and Karen conspire with Leo and Vince (assuming that NBC can get Connick and Cannavale back for some return guest appearances) to “reunite” Will and Grace against the conflict-torn former best friends’ wishes. Obviously, if either Connick or Cannavale are unavailable, they can easily be written as doing something else off-screen. These ten episodes could even be set over the course of two or three weeks, along a self-contained episodic timeline (after all, the final season of How I Met Your Mother took place almost entirely within the timeline of one weekend!).

Obviously, the season finale would feature another fight or tiff...snowballing and creating yet another rift between Grace and Will. If additional seasons of Will & Grace are ordered beyond 2018, this would need to be addressed accordingly. But it wouldn’t be unprecedented: at the end of Season 2 and into the first portion of Season 3, besties Jack and Karen also had a falling out that they eventually repaired.

So how would this approach end up gelling with the canonical insinuation that Grace and Will had remained estranged from each other for nearly twenty years? Again, through a little bit of retconning. It could be established that Will and Grace remained estranged for a majority of those two decades...but they reunited for brief periods, every now and then (perhaps sometimes involuntarily – again, due to the other characters orchestrating it). This would also allow the 2016 election-themed “reunion” episode to be canonical.

Maybe there were unique circumstances under which Will and Grace reunited, by happenstance, in the months leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election (hence the content of the “reunion episode”). But, later on in early-2017, Grace and Will would find themselves divided once again by a petty squabble in the aftermath of Trump’s contentious election. This could seamlessly be portrayed via a flashback sequence – then jump to several months later, when events (perhaps tragic events) cause Grace and Will to temporarily reconcile and hang out as BFFs once again?

Besides, who wouldn’t want to see Leo and Vince in a fun little “bromance” of their own, together? This could only serve as the source of additional tension between Grace and Will themselves.

Such retconning would fall in line with the on-again off-again nature of Will and Grace’s platonic friendship. Although they were unquestionably supportive of one another throughout their lives, a lot of palpable underlying hostility seemed to always linger between Grace Adler and Will Truman. Some of this can probably be attributed to the remnants of sexual tension that had always remained within the context of their friendship. It’s also very conceivable that Will and Grace would make the conscious decision to NOT introduce Ben and Lila to each other, as young kids – after all, if Will and Grace are hesitant about the prospect of whether their friendship can continue to work again, I seriously doubt they would choose to bring each other’s children into their mutual lives.

Perhaps, in the show’s timeframe, the period spanning from late-2016 to around 2019 was actually riddled with spurts of Will and Grace awkwardly trying to revitalize their friendship – and succeeding, for short periods of time...but ultimately growing apart, once again, due to lack of empathy and other toxic factors that get in the way. Eventually, this gives way to Grace and Will becoming estranged on a more long-term basis...not reuniting for another nine or ten years until they cross paths again at Lila and Ben’s dorm in the year 2026. Maybe, because of all they’d been through together, the time lapse “felt” like longer than it actually was, from both Grace and Will’s perspectives?

Indeed, the October 2016 “reunion episode” was filled with the same layers of raunchiness, implied interpersonal conflict, and character-based potshots that were so often seen during show’s original eight-season run. Anyone who was watching it could sense that these four friends had a ton of unresolved-but-unspoken issues festering between them. The four of them each being so incredibly self-involved also still rang true, even after ten years off the air.

For example, Grace is more upset about Jamie Dornan having an “ass double” than she is about Trump becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Meanwhile, Will is hopelessly infatuated with both House Speaker Paul Ryan and journalist Anderson Cooper. Karen’s own flighty support of Trump is due to her personal friendship with him and Melania – peppered by Karen cluelessly spewing bigotry without really realizing it. Jack, for his part, is riled up and bitter over how “Brangelina” announced their breakup during the same week when his own relationship fizzled out (Jack’s boy toy, Dakota, apparently broke up with Jack via text message), resenting the celebrities for allowing their problems to overshadow his own personal drama.

The main characters all retain their hopeless attributes. Will still cracks lame jokes that no one finds funny. Karen doesn’t realize that Barack Obama was America’s first black president. Jack hasn’t even decided whether he’s going to vote – in fact, he’s under the impression that the election will be held on the first day in December. And Grace tries to make Karen feel guilty for being a Trump supporter by reminding Karen how Karen’s maid, Rosario, could face deportation under Trump as a person of Mexican descent; Will then promptly reminds Grace that Rosario is actually El Salvadoran, to which Grace sneers, “What’s the difference?”

The rest of the episode involves Will and Grace each trying to convince Jack to vote for Hillary, while Karen tries to convince her “poodle” to vote for Donald (especially after Jack reveals he’s registered to vote in Pennsylvania – a pivotal swing state). Karen tries to use xenophobia, warmongering, and invoking natural disasters to take advantage of Jack’s naiveté. At the same time, Grace tries to appeal to Jack by invoking patriotism, the concept of shattering the “Glass Ceiling,” and the importance of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Of course, Grace mistakenly thinks that Hillary used to be U.S. Secretary of Defense – until Will corrects her and points out that Hillary was actually U.S. Secretary of State. Grace ends her pitch to Jack by hilariously serenading him with an ear-piercing rendition of “Go Tell it on the Mountain” – at which point, Will and Karen play rock/paper/scissors to determine which of them will be tasked with painfully pinching Grace to snap her out of her vapid spell.

But Jack doesn’t like the fact that Hillary wears pantsuits.

Will finally manages to convince Jack to vote for Hillary by informing him that Katy Perry (whom Jack worships) has endorsed Hillary. The episode closes out with Rosario observing the wayward quartet, as she scoffs: “Talk about a basket of deplorables!”

Overall, the episode was really well-done and flowed beautifully. It captured the characters’ heavily-flawed essences with absolute perfection. And, contrary to Berman’s opinion, I believe the Will & Grace revival could only be enhanced by snagging some cameo appearances from actual real-life celebrities who are timely to today’s headlines – maybe even Anderson Cooper, Jamie Dornan, or Katy Perry, themselves? Unlike many critics out there, I really enjoyed high-profile celebrities appearing as themselves in guest spots on Will & Grace – Candice Bergen, Bebe Neuwirth, Sandra Bernhard, and Cher provided some of the best ones!

In fact, Will & Grace should try to bring back as many recurring characters as possible – if they can be organically worked into the storylines. Jack’s biological son, Elliot (Michael Angarano). Will’s demented mirror-image-of-Grace gal pal, Val (Molly Shannon). Sociopathic hospital nurse, Sheila (Laura Kightlinger). Grace’s freespirited sister, Janet (Geena Davis), and their moody younger sister, Joyce (Sara Rue). Will’s playful nephew, Jordy (Reed Alexander). Karen’s forlorn perennial bartender, Smitty (Charles C. Stevenson Jr.). Will and Grace’s charades-loving mirror-image best friends, Rob and Ellen (Tom Gallop and Leigh-Allyn Baker).

Hell, they could even find a way to bring back JoMarie Payton as the sarcastic office assistant, Mrs. Freeman. Devise an excuse to write in Reginald VelJohnson as a cop for a stunt casting bit – and have a little mini-Family Matters reunion between Carl and Harriette Winslow.

The only character who it would be difficult to resuscitate would be Karen’s neurotic frenemy, Beverley Leslie (American Horror Story’s Leslie Jordan) – who entered a marriage-of-convenience with Jack to help Karen recoup her loss of fortune. The diminutive Beverley ultimately dies after an abrupt wind sweeps him off the edge of a balcony in 2008 – and Jack inherits Beverley’s fortune, becoming a platonic “sugar daddy” to a suddenly-broke Karen. There are, however, several ways in which the writing team could bring back Beverley Leslie: as a ghost who haunts both Jack and Karen, having faked his death and being sentenced to house arrest, or even in the form of a long-lost twin brother (yes, it’s a soap opera cliché – but it’s Will & Grace!).

Overall, there’s a lot of great potential for the Will & Grace revival – regardless of whether or not it runs past 2018. But I would implore its creative team to AVOID making the cardinal mistake of completely disregarding canon and continuity.

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