Poor “Will & Grace.” Word on the street is that the NBC sitcom, now in its fifth season, is as over as Jack’s magic career and Karen’s marriage. At cocktail parties and online, disappointed viewers inevitably agree that the show is in creative quicksand, unable to match its bright second season.
But “Will & Grace,” which reaches its 100th-episode milestone at 7:30 p.m. Thursday with a special hour-long episode, remains one of the best sitcoms on TV–middle-aged, perhaps, but still able to ring the hell out of its zingers. Even on an off night, Jack (Sean Hayes), Karen (Megan Mullally), Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing) are among TV’s most cathartic and lively characters ever. They are the closest thing we now have to Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer, who on “Seinfeld” inhabited a similarly comic New York where rage, narcissism and anxiety aren’t too far below the surface. The continued quality of “Will & Grace” bucks a trend whereby a top show bottoms out once its producers launch other series, in this case, “Good Morning Miami.”
The show’s critics like to point out that there have been some cheesy moves afoot, most notably the brief plot that found Will and Grace contemplating parenthood. At jumptheshark.com, a majority of online voters agree that the baby plot signaled the show’s creative death. Yes, there are few twists that can spoil a sitcom as surely as the addition of a baby –paging “Mad About You”–but ultimately the writers changed the characters’ minds.
What gives “Will & Grace” extra punch is the way it brings heavy issues to the surface and makes light of them. With a slightly subversive edge, it transforms its loaded subject matter–being gay–into lighthearted, mainstream punchlines.
