The Will & Grace Reboot That Nobody Asked For Is Here
Ok, Maybe My Mum Will Be Pretty Excited About It
In looking at some of best episodes of the year recently, we took a moment to rag on how dismal NBC’s sitcom lineup has been looking for the past couple of years. Of course, the recent addition of Superstore, The Good Place, Trial & Error and Great News seem to be steering things right again, but you can see why some executives might have been pushing to get back to the network’s glory days. I mean, NBC gave us Cheers, Frasier, Friends and 3rd Rock From the Sun, just to name a few. Oh, and also Will & Grace. Yep.
So, given the choice of which classic sitcom to revive, NBC went with this one. Y’know, the one with the gay characters who (hilariously) shout “We’re gaaaaaaaay!” every three seconds while the studio audience loses their fucking minds, as the skinny redhead and pill addict look on smiling, shrugging and adding “Yep, they sure are gay!”
And look, Will & Grace deserves all credit for being such a massive success throughout the ’90s and early ’00s, a time when gay characters were a rarity on television. That said, the humour and characters are so entrenched in the standard punchline mindset of “Can you believe how gay these guys are?!” that it’s gonna be pretty awkward when set next to the more forward-thinking programming of 2017.
Just as a few examples of the variety of LGBT characters on television at the moment, consider Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Captain Holt, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s Titus Andromedon or Broad City‘s Ilana Wexler. Now compare any one of them with Jack (or “Just Jack!“), whose every moment of existence is a rainbow coloured, high pitched exclamation mark. He isn’t a character who happens to be gay, he’s a gay character and, these days, that makes all the difference, something I imagine will make Will & Grace a pretty tough sell for modern audiences.
By the way, I’m not saying I actually want a Friends reunion, because that would almost certainly be horrendous. But between that and whatever flaming nostalgic mess this is gonna be, could we at least see what Chandler’s up to? Then again, that would present a whole other conundrum seeing as the New York of Friends is one where maybe a dozen black people live in the entire city. Ah, the ’90s…
3 Replies to “The Will & Grace Reboot That Nobody Asked For Is Here”
As society changes/advances, so does television. Will and Grace was a relevant and hilarious representation of it time, and could very easily be a big old flop on the screens of today, but I fingers cross that surely they have thought about this societal difference and evolve the characters and their jokes accordingly! 🙂
Agreed, it seems that would be the only appropriate thing to do. But with Will & Grace, “appropriate” rarely enter into it. Something tells me they’ll stick with the same old punchlines and character traits and claim some sort of retro edginess or lack of political correctness. I think it’s gonna be bad.