Alright, has everyone seen the hot new Madonna video for Die Another Day? The sequences where good M battles evil M are visually arresting, and somehow mirror my own personal struggle within this column. The cynic inside of me wants to lament that Will & Grace is the only current sitcom on network television that regularly deals with homosexual characters and to complain that TV is too heterosexual for its own good. Yet, the optimist inside prefers to simply enjoy the comic brilliance of this gay staple series and celebrate its formidable power to challenge viewers with sexual and gender-based stereotypes. The victor of this particular battle has yet to be determined, though I think the optimist is winning.
Despite the calculating NBC hype machine, Will & Grace has managed to find a loyal audience that rivals Friends, and for good reason -- the sitcom of four friends is significantly funnier than the sitcom of six friends, even if Friends is indeed experiencing a self-proclaimed renaissance. The guys and girls of Friends may grab the attention of Nielsens and Emmy voters, but the girls and gals of Will & Grace seem to be having a lot more fun than ever their Central Perk counterparts had.
On Friends, the six talented actors often upstage one another with trite lines and generally create a unique atmosphere that promotes cutthroat competition. The battle each week is not fought for the audience, but rather between the individual actors. For example, a recent Friends found Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Ross (David Schwimmer) exchanging punches to demonstrate comedic skills in a prat fall face-off. This type of ruthless acting results in sequences that strain to entertain the viewer, as we frustratingly keep watching for no real reason, save for the eventual choice Rachel may or may not make between Ross and Joey.
The chemistry between Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullaly and Sean Hayes is surreally altruistic. Instead of upstaging one another, each actor consistently shares the scene without taking too much of a personal bite. Granted, the jokes are often little more than clichZs, humorous puns and broad physical humor, but the principles are smart enough to realize that chemistry always outlasts the writing. Even The Mary Tyler Moore Show had a few poor episodes, and Lord knows the final two seasons of Seinfeld shall remain lost forever in a deserted trash bin of this critic's memory.
Will & Grace savors a symmetrical simplicity that restricts each character to a given set of traits. While this season has shown the interesting development of gay male-straight female attempts at fertilization, Will & Grace remain the control-freak, emotionally unavailable gay man and his best gal pal, the erratic neurotic. These two perfectly compliment each other and are the perfect couple, despite differences in sexual orientation. On the flip side, you have an even more bizarre couple, Jack and Karen. Sure, Jack is a flaming stereotype without a job and with stars in his eyes (including Kevin Bacon -- he has memorized all of the actor's film nude scenes), and Karen is a pill popping, party-snob harpy, but these two children of Dionysus compliment each other perfectly. They are a post-modern Lucy and Ethel -- always into mischief, without bother of emotional consequence.
Friends is all about character interchangeability -- while the actors struggle to outshine one another, the characters lack identity. Notice how incestuous relationships are increasingly the strength of the series. In essence, it doesn't matter that Monica married Chandler, or that Rachel must choose between Ross and Joey. Joey might as well be married to Monica, and Phoebe could date Rachel. The jokes will always function around mistaken identity, as the show becomes an ongoing farce that loses character identity.
With Will & Grace, the couple is the central subtext of the series. Despite the lack of long-term relationships, each couple interacts to a degree of infinity, but without compromising the character. Notice how Will and Jack are often paired with each other, as are Karen and Grace, and even Rosario and Karen. Last week, Karen and Grace even shared a hot kiss, that was later mimicked between each remaining couple. The twosomes on Will & Grace seem to point to an ongoing theme that the mismatched couple is a basic for survival in the hectic dating world of the 21st century. Each couple needs the separate parts that work as the functional whole.
Will & Grace is a show that will always make us laugh with such lines as "Fairy Godfather" and "Hey Ladies" in reference to Jack and Will, or with Karen's sudden lesbian crush on Grace after the aforementioned kiss. The state of the gay/straight couple is alive and well on nearly the most consistent sitcom on network TV.
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