Will & Grace: godsend or walking cliché?

Nah, you have an ally here, but I've hated it from day one. I also hate how the dude who plays Will needs to constantly bring up his wife in interviews and award acceptance speeches as if to scream to the world: "I only PLAY a gay character on TV....I'm not GAY!" Grrrrrr....

Yay! I thought that you might agree with me, cav. I would never have ranked it in my top... 500... shows, but it just got worse and worse to me.

As for the 'wife', I'm thinking façade...

I never liked it.

It's only saving grace (sic) is that it kept the idea alive. It has moments of really inventive comedy but too much of it is formula. Now if they could do a gay show something like "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Now, Curb Your Enthusiasm is an absolute riot :-D

Can you imagine a gay character stumbling through all the pitfalls of gay society? He wouldn't know if he was coming (sic) or going.

<shakes head> shame on all of you :-)

I actually liked Will&Grace until about season 2, when the phenomenon you all have described started to occur :-)

Now I get my dose of gay-ness from Queer Eye, and I'm happier for it :-)

It was one of my favorite shows.
Now I hardly ever watch it.

Harry Connick was definitely a jump-the-shark moment. I mean, he's cute, but...

The whole premise loses its raison d'etre if Grace is married, even if she's rife with insecurity blah blah blah... It was funny when she was single and insecure, annoying when she became married to a gorgeous sweet doctor and was still insecure.

. . . especially since the entire grab of the first season was that at any minute Will would give it all up to be with Grace. . . :-)

It's the kind of show, like Friends, that I have never been able to watch for an entire episode.

I wonder how many more series both of these (Friends and Will & Grace) will last?

I loved a few episodes of the first season of Will and Grace. Haven't seen it for at least a year. It started to graaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaate on my nerves.

I often think the Brits had/have the right idea. If you have enough 'concept' for 6 episodes, then there will be 6 episodes. Don't try to squeeze 13/16/21/26 episodes out of a 6 episode concept. Give us 6 great episodes and GO AWAY, far away, til you come up with more great ideas.

That's my ideal too, ehBeth; I think that you should leave in good esteem; six crappy series will usually diminish one's opinion of a show, even if there were two good ones. Seinfeld stopped before it began to be monotonous: Frasier didn't, which is a shame; I feel that the last episode should have been Niles and Daphne realising... something was lost after that happened.

Yeah, it's a classic thing. There's this whole "will they or won't they?" tension, then the answer is "they will!" and it goes waaaaaaaaaaay downhill. Happened with "Cheers", happened with "Frasier", happened with "Friends", basically (they've milked Ross and Rachel for so long I don't CARE anymore), "Moonlighting" is another famous example, etc., etc.

I liked "Mad About You" in that it showed them AFTER the happily-ever-after wedding, didn't bother with will they or won't they. BUT, of course, where it went bad is when they injected will they or won't they with the whole therapy/ threat of divorce. Oh, and the kid. I guess "will they or won't they have a kid", and the answer being "they will", is its own problem.

Anyway, yeah, wish they would quit when they're ahead.

What one has to realize is that these series don't depend on miraculous story revelations but ones involvement with the characters and some new jokes. They're all feature length movies streched out for hours so they are really the fast food of entertainment. They had the opportunity to play Will's attraction to Grace and visa versa which took about one season and then faltered. They have come up with storylines to give Grace something else to do but, guess what, they've given virtually no storylines as a diversion for Will. They're still afraid of letting him get involved in a long time relationship? They play jokes on this but that certainly became tiresome quite quickly. Karen and Jack have have had more involving storylines than Will.

"Frazier" at least has tried to come up with some new inventive storylines like the Mavis murder case and that's been fun as the sibling rivalry is brought to a head.

"Friends" is going into a last season that should have ended last season.

More evidence that the brits do this sort of thing much better. I like that there is sometimes a two or three year gap between short series of episodes. You just KNOW that if they're coming back, they've thought of something new/different/interesting - and that they were able to convince the actors of it.

It is the pressure of the series "season" to which now, in truth is peppered with a lot of reruns. HBO and Showtime are wise in giving one just enough and then going to a long hiatus -- "The Sopranos" couldn't even get Emmy nominations one year because there were no new shows! But then, that show is worth rewatching just to pick up on all the enthralling nuances of the characters. I probably understand Tony Soprano better than any of my relatives or friends!