Is there still a place for Will & Grace?

American sitcoms are my guilty pleasure. It doesn't matter how hackneyed the writing is or how bored the cast are after 12 seasons of the same running gags, I will probably still be watching.

Part of me has always found them impressive. On multi-cam shows like Friends, Will & Grace and The Big Bang Theory what you are essentially watching is theatre. There's a fourth wall missing for the cameras and sometimes a live studio audience. An episode will probably be filmed in a day which is no easy task and in the case of some sitcoms it's even edited whilst still being filmed on a vision mixer like football!

The writing has to be amazing even to squeeze one chuckle out of each episode nevermind a season of 22 entertaining yet inoffensive daytime 20 minuters. The writers rooms for these things are huge especially in the case of my latest guilty pleasure Will & Grace which had a writers room of 12 for every episode.

Will & Grace is a multi-cam sitcom based around two friends. One gay and one straight as they navigate life and love together. I discovered the show whilst scrolling through Amazon Prime and was surprised that I'd never heard of it before especially since it has been running for so long, it's first series airing in 1998.

1998 was five years before gay marriage was legalised. Will & Grace was the first network TV show where the main cast had two gay men in it and, in its second series, the first network TV program to show a gay kiss on-screen.

After an 11 year hiatus Will & Grace returned to our screens in 2017 for series 9 and will continue to run until it's final series in 2020. The re-boot has been met with a lot of delight and support but also a surprising amount of backlash, this time from the community that fought so hard to keep it on the air in the first place.

As a new fan of the series this fascinated me. Why are we now resisting the re-boot of a series that was such a big advocate of LGBT+ representation on screen? What's the harm in enjoying a silly comedy for what it is? What kind of message do we want to send to networks regarding the kind of representation we want?

Buckle up because we're about to delve way too deeply into the social political contexts of a show that survives on a heavy diet of gay jokes and melodrama... I'm going to enjoy writing this one.

1. We're here we're queer

Let's take our minds back to 1998. Spice girls were on tour, denim jackets were in, hip hop owned the radio... that might have been last week come to think of it...

Despite the apparent similarities between the late 90's and today, for LGBT+ representation it was a very different time. "Gay" films, TV shows and books were very much kept within the community. Probably due to the social climate at the time that while better than decades before was still a hostile environment for many Americans, especially if you didn't live in one of the big cities.

Because of this a lot of queer media was shoved under the rug. Networks too scared to damage their reputation and loose large chunks of their audience.

The solution?

Comedy of course! Humour is the perfect advocacy tool. If a gay person is funny then they are not threatening. The quickest way possible to de-sexualise a character is to make them ridiculous. It's a device that has ruled over LGBT media since the beginning and has helped to form the camp gay man and the no-fun, masculine lesbian stereotypes. Of course these had existed prior but the way LGBT+ people were presented on screen blew these into the mainstream. In many ways, it worked. It completely dehumanized LGBT+ people and turned us into an ongoing gag.

Will & Grace was created very much with this mindset. Originally the main characters were side characters in a completely different story until they were pitched to the network as having their own show. Will & Grace was a massive step forward for representation but was very clearly still a product for mass consumption. For example the gay lead is played by Eric McCormack who is straight and was probably cast in the role as, in his own words, a "safety net" for the network. Nobody knew what the reaction to the show was going to be so having a straight lead was probably a strategic move to "soften the blow". To balance out Will's lack of campiness we got the hilarious Sean Hayes as Jack.

While this character does develop over the course of the series, in the first few seasons Jack was very much there as the comedy buffer. A character so over the top he could not be sexualised and therefore entertaining to a larger audience.

What the first season does is sell the gay stereotype without having to really deal with it directly. Will and Grace share more kisses in the first season than any gay character because... there are no gay kisses in the first season.

2. When Comedy met Advocacy

Despite the early seasons limitations the fact of the matter is... this show is funny. Do I understand all the 90's references? No. Are the jokes and themes a little outdated? Sure. To watch shows like this it's vital to watch them through time goggles and to the writers credit while the network may have given them a list of do's and don'ts what they manage to do is actually talk about LGBT+ issues in ways that makes people listen. 90% of the humour is self deprecating gay jokes but that's not too far from my sense of humour anyway.

Occasionally they'll be a joke that goes too far. All sitcoms I think eventually reach their capacity of clever humour where the crass is the only place they have left to go but this show always seems to recover from those slumps quickly and it's kind of hard to stay mad when Will is grabbing onto Grace's boobs so her leaking water bra doesn't spray expensive paintings.

And then... we got a kiss.

In season 2 Jack becomes angry about a cut gay kiss from his favourite TV show. Furious he drags Will down to the TV network to complain only to be completely disregarded. Luckily after their meeting they run into a news reporter doing a segment and decide to take over. Will eventually throwing his pride to the wind as he pulls Jack in for a snog live on air. It's over the top, it's cheesy, obviously I loved it.

But, it wasn't a romantic kiss. It was a kiss to make a point and even after the original smackeroo it takes another half season before the boys get any romantic action, but hey, baby steps.

Will & Grace wears this first kiss moment as a badge of honour and great... good for them. To do that must have taken a lot of guts especially from the actors and network representatives who would have been in the firing line. Unfortunately Sean didn't have the same safety net as Eric and apparently received death threats during the season. Sean came out in 2010 saying that he had been too scared to do so until that point even though his character was the most open of all of them.

This might have contributed to the face that after that initial moment they seem to consider their job done and even in the re-booted season when so much has changed their advocacy seems to be stuck on that first baby step.

Is it a daytime sitcoms responsibility to be political advocates?

Considering how much Trump bashing goes on in the latest seasons I really don't see why not.

3. The LBT+

So Will & Grace does have its place in queer media history and it did break down a lot of barriers for gay men. Where the show hasn't aged so well is in its representation of everyone else under the rainbow flag.

Obviously the first aim of the show is to be funny so when you only have a character for a few minutes, stereotyping will be the base but it needn't stay so blatantly mean-spirited. Any reference to the trans community is usually through jokes about men being too effeminate to be men, which has problems onto itself. There are hints that Karen is Bi throughout the series but it is later disproven and lesbians get a pretty rough deal on this show in general. It takes 8 goddam seasons before we get a non-stereotypical lesbian on the show or at least one who smiles. I mean, I did laugh at the jokes made about lesbians but it was an angry laugh!

Again this is something that hasn't been rectified in the re-boot which, if I'm perfectly honest, is the most reasonable reason for disliking this show. It promised us so much growth but the only thing that changed was in season 1 gay marriage wasn't legal and in season 10 it is and it could have shown us so much more!

4. What's new?

The re-boot of the show I am delighted to say, is still as funny as the show ever was. The characters may be older but the energy behind them is still there and allows for them to tell different stories. One of my favourite episodes of the re-boot is episode 2 of season 9 when Jack and Will both have dates with men half their age. While originally smug that they are still attractive Will finds the difference between his own experience growing up gay and that of his date so strange that he gives up the chances of anything romantic to lecture him on gay history. The date, just for info, is played by Ben Platt from Dear Evan Hansen, one of my favourite celebrity cameos.

I think this clip sums up quite nicely why there may still be a place for Will & Grace. Would it be nice if they stepped up their inclusion game a little? Yes absolutely but on the other side the reason the show is so funny is because they use the characters and the dynamic they already have established so well and are not afraid to prioritise story over everything else. Part of the reason we can enjoy the LGBT+ representation we have on screen today is because shows like Ellen and Will & Grace paved the way.

Also, as hard as it is to believe, nothing has really come along to replace Will & Grace. If anyone can name a multi-cam sitcom with a majority LGBT+ cast and focus... let me know I'd be interested to watch it and compare. Eric McCormack and Debra Messing's chemistry also deserves a mention because it's one of the most believable and enjoyable TV friendships on screen, second only to Jack and Karen maybe.

To conclude, Will & Grace is a highly entertaining show that, while still has its issues, has been a big part in shaping our current TV climate. When the series ends for good in 2020 I will be sad but know it's probably about time and I hope that something just as good will come along to take its place.