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STUDIO: Lions Gate
MSRP: $5.99
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 45 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• The Final Bow featurette
• The Last Words: interviews with the cast
The Pitch
Will, Grace, Jack and Karen give it to us for the final time.
The Humans
Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes, Megan Mullaly, Harry Connick, Jr.
"Waitaminute Eric, what do you mean you’re not really gay?"
The Nutshell
In this series finale of the show about a gay man and his best friend, a straight woman, who live together and share everything except the bed, we get a look into how their lives are going to be in the future and how current issues get resolved and how they’ll shape that future. The show skips back and forth in time as Grace (Messing), who is pregnant with ex-husband Leo’s (Connick) child, has to make the decision whether or not to go with him to Rome or stay and raise her kid with Will. Her decision will drastically affect their long friendship, and not completely for the better. Meanwhile, Karen’s divorce from Stan has not yielded her the financial windfall that she thought it would, and so Jack is forced to do the unthinkable and shack up with uber-fairy millionaire, Beverly Leslie, in order to take care of her as she did him all those years. Those whom you think will end up together and those you think won’t don’t necessarily turn out the way you thought. There’s even a death involved.
"Damnit Sean, you’re going to tell me right now: are you really gay or not?!"
The Lowdown
Didn’t catch this show on a regular basis, but I’d see it now and then and could appreciate the sharp writing and performances all around. Messing and McCormack are affecting in their performances of the long-time friends and their relationship has its ups and downs in this episode alone, and nicely summarizes the friendship over the course of the entire show. However, the real draw for the show in my opinion has always been the zany supporting cast of Mullaly and Hayes. To this day, not sure if Hayes is gay or not (McCormack has a wife of nine years, but that could be a front…), but he was superb as the preening man chaser Jack. Equally as impressive is Mullaly as spoiled and mouthy socialite Karen. She probably had more one-liners in the show’s run than a decade of Lenny Bruce concerts.
Some of the stars definitely needed more time in hair and makeup every morning…
This finale had some of the same elements that came to mind in the Mad About You finale, mostly due to the time jumps, but it nicely shied away from screwing the pooch the way some finales do when they decide to whack a major character or have characters go on wild tangents that betray who they were during the entirety of the show’s run. The producers even threw in a little musical number with Mullaly and Hayes that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Will & Grace will be known as one of, if not the first sitcom to feature gay characters in the lead roles, but I think it’ll also be known for being a pretty good show in its own right.
Strangely, this is how Hayes would show up to work every morning, before going to wardrobe.
The Package
The show looks fine, although it is in TV standard. The audio is Dolby (what isn’t these days) and is fine also. The cover art is respectable, although considering that half the cast is supposed to be gay, the bottom half of the shot has cornhole written all over it. There’s two special features: The Final Bow, a 12-minute featurette which showcases the behind-the-scenes looks at the filming of the finale; and The Last Words, a good 25-minute piece featuring interviews with the producers and the cast, more behind-the-scenes and some bloopers.
"Here’s to making the top of the 700 Club’s Most Hated Shows list for the eighth year in a row."