Not A Couple Show Notes: Will & Grace Episode 3.14— “Brothers, A Love Story”

NotACouple
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read
In our own way, aren’t we all really just here for the onion blossom?

Because nothing good can last, this episode marks the farewell of Matt.

Not Matthew, of course, co-host of this podcast and really more of a Grey’s Anatomy lover than a Grey’s Anatomy leaver. But with “Brothers, A Love Story,” Patrick Dempsey gives us a farewell kiss, after his character has a meeting with John Wilkes Booth aka is assassinated.

We know Will will find happiness before this show concludes its initial run. And while it’s too bad that happiness couldn’t have been with McDreamy, at least it’s good that Will sends his former lover packing with a burst of queer power that can at times be a little lacking on this show.


Summary: Patrick Dempsey’s guest star run on W&G wraps up with him being a closeted asshole! Surprise! Looking past this problematic plotline, Matthew and Tess also speculate about how W&G can get queerer in its second run.

“This week’s episode was sponsored by Anti-Incest Dating Services, coming up with things to call your partner that aren’t ‘your brother’ since 1994.”

00:00: Trigger warning: Tess and Matthew make gross vomiting noises.

00:40: Your favorite nonfictional platonic duo (and Matthew’s sister) are back from London.

02:05: This episode really just has the one plotline — Will’s digging his relationship with Patrick Dempsey, but then surprise the sports journalist is SUPER FUCKING CLOSETED.

02:29: Does Patrick Dempsey’s character going by “Matt” instead of “Matthew” foreshadow that he’s going to pretend he’s a straight? (TL;DR: Yes.)

04:01: It’s too bad for Will that this episode exists, because for the first five minutes his relationship with Matt is going fantastic.

WILL: “Hey, TV person.”
MATT: “Hey, you.”
WILL: “I thought I’d come down to surprise you. Congratulations. You did — and you looked — great.”
MATT: “I don’t care about that. How great?”
WILL:Really great.”

06:11: Tess has a bad case of deja vu from watching Grace attempt to tell Will to break up with Matt.

Tess: “Literally I’ve had these conversations with Matthew before.”
Matthew: “I’m sorry, okay?”
Tess: “You’ve been in a relationship and it’s not going well — normally it’s not ‘So break up with him’; my line is almost always ‘So talk to him.’”
Matthew: “Maybe it should be ‘break up with him.’”
Tess: “Maybe it should!”

08:40: This episode falls short because it tries to do too much and too little with this plotline.

Matthew: “It’s frustrating. This is a good episode, from one standpoint, because it’s demonstrating how to be proud of yourself, but also it’s not — it’s not there. I don’t know how to say it. It’s not like it’s handling it in a straight way; it’s a very gay episode.
Tess: “Right. It’s just simultaneously too long and too short. There’s not enough time devoted to it but at the same time the episode drags forever because they keep telling us what’s happening instead of showing us.”

10:51: Patrick Dempsey’s character really gets shortchanged by spending so much of this episode offscreen, since it forces us to view him in the worst light.

12:08: Grace deserved more time this week too, so we can properly understand and applaud her for sticking to her principles: food and pride.

WILL: “What — What are you doing? You gonna join us?”
GRACE: “No. I thought about it, and I cannot, in good conscience, have dinner with you two. I’m not gonna be a party to your lie.”
WILL: “So, what, you’re just here to judge me?”
GRACE: “Will, believe it or not, I have better things to do with my life. I’m here for the onion blossom. So don’t worry. As soon as they call number 39, I’m out of here.”

13:41: Matthew and Tess try and fail to figure out how this could have been a two-part episode.

14:53: There’s something especially true-to-life in Will’s struggle to put his need to be loved — not, significantly, his love for the other person — over his own feelings of self-worth.

16:08: It’s interesting that Matt chooses not just to lie about being gay, but to lie about how he feels about gay people — a further step into the self-loathing closet that makes him definitively the wrong partner for Will.

17:44: Matthew ponders whether the W&G revival will do a better job of making its queer characters liberal radicals than in their original run.

20:20: When all is said and done, Will may be single, but at least he’s not straight.

Some gay plays: In case you’re interested, here’s some details on (now-closed) Rotterdam and the National Theatre’s production of Angels in America.

Gay first names: We didn’t think we were going to find any support for our (obviously true) theory that most well-adjusted gays go by their full name instead of a nickname, but here we are on a blog called WEHOville reading about how a guy ironically named Hank not Henry totally agrees with us.

Madison Square Garden: Tess and Matthew only think of Madison Square Garden as a concert venue too, but objectively I guess it is better known as the home of the New York Knicks, Rangers and Liberty, and the Big East tournament, and boxing, and the Westminster Dog Show. Hey, that last one is sort of gay!

Prior Waltering: Matthew is making this face a lot now.

Rocky? Doctor Scott?: This always seems funnier than it really is pause not it’s always funny.

Okay but Derek Shepherd is the worst: Since we haven’t really done a ton of Grey’s Anatomy pontificating since Patrick Dempsey joined W&G, this is our last chance. So: While many, many Grey’s viewers were devastated by the loss of McDreamy in Season 11 (oh man that’s so many seasons ago already)…we were not among them, and we were not the only ones. After all, the early seasons of Grey’s clearly established that Derek was not a super-great guy — for Bailey’s sake, everyone, the original cliffhanger was a reveal that he had a secret wife out east! — but his middle seasons seemed to suggest that was a thing of the past now that he was in True Love (TM). But after the big Season 8 plane crash (RIP Mark and Lexi), Grey’s turned Derek into a grieving, crippled rage monster (good character development!) for a year but then forgot to turn it off for Seasons 10 and 11. The jury is still out on whether or not this was on purpose…after all, Cristina does give Meredith a big speech about being the sun at the end of Season 10, and the rumors that Dempsey got fired for causing problems on set date all the way back to the original “Derek goes to DC” plotline. In the end, it’s called Grey’s Anatomy for a reason, you know?

Next Episode: S3E14: “My Uncle the Car”

NotACouple

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Will & Grace podcast run by @TheRealSpiffen and @matthewreddin. We upload on Thursdays!

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