My Final Night with Will & Grace
After two separate runs totaling 11 seasons and 246 episodes over the course of 20 years, the groundbreaking NBC comedy Will & Grace aired its finale on Thursday night. Although the revival started to run out of steam midway, the show rallied for a lovely finale that righted almost all the wrongs of the original 2006 send-off and underscored the show’s undeniable legacy.
Author’s Note: This is the third article in the author’s series about Will & Grace. Click here for Part One, which analyzes the revival trend and recounts my night at an episode taping. Click here for Part Two, which recounts the cast’s appearance at PaleyFest to celebrate the success of the revival. Click here for Part Four, which reviews and ranks all of the holiday episodes.
21 years, 7 months, and 3 days later
On September 21, 1998 NBC premiered a sitcom that in many ways was a carbon copy of its 1990s “Must See TV” formula. The success of Seinfeld, Friends, and Mad About You led to a proliferation of sitcoms about sexy young people dealing with dating in a big city. The city was almost always New York and the ensemble was almost always exclusively white. The same was true of Will & Grace, but one thing set this one apart— two of the four lead characters were gay.
