I don't.2099net wrote:You can't deny he's a walking cliché!
She needed it! Did you notice how much she always felt she needed a man to balance her out. She says it numerous times during the show that she knows only 1 kind of man inside out, "If I understood anything about straight guys, do you think I'd be here with you 2 homos?" And her relationship with Will was not very healthy to her love life. Plus, Will has too many hang-up's to keep a boyfriend. Trust me, I know the type very well. Why do you think I don't have a boyfriend (don't answer that -2099net wrote:I notice Grace was allowed to get married
)? It's not because I spend too much time with my best gal pal. Will is sort of a tragic character, and there are a lot of them in the gay community. Now I'm speaking from only seeing the earlier seasons - I haven't watched much of the show lately. I'll get to it when I buy the later seasons on DVD (as they slowly, slowly, slowly trickle out on DVD). However, I have seen more than 55 episodes from various seasons.I don't know if you know this... But that is the Sitcom formula. They don't often change that much. At least not for the better. I realize you people in the UK get spoiled with overly intelligent programs that stay fresh throughout nearly their entire run (As Time Goes By, Fawlty Towers, Absolutely Fabulous, Coupling, Keeping Up Appearences - these are just those I've seen). But in America, we don't get very many great sitcoms. Will & Grace sure is no Roseanne - but again, we can't fault the show for what's wrong with the world. Plus, don't forget how many shows have experienced ratings dips because of added characters the viewers felt were only added for some dumb, hokey reason. They pick up on it quickly. Was it Growing Pains or Who's the Boss that added a little boy cousin to it because the little blonde-haired kid got too big and they needed a "cute" kid to boost ratings but the fans were really not happy (I think it was Boss, but other shows have done it too, One Day at a Time did it too).2099net wrote:quite frankly after the first year or so, I got fed-up with it. It was the same week-in week-out. Characters never evolved, the jokes were always the same and frankly I got bored with it.
And as for Willow and Tara, you're very right. It was very important to TV and I never alluded to the show being preachy for that reason (no, very much in the way the X-Men movies have been, I'm talking about the episodes with Big Dogs and Octopi-like people fighting, the families squabbling the Fake-Costume people, I believe it was Xander's human family bitching that the Fake-Costume people aren't like them - who wouldn't side with them? They're Fake-Costume people for goodness sake / the Xander's Wedding episode is just 1 good example of this, which I admit branched off into Angel, but these are too poor metaphors for race - no need to Invent brand new races, we already had movies about "don't kill the Alien, he's just visiting - he's our friend" in E.T., Mac and Me, and countless other movies if you think about it, so if it's Aliens, it's been done before, and if it's black / colored - no need to tiptoe around the real issue, none whatsoever).
But don't forget that Will & Grace came first, and it was that show's success that warmed TV audiences up to Willow's "lifestyle." I use quotes, I am explaining in case you need it, not because I ever believed it to be that but as a constant example of how we need shows like Will & Grace to give us very human portraits of gay people to offset what the people who don't understand are always saying. Human = flawed. Only a moron looks to gay lawyers to be John Wayne's or gay high school/college students to be Xena's. So that's why most gay superheroes are in the comic books. One day, we'll get gay characters who can do everything, but for now Will & Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will do just fine (even though they're both cancelled, so they'll have to do it in reruns). Don't pretend that Willow did so much without any help from Will & Grace, or I'll have to insist that you're talking through/thinking from a part of the body less often used for conversation. And if you really want to harp on this "cliche" thing, remember that Will & Grace was a comedy. Cliches can be used celebratorily. As they were for blacks in The Jeffersons, What's Happening?, and Good Times - and even further back in history during those infamous radio shows like Amos & Andy that most people now find archaic.
If you ask me - Buffy had it a little too easy in every way. It's much more challenging to embrace the stereotype, knowing in your heart and mind that it's not true. But you don't really understand it. So while you mean well, you're not expert in this scenario.
Hey, Mr. International Culture Expert, why don't you try living in America for a few months before judging us that way. Miracles don't come every day, bridges aren't built overnight. We're lucky if we get 1 legitimate national break every 4 years! People have to make things happen for themselves. TV can't do everything by itself, though apparently it seems you think Buffy must have been all-that and World Peace. It was a far too self-involved to be more than a superficial blip on the Pop Culture radar. Time will wear away this show's popular conscious and all that will be left are the cults. The things they say about Star Trek geeks will soon become Buffy geeks. But Will & Grace will be remembered as the show that made good on Ellen's promise (silent). The show's great gift wasn't that it braved the final frontier, but that it finally presented Working / Regular gay characters for the first time who stayed on TV, won audiences over, and managed to say a lot - whether you want to recognize it or not.2099net wrote:Finally, if American television as late as 1998 needed an in-offensive show like Will and Grace to give it a kick up the ass, you may as well all go back to living in caves - it seems to be how civilized and tolerant the nation appears to have been.
Season 1 has its share of bad episodes (Teacher's Pet, Out of Mind, Me Robot etc.), but there's some really good ones in there as well. It only gets better, though.
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