Was it good for the gays?

For eight years, network television has regularly paraded gay characters through America's living rooms, courtesy of NBCs comedy hit Will & Grace. With the show's final episode coming up May 18, 2006, we asked some gay and lesbian writers for their thoughts about the show. Was it a revolutionary breakthrough for gay visibility or an embarrass in sexless minstrel show? The answers we got may surprise you.

Selling America a gay pal--and diet soda 

By Doug Wright 

Television producers aren't social pioneers; they shouldn't be confused with the heroic drag queens of Stonewall, Judy Shepard, or Mattachine Society founder Harry Hay. In our capitalist culture television is a marketing tool with a single message: consume. And the task of the TV producer is challenging but simple: to keep America watching through the commercial breaks.

The writers of Will & Grace had a daunting task--to offer up a show with gay characters that doesn't alienate anyone in their targeted demographic: people who buy things. It was a seemingly intractable problem, and yet they did it with incredible slyness; they made a gay show that charts the relationship between a man and a woman.

Grace might date or even marry, but Will was her priority. And who--at the end of the day--received Will's constant, unconditional love? Grace. Each episode concluded with the two of them munching crackers or brushing their teeth and thus reaffirming their primacy in each other's life. In this self-proclaimed gay show, heterosexual Americans experienced a reassuring trope--a husband and wife in a marriage without sex. (Hardly groundbreaking television, since Lucy and Ricky appeared in their twin beds in the 1950s.)

This prudent structure--which rendered a potentially outre subject as comfy as oatmeal--freed the creators of the show to subtly advance other agendas, portraying one of network television's first gay kisses, perspectives on gay parenting, "cures" for homosexuality, even the dicey topic of same-sex marriage. The minds behind Will & Grace were savvy enough to know that as long as these issues were safely embedded in the story of a man and a woman, they were permissible. And so they implanted them--week after week--with the delicacy of neurosurgeons.

Some enthusiasts suggest that--thanks to Will & Grace--every American, no matter how geographically remote or self-deluded, now knows a gay person: Will Truman! Will, however, is not a human being; he's a bunch of colored pixels, beamed over a satellite. Plenty of viewers will countenance things on the idiot box they'd never sanction in life, and guffawing at Will's one liners one day does not mean you'll vote against an antigay ballot measure the next.

Obviously, Will & Grace didn't represent our diversity any more than My Wife and Kids represents all of black America or George Lopez speaks for all Latinos. If at times it indulged in stereotypes like the Nelly Next Door or the Butch Gym Bunny, so be it. Since commedia dell'arte, humor has been built on archetype--the scoundrel servant or the shrewish wife.

But if Will & Grace failed to fully represent our lives as we live them, it wasn't the fault of the show's creators. It's the medium itself. Will Truman's job isn't to promote tolerance or cure HIV or lobby Washington on behalf of transgender youth; it's to provide the tenuous fabric that binds the new Mercedes S-Class to Diet Coke.

Wright won the Pulitzer Prize for I Am My Own Wife.

Will you stop now? By Dave White

Goodbye, Will & Grace. You were always boring and never really funny, and here's why--oh, wait, let me get this one nagging thing out of the way first. It s the answer to the obvious question people always ask you right after you tell them you never liked their favorite show. After they get that "Oh, you haters; you think you're better than everyone else" look on their face and try to make you feel bad for not understanding that the show in question was groundbreaking, important television that we all needed to get behind for the good of the community. That question is, "Well, what do you like?"

The answer is Seinfeld, Freaks and Geeks, and Arrested Development and, currently, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Simpsons, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and the U.K. version of The Office. See? I like comedy on TV. And I like gay humor on TV too. For example, I dug that episode of Aqua Teen where Master Shake had his teeth removed and then explained why by saying, "Having teeth is gay." That was funny.

OK, so back to the "here's why" thing I started with: From the get-go, W&G left me wondering why it even lasted through its first season, much less why it got picked up for more. It was about a dull skinny gay with no discernable personality traits beyond an obsession with clingy sweaters, and his best dull lady pal who was equally missing human traits. They were the best of friends, except for the part where they barely seemed to enjoy each other's company at all. Added to this mix was an annoying, twerpy second gay whose job it was to do Cher impersonations and to call the gay lawyer fat. The alcoholic chick with the big breasts was funny sometimes. But she was the only one. And that's because she openly hated the rest of them and loved herself. She was the Ted Baxter, the only consistent character in the bunch. The other three were at the mercy of the show's writers, who seemed hog-tied somehow by forces greater than they were and who bent the characters to whatever gags that week's episode demanded.

There moments when the show's dependence on stunt casting was fun. They did a lot of that to pick up the slack. The Matt Damon and Michael Douglas and Sandra Bernhard shows were good. Then they'd disappear and I could ignore it all again. Cher popped up a couple times, naturally. She eased into her position as a symbol of lowest-common-denominator faggotry, but thankfully rose above it every time she opened her mouth. But then the show was left with the regular characters. And that oxygen-depletion machine Harry Connick Jr.

And really that's it. A lot of wacky misunderstandings and jokes about shopping. Sometimes they'd toss Gay #1 a potential boyfriend. Or not. It didn't matter really. Nothing felt like reality anyway. Like that batch of episodes with Capote screenwriter Dan Futterman and how he was so fat and ugly (a.k.a. skinny and attractive by real-world standards) that he had to be fixed up to appropriate gayness before anyone would even consider dating him? That was great. So groundbreaking. But whatever. W&G could get away with having no sex at all because it was a prime-time network sitcom, and besides, that was the insane territory of the truly awful and truly tragically addictive Queer as Folk. And here's my favorite thing: Neither one of these series, for all their self-importance, was as significant to bulldozing Gay through to the mainstream as South Park has been. That show's got weirdo queer characters that know how to have a good time, and it still manages to get nice ratings. Big Gay Al, Satan, Mr. Slave, "Miss" Garrison, and Butters--well, maybe Butters isn't quite fully gay yet, but he's almost there--are idiosyncratic homos kids can look to and think, Oh, OK, there's this thing called "gay" and that's what it is. Who cares. If you looked to Will & Grace for anything other than a couple of tossed-off one-liners, then you were a sad Gen X gay shut-in who bought it all and said things to your friends like, "I'm a cross between Will and Karen!" In any case, you were barking up the wrong one. Pushing the queer barge forward is your own job. A sitcom's purpose is to make money, and this one's task was to rake it in for NBC. Mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, have you seen Wonder Showzen? Because, you know, now that your viewing schedule just got 30 minutes free, you should check it out. No, it's not gay at all. But you didn't really need it to be, did you?

White is the author of Exile in Guyville (Alyson Books). His American Idol wrap-ups can be read on Advocate.com.

It's true, and you know it

By Suzanne Westenhoefer

Queers always bemoan the lack of gays on television, and when we finally get some, we work ourselves into a frenzy over how they're "not gay enough" or "too gay." Almost always we are wrong, and no more so than with Will & Grace. I've challenged homos across the country to deny they know a Jack or a Will, and the sheepish look that crosses their faces has been proof we just aren't content seeing ourselves on TV.

Truth is, we are ordinary and mostly normal folks who drag through our days stewing about that noise the toilet is making and wondering what keeps happening to all the "good" scissors. We are wickedly boring and pedestrian, and if a show like W&G wants to paint us as highly bitchy, saucy, boozed-up raconteurs who can all afford $800 FrancisFrancis! espresso makers, I say good for us!

Like most nonstraights, I secretly get great pleasure out of being thought of as unique and outstanding because of my sexuality. If folks are that gullible, I'm all for it. And now it is a bit of a loss to me--and to all of us who've enjoyed this misguided belief--that W&G is finishing its run.

As long as there are people out there trying so hard to deny me my civil rights, I am in favor of pushing the agenda that we are adorable, witty, and anything else that delivers the PC version of "We don't need you to think we're as good as you, since some of us feel we are better." W&G played that anthem loudly, and I will miss it. I don't need straight people to see us as we are; I live that truth every day, and trust me, it is not sitcom material.

Westenhoefer is a panelist on I've Got a Secret, airing weeknights on GSN.

Eight years of great laughs

By Jim Colucci

In a memorable 2002 episode of Will & Grace, Jack becomes Kevin Bacon's personal assistant, and his first task is to find Kevin's stalker that is, himself. As a comedy writer who'd been hired to write the companion book to the landmark sitcom, I could identify; for years I'd been stalking the show's producers, hoping to get a job on one of the sharpest-written comedies of the decade. And as a gay man, I would have been honored to contribute to a true TV milestone: the first mainstream network program specifically created to have a gay lead character.

In that unfortunately brief, hopeful epoch between Ellen's coming-out and Janet's popping-out, when TV last dared to be daring, Will & Grace made history. For as many times as we'd seen sitcom permutations of straight family life--wait, in this one, he's the smart one and she's the slob!--it had taken nearly a half century of network broadcasting before TV brought us the first depiction of another age-old relationship, that of a gay man and his best straight girlfriend.

But being a pioneer can be a thankless task. Critics, many of them gay, have criticized Will & Grace for portraying a seemingly sexless Will and a flamboyant, flighty Jack, and for the negative messages these "exaggerated" characterizations must be sending to the straight world. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm often as square as Will and as airheaded as Jack all in the course of one afternoon, and I don't care if straight people know it. What I do know is, during the show's first season, my straight, blue-collar cousin told me during Thanksgiving dinner that he never missed an episode of Will & Grace, and for once we had something to talk about--even if we did have to share our favorite moments over the roar of some stupid football game.

Now that eight hilarious seasons have come and gone, I hate that we're saying goodbye to my (and my cousin's) favorite show, one of a dwindling few appointment-viewing half-hours. But I've decided to find consolation in the fact that Will & Grace will live on in constant rotation in local syndication, on Lifetime, and on DVD. And even if the show does fade from memory just a little bit, there is an upside. On those inevitable occasions when I steal one of Karen's put-downs and try to pass it off as my own off-the-cuff brilliance, I just might be able to get away with it. *

Colucci is the author of Will & Grace: Fabulously Uncensored (Time Inc. Home Entertainment) and the upcoming Q Guide to the Golden Girls (Alyson Books).