Rewatching the show in its entirety now, almost a quarter century after it began airing, a lot of superlatives still apply and a majority of the show's themes have stood the test of time. There are also a few glaring negative traits that have only become more apparent, and one of them is the incredibly disproportionate treatment of the two leads' love lives.
Grace gets her heteronormative, romantic season-long relationship arcs with lots of intimate moments and evolving dynamics. She gets the lingering kisses, the implied sex, the serious moments. Will gets... Nothing. None of it. His relationships are always one-offs, Monster Of The Week parodies of gay men whose inherent deficiencies serve as foils for his uptight persona; pathological liars, barely invested sugar daddies, men who are not supermodels whose body diversity we are expected to laugh and point at.
They are just the icing on the cake though, the lion's share of episodes otherwise being taken up by a borderline jeering condemnation of his sexless, joyless, partnerless life as a man unable to move on from a relationship we were never even privy to, as it unfolded offscreen and pre-pilot. We never see him get a true win, or at least not yet at this point, 6 and a half seasons in. This far along, it starts making the show truly hard to watch, with nothing to balance out the negativity. It's incredibly unfair and frankly depressing.
I genuinely think the zeitgeist is not enough of an excuse. This show was one of the most popular sitcoms on NBC at the time., they could have taken a much bigger "risk" in portraying Will's love life. They could have been so much more kind.
Grace gets her heteronormative, romantic season-long relationship arcs with lots of intimate moments and evolving dynamics. She gets the lingering kisses, the implied sex, the serious moments. Will gets... Nothing. None of it. His relationships are always one-offs, Monster Of The Week parodies of gay men whose inherent deficiencies serve as foils for his uptight persona; pathological liars, barely invested sugar daddies, men who are not supermodels whose body diversity we are expected to laugh and point at.
They are just the icing on the cake though, the lion's share of episodes otherwise being taken up by a borderline jeering condemnation of his sexless, joyless, partnerless life as a man unable to move on from a relationship we were never even privy to, as it unfolded offscreen and pre-pilot. We never see him get a true win, or at least not yet at this point, 6 and a half seasons in. This far along, it starts making the show truly hard to watch, with nothing to balance out the negativity. It's incredibly unfair and frankly depressing.
I genuinely think the zeitgeist is not enough of an excuse. This show was one of the most popular sitcoms on NBC at the time., they could have taken a much bigger "risk" in portraying Will's love life. They could have been so much more kind.
