What I’m Watching: Will and Grace

Will and Grace: Season 9, Episode 8 “Friends and Lover” (B-)

I accidentally missed this episode and watched the following installment first, so I’m posting it immediately before my review of episode nine. If that episode is formulaic and obsessed with double entendre, this one is drowning in that. I’m a big fan of Nick Offerman from his role as Ron on “Parks and Recreation,” and I recently saw him perform live at the Beacon Theatre. There’s no denying that he was the perfect person to play renowned celebrity chef Jackson Boudreaux, and this episode was pretty much just an excuse to have him say things about bread that sounded infinitely more sexual. I cracked a smile a few times, but most of this humor was predictable and relatively easy. Will and Grace feeling awkward once they realized that he was sleeping with both of them and, worse still, wanted to have a threesome, was entertaining, and I wonder if he’ll become a recurring player who can cause them further attraction and aggravation in the future. I was curious about whether he’d share any scenes with his real-life wife Megan Mullally, and that was relegated to a reference in the final scene in which Karen laughed him off as not her type. The “trucks for tykes” song being stuck in Jack and Karen’s head was a stretch to occupy two characters fully for the duration of the episode, but that’s what happens sometimes in a season of television – an installment or two has to be padded with some less than stellar material.