What I’m Watching: Will and Grace

Will and Grace: Season 9, Episode 13 “Sweatshop Annie and the Annoying Baby Shower” (C)

This is one of these episodes that makes me question whether this show really needed to be brought back, since it feels like such a filler installment that adds absolutely nothing to the overarching plot, and delivers few laughs in the process. I don’t watch nearly as many commercials as I used to back when this show was originally on prior to the days of online viewing experiences, and so I’m not sure if Jennifer Lopez’s guest appearance was heavily promoted or not. I don’t think she needed to show up, but at least her spot was limited to Jack being annoying and doing physical comedy while she got angry enough to get in the drawer and show him how the corpsé was supposed to act. Karen having the kids he dropped off operate a sweatshop was admittedly clever, and she and Jack salvaged it by having Jack perform while the kids actually continued to believably work on the assembly line. Will bonding with teenage girls about his relationship woes was silly, and I think it’s time for him to look forward and try dating someone new rather than obsess over past romances that didn’t pan out. Grace taking Will’s advice to write her feelings down on paper rather than exploding at people in the moment was ill-timed, and naturally from the moment she started it was obvious that the notes were going to be read aloud, which would have been fine if she hadn’t named her company in one of them. At least it turned into a therapeutic experience even if it was a hopelessly awkward one.