What I’m Watching: Will and Grace

Will and Grace: Season 9, Episode 14 “The Beefcake and the Cake Beef” (B+)

I’ll give this episode a positive review because it handled its two plotlines very well, tackling one series-relevant issue and another current political one in the best way it knows how. We’ll start with the less exaggerated one, which was Jack for once being a good friend and trying to seriously give Will relationship advice since he was looking out for him. His inability to process Grace’s definition of “vis-à-vis” was a false indicator of his grasp on the situation, in which he explained to Will that Cheyenne Jackson’s Michael just wanted him for his money. Jack never offering to pay for anything either was a running joke, but ultimately things turned out exactly as Jack had predicted because Michael’s big life move wasn’t one related to their relationship but instead a request for him to invest in his gym. Something tells me that Jack did consider a romance with Will in the same way, but they’ve come so far from there that to imagine it now would be impossible. The other feature of this half-hour was one that has allowed this show to be even more topical than when it used to air a decade and a half ago, with Karen serving as the stand-in for right-wing Trump fans. “People like me don’t care about the problems of the white working class – that was just to win the election” was just the icing on the cake (pun obviously inserted), and Grace having to defend Karen’s right to request a cake bearing an acronym that went against everything she and the baker believed in proved to be an entertaining direction for this episode. Vanessa Bayer’s baker adding an I and a Y to spell out “IMAGAY” was clever, and naturally this defense of civil rights would lead to neo-Nazis and the like frequenting this very inclusive establishment.