What I’m Watching: Will and Grace

Will and Grace: Season 10, Episode 9 “Family, Trip” (B)

I’m not overly fond of episodes in which characters find themselves debilitated after unknowingly taking drugs, but this show managed to work it into its particular rhythm in a way that was mostly tolerable. I was curious what it was about the chocolate milk, which I do love, that was quite so appealing to Will, Jack, and Karen that would make them so eager to drink it when they usually don’t, and that became clear just as soon as we saw the butterflies all over the door when Karen walked out of the apartment. Her singing in a laundromat performing her final act as Mrs. Stanley Walker had considerably more dramatic oomph to it that I would have expected, and as a result we saw the show as she imagined it more than we saw her actually being watched by the other people in the laundromat. Jack convincing himself that he and Will were soulmates because they apparently finished each other’s penises was a predictably absurd proclamation, one that faded as soon as they started coming down even though they did acknowledge the important role they play in each other’s lives. I’m always happy to see Mary McCormack, who played Grace’s sister Janet for the second time, and I enjoyed her sharing that her last boyfriend’s anxiety rat may have gone missing when she last saw Grace. I did not recognize Chelsea Handler as Donna, Grace’s client who wasted no time in wooing Janet and threatening to throw Grace’s work-life balance completely into chaos.