And To All A Good Night...

In the theme of the slightly more serious blogger...

I've heard it a number of times from friends, on previews, articles and other blogs.

This is the last season of Will & Grace.

Now, this shouldn't be that big of a problem. It's only TV. Anything more and I (more obviously) have no life.

I didn't have that big of a problem when other shows ended. Friends. Cheers. Seinfeld. The Education of Max Bickford. Young Americans. Popular. Dawson's Creek. (What is it with me and the WB?) The West Wing (I mean really now...they got moved to SUNDAYs).

But, now that it's sunk in that Will & Grace is coming to an end, I'm going through my just-like-QAF-seperation-anxiety. It's a bit traumatic. A bit depressing.

Yes, it's true that W&G has become a bit bland and not something I HAVE to see every week. Somewhere around two seasons ago, the funny started to disappear. The witty social commentary, the zingers, the have-to-use-all-the-time quotes. Gone.

But, it's something more than that.

Will & Grace was, and maybe still is, more than just a show. As much as Max Mutchnik and David Kohan say again and again in interviews, the show has changed the way people think about sexuality, about society and about the place of sexuality in society. I've heard KoMut saying that they never set out to change people's minds or make a social statement. Will will never have a real, long-term relationship. Will won't ever be shown in an intimate moment. The goal has always been just to make people laugh. And stay on the air.

But, isn't it more? In a time when all we had was every third episode of pre-suckage Real World, the occasional after-school special on Lifetime and the occasional movie, W&G was truly revolutionary. True, Ellen paved the way, but it didn't exactly resonate and it wasn't really that funny. And, except for the controversy and the "first-ever" moniker, it wasn't something EVERYONE was watching EVERYWHERE.

I watched my first episode in the college frat house. It was awkward and uncomfortable. But, it was funny. And endearing. And it started conversations. True, I didn't want anything to do with the conversations, but "it" was out there. "It" became more acceptable to talk about. "It" was on a prime-time, mega-Thursday night, major network lineup. "It" became a lot less taboo. "It" made it a helluva lot easier to think about honestly. "It" gave a name and a code for the the relationships that were instinctually made over and over again.

"Does this mean I'm your Grace?"
"Yeah. I guess it does."
"So who's our Jack and Karen?"

As corny as it sounds, W&G made it monumentally easier to come to grips with everything that was happening in my life. W&G was the gay social circle that I was too afraid to actually go out and find. W&G made it easier for the people who knew me or would come to know me to talk about things they may have been too uncomfortable with to actually talk about.

Like the time I went home for Christmas. My cousin, out of the blue, asks me, "Do you watch Will & Grace?" Yes. "Do you like it?" Of course. "Do you really like it?" I do. I smile. She smiles. We go back to eating. Christmas was that much better that year.

And what about the "coming out" episode? The one when W&G remember that Thanksgiving in college when W&G dealt with it all. It wasn't all hugs and kisses and warm moments. It's difficult. And maybe it's supposed to be sometimes.

There's the Hot Gay Nerd episode. The one that helped me to finally admit that I only like nerdy gay guys. It's trendy. And people can stop making fun of me.

So now that W&G is coming to an end, I have this feeling that things won't be the same. Not in that tragic, life-changing kind of way. It's just TV. But, the show won't be there like it has been for the last however many years. I may not have watched it all the time. I might have missed a season. But, it was there. The whole time. Making it that much easier for the gays to just live our lives, for the straights to get a little more comfortable and everyone to take some time to just laugh at the absurdity of it all.