15 TV episodes we’ll never get tired of watching
Will & Grace, “Alive and Schticking”
We had to include another Will & Grace episode, because this one was different than all the others. It was completely live.
To launch (what they thought was) their final season, the executive producers of Will & Grace thought it would be a good idea to do a live episode of the show. It wasn’t going to be easy, and mistakes were bound to be made, but they went for the live episode anyway, and it was pure television gold.
On the episode, which takes place in and around Will and Grace’s apartment, Grace is contemplating having an affair with a married man, and justifies it because of Jack’s long history of dating married men. Jack is dealing with his new career of hosting his own talk show (and sporting an eyepatch from a serious glitter accident), and Will is trying to keep a secret from Karen after he finds out her husband Stan is still alive. His former boss Malcolm is trying to keep Will from spilling the beans, and also trying to date Karen.
In typical Will & Grace fashion, the episode is full of physical comedy and plenty of laughs. When Grace admits she’s going through with the affair, Jack is offended that she would attempt to know a married man “in the Biblical sense… and in the vagina” because, he admits, he has never actually cheated before. Then he admits another secret, that he didn’t have a glitter accident, he actually burnt his eyebrow off during a segment on his show where he refused to stop singing even though the set was on fire.
The greatest thing about this live episode is the fact that the actors could not stop laughing. Much like on Saturday Night Live, sometimes you can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous scene you are acting out, and those breaks in character make it even funnier for the audience. The scene between Grace and Jack is probably the one where they break character the most. When Jack takes off his eye patch to reveal he’s missing an eyebrow, the two of them can barely contain their giggles enough to get out their dialogue.
Every episode of Will & Grace sends us into hysterical laughter, but seeing the cast laugh too makes it that much better! The episode was such a success that they did another live episode later in the season, but nothing will ever beat out the first.