The Spectacle of Actors Struggling Not To Crack Each Other Up
Dana Stevens: “The live-ness offered a chance to punch up the show with some unusually broad sight gags, including a huge spit take from McCormack, who was conveniently guzzling coffee when Grace let the cat out of the bag about Stan's reappearance. But the real reason to watch last night's episode—perhaps the only reason to have watched Will & Grace for the past several seasons—were the screwups. There's a reason that blooper reels and out-take montages are perennial best-sellers: Regardless of the quality of the material, there's just something eternally irresistible about the spectacle of actors struggling not to crack each other up.”
The article links to a 5-minute video re-cap of the episode, and it's genuinely funny. Instead of bringing back the laugh track, have all 22 minutes done in a row with no second-takes, in front of an actual live studio audience. Not quite reality TV (since the show would be fictional), not quite theatre (since they would be playing for the cameras, and they'd only perform the same show once or twice depending on whether, like Will & Grace, they do it live for both East and West coasts), but also not quite TV, since it's imperfect, I'd love to see more short fictional shows performed "live". Gimmicks like those of Will & Grace seem to work because like people who don't have multiple times to get it right, our interactions with each other are imperfect. It's what makes Saturday Night Live the funniest: people like Jimmy Fallon who can't ever seem to keep a straight face makes any skit he's involved with even funnier.
