Review: Will & Grace Effortlessly Channels the Spirit of I Love Lucy

The episode is a reminder of just how influential I Love Lucy still is, and a testament to Will & Grace’s own legacy.

Will & Grace
Photo: Chris Haston/NBC

By the end of its original eight-season run, Will & Grace had long since jumped the shark, plagued by stunt casting, back-from-the-dead husbands, and, of course, that finale, which the 2017 revival of the show wisely sought fit to pretend never happened. Prompted in part by the 2016 election, Will & Grace found new purpose in the Trump era, thoughtfully navigating topics like conversion therapy, the Me Too movement, and religious freedom—the latter of which was depicted in a shrewd inversion of recent wedding cake discrimination cases, with a lesbian baker refusing to fill an order honoring the president.

With only three episodes left, however, Will & Grace has decided to pull one last stunt, and it’s one that, surprisingly, the series has never tried before: a tribute to I Love Lucy. Since the show’s inception, critics have been wont to liken Debra Messing to Lucille Ball, not just because of her fiery red hair, but her deft mix of self-deprecation and broad slapstick. The latter quality, best exemplified in a season-two episode in which Grace’s water bra springs a leak to uproarious effect, would eventually become the province of dysfunctional sidekicks Jack and Karen, played by Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally, respectively.

It would have been easy enough to simply recast Will & Grace’s central foursome as Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel. But the reverently titled “We Love Lucy” gives Messing, Mullally, and Hayes each their own crack at Lucy, as their characters spar over which one of them is most similar to the famous ’50s TV wife. (Ever the straight man, no pun intended, Eric McCormack plays Ricky—with a dubious Cuban accent—for the entirety of the episode.)

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“We Love Lucy” faithfully reconstructs iconic scenes from I Love Lucy, with Mullally stomping grapes with perennial archrival Beverley Leslie (Leslie Jordan) and Hayes, in Lucy drag, stuffing chocolate bon bons in his mouth like a squirrel hoarding nuts. But it’s Messing, who’s always been Will & Grace’s unsung secret weapon, who pitch-perfectly fills Lucy’s shoes in a recreation of the famous Vitameatavegamin bit from I Love Lucy, in which Lucy drunkenly stumbles her way through a TV commercial for the elixir.

For this episode, Will & Grace’s production team painstakingly created replicas of I Love Lucy’s sets, costumes, and props (including 1,200 pounds of black grapes), and the scenes themselves are nearly shot-for-shot recreations of the originals. Messing’s mimicry is similarly uncanny: Her performance pays tribute to both Ball and her own gift for physical comedy, right down to her quivering grimace and inebriated slur.

Recent episodes of Will & Grace have fallen back on old tricks: Guest stars abound, from Gus Kentworthy to Demi Lovato, who plays a surrogate-slash-cam-girl throughout the season, but aside from a clever cameo by Lucie Arnaz, “We Love Lucy” lets its four leads shine as they alternate roles. In contrast to Messing’s spot-on embodiment of Lucy, Mullally hilariously imbues every character she plays with a little bit of Karen Walker, deadpanning a signature quip about Lucy’s quilted frock and playing Fred in full makeup and martini in hand.

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Will & Grace hit its stride during the early years of the George W. Bush presidency, serving as a weekly declaration that—despite the administration’s campaign to erase LGBTQ people—we’re here, some of us are queerer than others, and we might just help your daughter get her shit together. While Karen’s casual pill-popping feels out of touch in the age of rampant opioid addiction, the show’s revival has confronted hot topics more unapologetically than ever, most memorably in last season’s “Grace’s Secret,” in which Grace tearfully confides in her father about a sexual assault. So it’s both ironic and fitting that “We Love Lucy” is one of the show’s final episodes—a reminder of just how influential I Love Lucy still is, and a testament to Will & Grace’s own, albeit very different, legacy.

Score: 
 Cast: Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Sean Hayes, Megan Mullally  Network: NBC

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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