TV Trivia
by Michael Karol
& Craig Hamrick

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© 2006 Michael Karol and/or Craig Hamrick

Was Will & Grace The Modern
I Love Lucy?
By Michael Karol
posted 09.03.06

Was Will & Grace the new I Love Lucy, just "gayed-up"? Granted, Lucy’s writers never would have put a gay character into the Ricardo-Mertz mix, but due to our still-conservative national zeitgeist, Will and Jack are two of the most relentlessly single gay men ever portrayed in any medium. And any sex that might happen (except for a kiss here and there, deliberately put in to "shock") happened strictly off-camera. Now…consider the similarities between the classic comedy and the modern hit:

1. At the center of the fun are two couples, in this case, Will and Grace (the ersatz Lucy and Ricky), and Karen and Jack (the new millennium Fred and Ethel?).

2. There’s lots of slapstick, much of it involving Grace; her portrayer, Debra Messing, has often been compared to Lucy (she has red hair, though certainly nothing like the red-orange hue Lucy was famous for), and in fact "played" her in a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly a few years back (Will was Ricky/Desi Arnaz). Could she inherit the mantle? One look at the episode in which Grace goes to an art opening with fake breasts, then accidentally punctures one, says a resounding Yes!)

3. Karen and Jack never have sex; the men and women on W&G are of different persuasions, shall we say, even though they fool around sometimes kissing and bumping butts. Fred and Ethel were about as sexless a couple as TV has ever seen, aside from Grandma and Grandpa Walton.

4. There was real chemistry between Lucy and Desi, but they were kept to the twin-beds standard of the 1950s. Only hugging and kissing allowed. Will and Grace have a true chemistry, too, and being best friends, hug and kiss all the time.

5. One of the foursome is a cheapskate (that would be Fred and Grace), a trait that is consistently mined for laughs.

6. The interplay among the two couples works in any combination, as it did with Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel: Will and Jack, Will and Karen, Will and Grace, Grace and Jack, Grace and Karen, Jack and Karen. It’s all good.

7. Jack was (despite a brief respite when he thought he wanted to be a nurse) to nursing school) a wannabe actor, and has consistently dragged the other characters into his show-business fantasies.

Need I mention all the structural sitcom stuff W&G (like every sitcom) has inherited from I Love Lucy (three-camera shooting technique, a live audience, and on and on)?

Michael Karol has written four books about Lucille Ball: Lucy A to Z, The Lucille Ball Encyclopedia, the revised, expanded 3rd Edition; Lucy in Print, looking at press coverage of Lucy and her costars over the past 60 years; The Lucille Ball Quiz Book; and his most recent, The Comic DNA of Lucille Ball: Interpreting the Icon. He has also written the best-selling TV Tidbits book The ABC Movie of the Week Companion. A date gone wrong sparked his vampire/mystery novel Kiss Me, Kill Me. Its prequel, Sleeps Well With Others, is due out in the fall of 2006. All are currently available on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and many other online and in-store sources. Visit here for more information.