To no one’s surprise, NBC’s revived “Will & Grace” sitcom bashes President Trump. The premiere episode of the NBC revival, about the lives of four New Yorkers, included jokes about Trump’s skin tone being like Cheetos and a spoof on the president’s “Make American Great Again” campaign slogan, imagined on Will & Grace as “Make America Gay Again.”
But the show, at least to one critic, is mostly about liberal smugness and hypocrisy.
Writing in Slate, Willa Paskin observes that the new "Will & Grace" features characters who have no family, have failed at romantic relationships, and who slam conservatives but are too lazy and selfish to follow through on political commitments.
In the debut episode, Trump-voter Karen (Megan Mullally) offered Grace (Debra Messing) the opportunity to redesign the Oval Office. While there are political jokes, the characters often seem so preoccupied with their personal lives that politics is secondary - something unforgivable in the era of Antifa anger. At one point Grace comes upon Will, who is writing a letter to a Republican congressman. “You’re so woke,” Grace says. “I used to be woke. Now I use my pussy hat to sneak candy into the movie.” Will tells her she too can write her congressman. “I’m so busy,” Grace replies. “What can I do that’s low effort but high impact?”
“Creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan are out to tweak, not lose, their liberal audience,” Paskin writes. “As the show sends up liberal complacency, it also takes pot-shots at the Donald. On Trump’s desk is only a Russian-English dictionary and a fidget spinner; Grace wants to match the curtains with his coloring and pulls out a Cheeto. But Mutchnick and Kohan are not always completely in control of the liberal narcissism they are ostensibly lampooning. 'Will & Grace' can get a little smug. The first episode ends with a shot of a ‘Make America Gay Again’ hat, which Grace has left on a chair in the Oval Office, as if that sufficiently redresses her self-absorption.
Were “Will & Grace” to completely drop the Republican jokes and zero in on left wing smugness, they might really have something.
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