An analysis of 1.5 seasons of Will and Grace

So now that Season 1 of Will and Grace is 20 years old, and a new season is just here after a hiatus I have decided to watch it from the beginning. When I was younger I watched some odd episodes before I knew about my sexuality and I vaguely remember it, but now I'm watching it seriously.I have just watched 1 and a half seasons of the show, and TL;DR it's worth the watch. But here are some detailed analysis i have made on the show.Will & Jack: The main cast has not 1 but 2 openly gay characters, Will Truman, a lawyer and a title character, and Jack, Will's second-best friend. (His best friend is straight-woman designer Grace)One of the worrysome aspects of the show is Jack being the butt of most jokes, mostly because he is the stereotypical flamboyant femme gay, and the show is constantly putting Jack down for it. Mostly from the lips of Will. This is really upsetting when a lot of the main cast of friends call Jack and sometimes Will, Women, as an insult, which is a chauvinistic perspective on gender roels. However this is really interesting in S1E19 "Will Works Out" in which Jack starts to frequent the same Gym as Jack, and Will is very upset about Jack's personality, Will even calls jack a Fag, which for me was a really frustrating point. But it is also in this episode that we learn that Will is ashamed of Jack because of some internalized homophobia, which rings very true to life, and Will was scared that some of his social circle would know he is gay, they eventually overcome this when Will starts to introduce Jack as his best friend and apologizes to Jack. The femme-shaming over the course of the show however does not stop.Coming out plots A very recurring theme in the show; we have Will's gym episode above, but also Jack coming out to his mother which is a very heartwarming episode, and when Will realizes his father lies about his sexuality to other people, all which are rectified in favor of "Pride" which was also a positive point of the series.intimacy For a show which was a pioneer in the representation of Gay Men it is really offputting how their relationships are always ommited. In 1x01 it is established that Will is coming out of a long term relationship, the same as Grace, and Jack has a series of casual flings under his belt, often a joke. However Grace has multiple relationships on screen over the course of the series, and Will has none, he was shown on the odd "good/bad" date but they are never the kind of long term relationships you seek to have on Sitcoms like this. I will not weigh this too heavily against the show as none of the characters had a relationship last for more than 2 episodes at best, But the hetero relationships are often shown the moments of intimacy and the romantic kiss, the gay characters however never get to display their affection, in fact the 2 gay characters kiss women all the time, which is weird. Will & Grace have the habit of greeting each other with a peck on the lips and Will had a plot line which involved troublesome sex nightmares with Grace (steamy scenes) and Jack has a running joke with being an excelent Kisser with Karen and Rosario.However I was really proud of the Show in the very Meta episode 2X14 when the characters are excited for the first gay kiss on a major soap opera, which ends up being a cop out when the camera pans out. Jack takes it personally and starts to protest against NBC (who also produces Will and Grace as well as the fictional Soap Opera) this is washed out as not important by the rest of the cast including Will, but Jack convinces him otherwise. Will's big gesture is kissing jack in front of an NBC newscast making the first gay kiss on usa television (meta because that happened on the NBC show) idk about tv history to check the truth of the fact (i'm not american) but I will just give props to the show for blazing this trail! So there, it was a real nice culmination of what the show did wrong all walking to something positive.Overall We have to keep in mind that this was all broadcast in 1998/99 even with some backwards mentality it was very ahead of its time and incredibly funny in spite of some insensitivity. I highly recommend it. I believe the contributions this show had on queer representativity in mainstream TV was very positive and I recommend this show. I can't wait to watch more and to see Season 9 which was aired in 2017!PS: Karen is a queen and she steals the show! Go see it!