'Will & Grace': Reviving One of TV's Greatest Sitcoms

After ending in 2006, Will & Grace is still held dear to many fans (including myself who owns all eight seasons) who watched religiously back in the early 2000s, continue to love watching a single gay man and his straight best friend continue to struggle with the dating scene in New York City.

They're back at it again with slapstick comedy and quick quips that had us falling in love with the show the first time around. The first episode feels a bit forced due to it being mostly about the political climate we are now in, but once we arrive at the second episode we finally get back to the original momentum of the show but now incorporating the new culture as much has changed from 2006.

It's hard to think that so much can change in just 11 years but we go from basic flip phones, pagers, and landlines to smartphones, tons of apps like Tinder and Grindr, and a whole new way of dating. It's fun to see that the characters have considerably aged since the last time we have seen them and how well they have adapted to the new culture and technology, as we see in the first episode with Jack scrolling through Grindr as if the app was made for him.

The premiere of season nine address the political climate we are in as the cast initially got together before the 2016 presidential election to create a campaign video asking voters to vote for Hilary Clinton. Streaming from that video, the first episode of season nine revolves around the characters (except for Karen, of course) coming to terms with the fact that the candidate that won the election isn't the one they had hoped for. Once we get past the first episode the cast is back to its original antics, Jack and Karen continue to be focused only on anything that effects them, Will & Grace keep their weirdly strong connection as best friends living together for the past decade.

In an age where we are seeing a lot of classic films and television shows being remade and rebooted, it's great to see a television series that doesn't try to be anything it isn't. A lot of the remakes and reboots we see now can either be seen as trying too hard or really not hitting the mark on creating the same tone from the original. It doesn't mean that some remakes and reboots don't do well but a lot of them we can do without.

It's also nice to see that the cast and creators embraced the fact that time has passed with their characters instead of trying to rebuild where they left off in the season finale in 2006. They even took it as far as to say that the season finale back in 2006 was all but a dream. After 11 years and being in their late 40s, it's much different to be single and living with your best friend than what it was when they were 30. Just as the premiere of season nine ends Grace even asks if things will be different this time around;

“Yes. Because all the other times we’ve done this we thought it would be different, but this time we know it’s going to be exactly the same. And that’s what makes it different.”— Will Truman

Catch Will & Grace Thursday nights at 9/8c this Fall on NBC.