Will & Grace Review: Supreme Courtship (Season 10 Episode 14)
On Will and Grace Season 10 Episode 14, “Supreme Courtship,” the show’s action takes place on Valentine’s Day and coupled with a few other continuity errors, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this episode may have been reshuffled in the airing order or, at the very least, that a few writers fell asleep at the wheel when plotting the episode.
For example, while Will mentions McCoy, who he supposedly got back together with on the last episode, Will and Grace Season 10 Episode 13, “The Real McCoy,” Karen also wistfully mentions being alone on Valentine’s Day for the first time.
However, she got back together with Malcolm on Will and Grace Season 10 Episode 12, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” so altogether, things just do not add up.
It also doesn’t really make sense that in this episode, Jack is pushing so hard for Estefan and Will to connect.
Only several episodes ago, Estefan and Karen were feuding over Jack, so it seems strange that Will and Estefan’s lack of connection would not have come up then too if it was really such a pain point for Jack to be stuck in the middle of people he loves.
Overall, some of this sloppy writing takes away from the overall effect of the episode, though it does feature some fun moments (RBG references abound!) and what may be my new favorite set of scene partners, Karen and Noah.
When Grace spills the beans that Noah has another writing pseudonym, authoring The Bodice Chronicles under the pen name Sylvia De La Croix, the whole group is atwitter, but the biggest response is from Karen, who’s devoted to the adventures of Chronicles’ lead character, Aurora.
David Schwimmer’s scene with Will earlier in the season on Will and Grace Season 10 Episode 6, “Kid N’Play,” was a highlight and a reminder of how well Schwimmer can play off of almost anyone in a comedic scene.
The show has not leveraged that nearly enough, often only allowing him opportunities to play off of Messing, but this episode proves yet again how many more scenarios they can put Noah in to drive the action forward and have them work.
On this episode, while Schwimmer shares some sweet, chemistry laden moments with Messing, he spends most of his time with Megan Mullally’s Karen, who’s struggling with Noah’s decision to kill off his lead character so he can focus on “writing real novels.”
In typical Karen fashion, her response is elevated beyond that of a normal human — at one point, she points a gun at his laptop — and watching Noah try to figure out how to respond to her is hilarious.
Both Noah and Karen are guarded people, and as we have seen several times, neither consistently excels at expressing the love they feel for other people, so it’s especially interesting to see them challenge one another.
Ultimately, it’s Karen who reveals her vulnerability first, explaining why she’s so attached to Aurora’s love story, and pointedly telling Noah her theory about why he’s ending his romance novel career and avoiding spending Valentine’s Day with Grace.
As bizarre as her delivery may be, Karen often has some astute observations.
In one breath, she’s shooting bullets into the ceiling of her office building and comparing Grace’s heart to a “bird in a microwave” and the next, she’s psychoanalyzing Noah’s fear of looking foolish and totally losing himself in romance.
Both gifted with playing comedy with a layer of brokenness, Schwimmer and Mulally do amazing work here and this version of Karen — the Karen that is simultaneously ridiculous, raucous, sweet, and vulnerable — is always the best Karen.
It’s a blessing whenever Mullally gets opportunities to show all those shades in a single storyline.
Plus, the Karen/Noah/Grace storyline is one of the sweetest things the show has presented in the revival and continues to add layers to Noah. He may be the West Side Curmudgeon, but maybe he too has a heart that’s squishy like a bird in a microwave.
Grace’s storyline is less interesting but it does do one thing well: show just how tapped into pop culture Will and Grace continues to be.
For a variety of reasons, Ruth Bader Ginsberg has become a part of the national zeitgeist, a super hero of sorts, so it’s quite hilarious that the show decides to craft a storyline around the public’s outrage when she is injured (by Grace — whoops!)
The specifics of how, when, and why are not the funny part, but the reality that it’s a city, nation, and Twitter-wide emergency that RBG has been hurt is funny, mostly because of just how much that response rings true.
One only need to look at a few memes that went viral when she was hospitalized to know that’s not farfetched in the least. If only we knew whether they were ahead of the curve and wrote this before she fell ill earlier in the winter.
The storyline surrounding Jack’s desire for Estefan and Will to connect on a personal level is the least effective, mostly because it feels so unnecessary and like filler.
While it’s understandable that Jack wants the two men he loves most to love each other, having already had one storyline this season focused on tension between Estefan and Jack’s friends, this storyline is redundant.
In fact, the entire ruse about Jack lying to Estefan to convince him that Will was secretly in love with him only makes Estefan look dumber and more impressionable.
Jack isn’t the Einstein of the group and certainly shouldn’t be expected to marry someone like that, but it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to understand why those two are together. An enduring is#Wilsue is that the more we see Noah, the more endearing he becomes; the opposite is true for Estefan.
Stray observations:
- How divine does Megan Mullally look in pink?
- Will’s dream man being Barack Obama = so on brand.
- Line of the week: “You have plenty of time to write books no one will read.” I’m going to pocket that and save it for my next date with some overly serious, self-congratulatory auteur. Thanks, Karen.
What did you think of this episode of Will and Grace? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Will and Grace airs Thursdays at 9:30/8:30c on NBC.
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Cristina Iskander
Cristina is a Broadway enthusiast, book lover, and pop-culture fanatic living in New York City. She once won a Fantasy Bachelor contest (yes, like Fantasy Football, but for The Bachelor), and can banter about old school WB (Pacey + Joey FTW) just as well as Stranger Things and Pen15. She's still upset Benson and Stabler never got together and is worried Rollins and Carisi are headed down the same road, wants justice for Shangela, and hopes to one day walk-and-talk down a hallway with Aaron Sorkin.