Will & Grace Review: With Enemies Like These (Season 11 Episode 3)

Third time isn’t the charm in this case. Will and Grace Season 11 Episode 3, “With Enemies Like These” is a dud.

That’s not to say the episode doesn’t have its moments. Even a subpar Will and Grace episode will generate a few chuckles, but after two strong outings to kickstart the season, this episode feels like it’s stalling any progress for the show.

There are three storylines running through this episode: one centers on Grace’s valiant rage against the machine (the machine being the apartment building board president, who is policing deliverymen in the building), a high stakes poker game between Karen and her former brother-in-law, Danley, and the culmination of many years of bald jokes at Will’s expense.

Patton Oswalt and Chris Parnell make a welcome appearance (seeing Parnell always makes me nostalgic for his Dr. Spaceman days) but even their fun guest spots can’t hide the fact that the plots themselves are meh at best.

Grace’s anger that her neighbor is inhibiting her ability to partake in the “lazy hungry person’s renaissance” is understandable, and perfectly in line with her character, but that it’s essentially her entire story for the episode is somewhat ludicrous.

It also doesn’t help that there’s some strange tie-in with a DNA test that reveals she’s related to said neighbor. I still can’t fully follow the logic of how this DNA test revealing what traits she’d pass on to her baby somehow led to her neighbor, which doesn’t help matters either.

The Will and Jack storyline fares a bit better, if only because it allows for Will to pull off an epic bald-cap joke on Jack, leaving Jack, high and dry (and bare headed).

It’s not often that Will gets the upper hand, so even though the whole gag is silly, it is a sweet bit of karmic retribution after years of Jack making jokes at Will’s expense about his appearance.

The most irksome has to be Karen’s plot line however. I’m generally a big fan of Karen and think Megan Mullally can make almost any story work. The keyword there being most.

Karen’s stories and humor are often a bit off-color and that’s fine. It’s part of what makes her character so fun, but on this episode I felt myself cringing. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The aforementioned poker game, which takes up most of Karen’s air time, lacks some spice. Oswalt is generally an MVP when it comes TV guest appearances, and Megan Mullally could have chemistry with a chair, but for some reason, you can feel every inch of their effort to make these scenes — and the aggressive flirtation and one-upmanship in them — work.

It also begs the question…why?

Karen has been relegated to the sidelines more than usual this season so for her first bigger story to be focused on an old brother-in-law and her acquisition of a minor league baseball team is odd. Unless we’re going to see either one more in the season, I don’t really get the point.

It also doesn’t help that there are a few jokes that are almost too obvious and crass (even for Karen).

Jokes about virginity or girls with daddy issues or gags where men are forced to stand naked and on display against their will might have worked back when this show originally aired, but they don’t go down as easily in 2019. 

You can and should do better, Will and Grace. 

 

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Will & Grace airs Thursdays at 9:30/8:30c on NBC.

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