"Will & Grace" says goodbye
Gay lead characters, eighteen million viewers and a finale that eleven years later became a daydream.
On 18 May 2006, NBC said goodbye to "Will & Grace". Around eighteen million people watched the finale, the most-watched episode of the last two seasons. The sitcom about gay lawyer Will Truman, his best friend Grace Adler and the eccentric duo Jack and Karen had been running since September 1998. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History describes it as the most successful television series with gay lead characters. For mainstream American television, that was anything but a given.
The network had prepared the farewell on a grand scale. The cast toured the talk shows, and before the finale an hour-long retrospective was shown with interviews and scenes from eight seasons. Many tears were shed on set during the filming of the last scene. As with every episode of the series, James Burrows directed.
The finale itself jumped through time. Grace takes back her ex-husband Leo, Will feels betrayed, and the two don't speak for years. Both start families; Will raises a son with his partner Vince. Only when their grown-up children meet at college do the friends find their way back to each other. Meanwhile, Jack and Karen provide warmth and chaos, and at the end the two sing "Unforgettable" together. The evening closes in the bar from the pilot episode, with a toast to friends and family who take you as you are.
The reviews were mixed; for many, the time jumps were too much. By then, creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick were already on their way into the history books: in 2014 they handed scripts and other memorabilia to the Smithsonian. And when the series returned in September 2017, it simply declared the finale a drunken daydream of Karen's.