"Good Lord, Jack. If I gave in to every persuasive argument,
I'd be in some crazy three-way marriage with Maury Povich
and Connie Chung! " - Karen (Megan Mullaly) on Will
& Grace
Now
about to enter its sixth season on NBC this fall, the
hit sitcom Will and Grace has won numerous awards over
the last five seasons and is consistently among the top-rated
shows on network television. But when it premiered in 1998, few
believed Will and Grace would even survive, let alone
flourish, because it revolves around the friendship between a
gay man (played by Eric McCormack) and his straight female friend
(played by Debra Messing), with Will's gay friend Jack (played
by Sean Hayes) and Grace's secretary/friend Karen Walker (played
by Megan Mullaly) rounding out the cast.
Although
Will and Grace are the characters around which the series officially
revolves, the two secondary characters have become so popular
over the years that they have developed a cult following of their
own, with many Will and Grace fans referring to the show
as The Jack and Karen Show instead.
Karen
is a wealthy, spoiled socialite with a shopping fetish and a very
distinctive high-pitched voice, the kind of woman "who thinks
an act of kindness is letting her step-kid have the fruit out
of her whiskey sour", as her housekeeper described her (Season
2, Episode 15). Sometimes annoying, often frustrating, and usually
hilarious, Karen is a character most fans either love or hate.
Karen
is also not exactly heterosexual--or as Mullaly
describes her, she "goes both ways" (the actress, who
recently became engaged to a man, has also described herself this
way). Although for the first few seasons Karen was married to
a wealthy older man (Stanley Walker), Karen's attraction to women
was hinted at early on in the series through comments like this
one (Season 2, Episode 20):
JACK:
Yeah. Oh, look! There he is. There's Bill. Isn't he dreamy?
KAREN: Yeah, he's a slice of ice-cream cake. Now when do I get
to French-kiss a girl? Come on, when? When?
Karen's
unambiguous sexual comments about women became more frequent in
later seasons, as in this exchange (Season 5, Episode 16):
KAREN
(to Grace): You should let me help you more, honey. I know a few
things, and I care about you. Hmm? Now let's get back in there.
C'mon, we got a room full of lovely ladies. Let's put on some
music and get those tops off.
GRACE:
You do know that it's not that kind of girls' night?
KAREN:
We'll see.
Karen
continuously makes half-joking attempts to seduce Grace,
and finds reasons for the two women to kiss at least once every
season, as she did in Episode 3 of the fifth season when she convinced
Grace to show her how Grace's boyfriend Leo kisses:
KAREN:
Honey, what is the problem? It was just a kiss.
GRACE: Oh, no, no, no. You don't understand. It was a really good
kiss.
KAREN: [SCOFFS] Sh-yeah! Show me.
GRACE: No.
KAREN: Show me.
GRACE: No.
KAREN: Come on. We're both stoned.
GRACE: Forget it.
KAREN: Shut up and show me.
[GRACE
GRABS KAREN AND KISSES HER LIKE LEO DID EARLIER]
KAREN:
Yeah, you're screwed.
At
fourteen seconds long, this kiss still holds the title of the longest
kiss between two women on network television. The show even made
a rare reference to bisexuality in Season 5, when Madonna made a
guest appearance as Karen's new roommate and accused Karen of having
a "weird bisexual vibe."
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