Boston Globe: 'Will' brought attitude. But more important, it changed ours ... May 2006
"Will & Grace" mainstreamed a way to laugh about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and straight sexual politics from a place of pure affection, not fear and hatred.
The show never lazily mined models of gender and sexual identity already in existence; we had ''Everybody Loves Raymond" for that.
Over the years, the show made light of a gay man trying to be a straight man (Neil Patrick Harris), a straight man posing as a gay man (Matt Damon), a straight man who acted like a gay man (Richard Chamberlain), a closeted gay Republican (Leslie Jordan), an older lesbian couple (Michele Lee and Chita Rivera), a younger lesbian couple (Edie Falco and Chloe Sevigny), a lesbian mom (Rosie O'Donnell), and many other variations. These were guest characters who challenged assumptions while they kept the farce going.
For straight viewers with no gay friends, ''Will & Grace" provided a chance to spend time with gay men (and one bisexual society lush) without awkwardness or oversensitivity -- and with lots of serious laughs. And for straight men, in particular, it was an opportunity to watch straight male characters (played by Woody Harrelson, Harry Connick Jr., Gregory Hines, Sydney Pollack, Alec Baldwin) relax around gay male characters, even be outnumbered by them, and not feel discomfort. The show let straight men see straight male actors play gay men (Eric McCormack, Patrick Dempsey, Michael Douglas) without much to-do. It even delivered Damon as a straight man willing to pretend to be gay to sing in a gay chorus.
Did ''Will & Grace" change the country politically? Not obviously, of course, but it did help create a climate where the ''gay debate" has changed from ''Should gays be visible?" to ''Should gays have equal rights?"

The show set out to be a traditional, popular American sitcom complete with a loud laugh track, stagy choreography, and the kind of exaggerated comic stylings that reached back to the sitcom's vaudeville roots. At times, the cast seemed to be dancing across the set of Will's apartment. The socioeconomics -- white, yuppie, affluent, pop literate -- were created to fit neatly beside ''Seinfeld," ''Friends," and all the other NBC sitcoms. The gay milieu was meant to be the big surprise, the switch.
As a conventional sitcom, it traded in stereotypes for sure. The magnificent cast -- McCormack, Megan Mullally, Debra Messing, and Sean Hayes -- brought great distinction to their characters, but their characters were built to be familiar. Just as ''Friends" gave us a typical dumb womanizer with Joey, Hayes's Jack was the quintessential flamboyant gay flake.
He was a type, but then name any sitcom character that isn't based on a type (except, of course, Kramer). huh.
The show depended on its many guest stars and semi-regulars to bring in images of diversity (Hines, Taye Diggs, Wanda Sykes).
...And then there was Mullally. She took the fusty cliche of a rich bitch and made it into one of TV's funniest characters ever. She merged a Betty Boop voice with the snobbery of an Alexis Carrington Dynasty and the self-delusion of a proud substance abuser, and came up with a hysterically amoral monster. Her love/hate treatment of her maid, Rosario, played gamely nice - gamely by Shelley Morrison, upended yep political correctness, and her sexual voraciousness was quietly scandalous. She made even the small throwaway gags sail, such as ''You say potato, I say vodka." she sure did. cmmts that might not be that funny? very funny from her.

good article. by Matthew Gilbert