Will & Grace – The Pursuit of Happiness

By: Kelly Kearney

In “The Pursuit of Happiness” Jack gets in touch with his inner actor while Will takes a romantic risk with a handsome faculty member. Will’s not the only one with love on the brain as Karen gets a visit from Malcolm and has to decide if their bizarre love is worth forgiving him for destroying her marriage. It’s rule breaking, ex- lovers and JUST JACK in this week’s Will and Grace.

The Truth About Spandex

We open at Will’s (Eric McCormack) apartment where he and Jack (Sean Hayes) have just come home from a bike ride. Dressed in their best spandex, the two men talk about their lives over coffee and Jack’s fruit of his looms. Apparently spandex tells the truth about your body and Jack’s not taking any chances. It’s why he packed his shorts with two peaches and a banana. “Quite the fruit basket you’ve got there,” Will says and as Jack bites into his banana the topic turns to men. Will’s been getting vibes from a fellow law professor and Jack wants to know all the hot details about Will’s “chubby chaser.” He admits he is interested but wants to play it safe and avoid the drama of work place romances. Jack tells him to throw caution to the wind and see where this Paul thing goes. Their talk gets interrupted by an impromptu tap dance because these two men cannot deny the call of a good foot tap and choreographed dance off.

Over at Grace Adler designs Karen’s (Megan Mullally) on the phone with her friendly FLOTUS, who has a man for Karen now that she’s footloose and fancy free from Stan. Karen turns Melania down but does offer the first lady some divorce tips as well as a killer lawyer than can help her “Be Best” if she ever needs to bail on her current husband. Grace (Debra Messing) is listening to the entire chat and tells Karen, “I’m not sure we can trust her taste in men.” Karen laughs that off since she’s pretty sure Melania didn’t have a choice in her marriage, so her advice on men cannot be totally discredited.

All hook ups aside, Grace thinks maybe it’s time for Karen to re-enter the dating world. After all, she knows how hard it is to get back on the horse, so to speak, after a divorce. Their Karen chat quickly turns into all about Grace, but the moral of her story hits Karen hard and she decides to jump head on into the dating world. Karen takes that as her cue to leave because when does this woman ever work a full day? As her assistant leaves Grace gets a package delivered by Fed-Ex. Only, it isn’t fabric bolts and decorative pillows in the box, but Malcolm (Alec Baldwin) and he’s shipped himself to his one true love Karen! Malcolm hasn’t gotten over Karen and even his waterboarding adventures in Bahrain have left him unfulfilled and feeling tortured by his lost love. Now he’s home and willing to do whatever it takes to win her love back.

How to be an Actor

It’s been years since Jack gave up on his “Just Jack” dreams, but running into his acting coach Zandra’s sister, Zusanna (Andrea Martin), could reignite his love of the art. That is especially after Zusanna tells him that she always believed in his talent. When Jack asks the woman if she’s still teaching and she replies that teaching “is for no talent hacks.” Now she’s a dog walker, which explains the pack of fur babies roaming the apartment’s hallway and howling at Jack’s high pitched-squeals. Zusanna questions what Jack’s been up to and he admits that he’s a part-time actor and part-time talentless hack. The good thing about teaching, he explains, is he gets dental insurance. But Zusanna isn’t impressed as she asks, “Does Tom Cruise have dental? No, but he’s such a good actor you believe he has teeth.” All Tom Cruise dental conspiracies aside, Jack manages to ignite Zusanna’s love of acting and the woman announces, very dramatically, that she will go back to teaching as long as Jack will be her student. Having not asked the woman for her services, but loving anyone who shows him attention, Jack is thrilled to have another acting mentor in his life.

 Just Jack is Back!

At Columbia Will finally decides to beak his own rule and asks the very charming Paul (Barrett Foa) out for a drink. Paul assumed that Will was a stickler for rules and not really into dating his fellow faculty members, so he’s surprised by the offer. Will laughs him off like he’s totally not on the straight (pun not intended) and narrow. He plays it so cool that Paul agrees to the date and Will is thrilled.

Back at Grace’s office Karen comes back from her blind date a wreck. The man stood her up and she is done putting her heart on the line. She says she had two loves in her life, one she married and the other Malcolm, who led her to divorce. From now on she’s swearing off men. When Grace says she saw Malcolm and thinks Karen should give him another chance, Karen doesn’t want to hear it. She still blames the man for breaking up her marriage and has no interest in seeing him again. Grace offers her thirty seconds of tough love and, of course, Karen assumes that’s some kind of sexual advance and she’s all in. Unfortunately, Grace turns her down for some harsh truths about Stan saying, “People in healthy relationships don’t cheat.” Meaning, if her marriage to Stan was solid her affair with Malcolm would have never happened.

Elsewhere, Jack’s having his first acting lesson with Zusanna and it’s going…well, confusing. The woman is all over the place and has Jack exploring fear, in a very physical way. She asks him to show her a man who’s afraid of birds and heights and losing his lover. His performance is all mashed up into one spastic and gyrating mess. Then Zusanna changes course and asks him to show her a man who gave up his acting dreams to become a teacher. This hit close to home for Jack and when one of his students, Felix (Amari O’Neil), interrupts his soul-searching moment Jack announces, “Mr. McFarland is dead, Felix. He was your teacher. I am an actor and only an actor and from this day forward I am JUST JACK!”

Cheating Can Ruin a Good Thing

Back at the University Will and Paul are smooching and talking about their date when they’re interrupted by Paul’s husband, Liam (Aly Mawji), and their infant daughter. The two men kiss hello and talk about their day as well as their daughter’s missing toy that Liam thinks is in Paul’s office. Handing the baby over to Will, the couple leave to go search for the little girl’s security bunny. Will rocks the fussy baby while apologizing for being the other man in her father’s life. It’s not long before Paul and Will are alone again and the truth is out that the two married men do not have any sort of arrangement and Paul is a cheater, making Will very uncomfortable. He turns down Paul’s date and says he isn’t the risk taker he pretended to be. Paul’s disappointed because he assumes all gay men cheat, which offends Will even more. After decades of fighting for equal marriage Will thinks Paul’s excuse that everyone does it is weak and not something he can get behind. Besides, Will Truman is a man of truth and the legal eagle believes in rules and laws and cheating just isn’t a part of his DNA.

Meanwhile, at the office, Malcolm shows up just as Karen has sworn off men and the two use Grace as their intermediary couples’ therapist. Karen refuses to talk to Malcolm, but she won’t leave the room either, so her wannabe suitor starts explaining their relationship to Grace, in very graphic detail. Karen jumps into this three-sided conversation with her own memories of their bizarre love story, including the time they had a threesome with everyone’s favorite bartender and comedienne, Smitty. Using Grace like an unwilling interpreter, the two whisper their desires into her ear and ask her to repeat them to the other person. The terms “lady nest and skin missile” turn this little game into an awkward moment of too much information that has Grace cringing through every horrible secret. Finally, the human telephone game is done with playing monkey in the middle of their foreplay and Grace tells them she’s done, and they need to talk. That’s when Malcolm announces his love for Karen and calls her the “Cleopatra to my Antony,” but she can’t forgive him for destroying her marriage. Grace thinks she can and tells them that on some twisted level the two are made for each other, but they have to leave the past in the past if they ever hope to move on into the future. What Grace says must make sense to them because Malcolm walks out and then reenters the office as if it’s his first-time meeting Karen. The two have a romantic introduction and Malcolm asks Karen on a first date. It’s a redo for the couple with a brand-new start, minus the dark clouds from their past hovering over their future. Karen accepts the date and goes a step further, forgiving Malcolm for his role in her divorce. She loves him and he might be the only man that can match her level of insanity; the two, are meant to be.

The episode ends with another realization and a warning about the importance of good dental insurance. After Zusanna smacked Jack in an impassioned plea for him to find his inner actor she knocked a tooth loose and now he needs his teaching job back for the insurance. Tom Cruise he is not, and his pearly whites have an obvious gap where a tooth used to be. Funny thing about his teaching job is Zusanna stole it because she needed her own dental insurance! The woman manipulated Jack out of his part-time career and now he is jobless and toothless! Apparently, Zusanna needed those benefits too and tries to spin her manipulations as an acting lesson – one that taught Jack how to leave his comfort zone, and he’s passed with flying colors! Of course, Jack will believe anything if you sell it hard enough and is beyond proud of himself for fine tuning his acting skills. The problem is he still needs a job with insurance to fix his tooth and his teaching job has been filled. Lucky for him, Zusanna knows of a job that is perfect for Jack. It has just enough benefits to keep him in teeth, but not nearly enough to keep him out of poverty. Jack’s taking over her dog walking business and if the St. Bernard dragging him around the apartment complex is anything to go by, “Just Jack” might have found his true calling.