'Will & Grace' Goes Live to Open FINAL Season - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

barwars · 07-22-2005, 06:49 PM

'Will & Grace' Goes Live to Open FINAL Season
(Friday, July 22 03:05 PM)

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com)
NBC's "Will & Grace" will begin its final season without a net.

The show's eighth-season premiere will air live, NBC announced Friday (July 22). The cast will perform the episode twice, once for viewers in the eastern part of the country and later for audiences out West.

"This opportunity for a challenging live platform launch for 'Will & Grace' is the perfect way to inaugurate their final season," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says. "On the heels of the amazing Emmy nominations that recognized the series' achievement, we think the audience is primed for a memorable first episode and an equally memorable last year."

"Will & Grace" is among the leading nominees for the 57th annual Primetime Emmys, tying ABC's "Desperate Housewives" for the lead among series with 15. The show's nominations include outstanding comedy series and acting nods for Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally.
The live episode will pick up where last season's finale left off, with Grace (Debra Messing) considering an affair with a married man (guest star Eric Stoltz, who's reprising his role). Alec Baldwin, who earned a guest-acting Emmy nod for his work on the show, will also return.

"We love the idea of a live episode," "Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick say, "because we get to show the audience of 'Will & Grace' what we've known from day one -- we work with the best cast in network television."

The live episode will air at 8:30 p.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 29.

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve...543|1|,00.html

iluvjackandkaren · 08-14-2005, 12:04 PM

thanks for posting!!

i can't wait!

slackermonkey · 08-15-2005, 02:05 AM

A live episode somehow makes sense for "Will & Grace." But I'm kind of curious as to how this whole East/West Coast thing will work, especially on the eventual DVD release.

sitcomfan89 · 08-15-2005, 01:56 PM

Wow! Should be good. I remeber it was really funny when Drew Carey Show did it's last episode live.

Joeylova87 · 09-26-2005, 09:26 AM

After this show gets cancelled, there will be no more good shows to watch on Thursday.

jayman75 · 09-29-2005, 10:11 PM

It was great... but I swear that Alec Baldwin swings both ways. I mean, tonight, his stint as the Boy Scout Leader on SNL, and there have been other instances I can't begin to name. Maybe that's why he and Kim Basinger got divorced.

They can't get rid of Rosario.

And Grace looked like she had a paunch. They could have picked a more flattering outfit.

And... did something really happen to Megan Mullaly? I thought it was just a write-in until she came out on crutches.

Any thoughts???

tvfan0101 · 09-29-2005, 10:31 PM

I thought it was hilarious. I love live television. Whenever the actors/actresses started laughing and then the audience started laughing, that was great.

snl 70s show fan · 09-29-2005, 11:57 PM

it was a great ep if this really is the last season i hope all the eps are as good if not better than this one

Rene · 09-30-2005, 12:00 AM

it wasnt really funny, i chuckled once

HuntingtonM15 · 09-30-2005, 12:48 AM

I thought it was pretty good. Maybe it was just the whole live thing that I liked, but I did think it was good. Something obviously did happen to Megan, but I'm not sure what.

Joker85 · 09-30-2005, 01:19 AM

She said on Ellen what really happened and I can't remember now what it was. But she definitely hurt her foot. As for the live episode, I think they did a great job, and you've got to hand it to all of them for being able to handle themselves so well (particulary Eric and Megan) but it's always funny when the actors crack up like Debra Messing and Sean Hayes did. Overall a good episode. Let's hope they keep up the quality for their final year.

PZelda · 09-30-2005, 01:48 AM

Yup, Megan did hurt her foot. I heard it was because she was dancing to a commercial at her home and she fell down....SOMEHOW. I'm not even sure how she managed to accomplish such a thing.

I loved the whole thing. I thought the TMYK shooting star reference was funny.

HuntingtonM15 · 09-30-2005, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joker85

As for the live episode, I think they did a great job, and you've got to hand it to all of them for being able to handle themselves so well (particulary Eric and Megan)

I definitely commend Megan for doing such a great job. I don't know how she was able to keep such a straight face and deliver her line after first seeing Jack's eyebrow. I would have been cracking up.

JoshB80 · 09-30-2005, 08:45 AM

Did anyone record the West Coast airing? I'd like to see this airing and compare it to the East Coast airing. When I went to a taping last summer they would totally rewrite a few scenes if the audience didn't find it funny the first time around. I am just curious if any rewriting was done. If you can help, please let me know.

Josh

dynoguy88 · 09-30-2005, 11:29 AM

I'm on the east coast so I saw the first airing. It was pretty good. Seeing it live was a treat. Notice how the picture quality was different - like the picture quality on soap operas. I was pretty impressed that the cast held up as well as they did. It really went rather well. When they film it in the normal format, the actors shoot these scenes several times so they can get the best and funniest readings when the show runners edit the episode together - going live is a little risky since you won't always get the best readings and the possibility of flubbed lines. Good for them.

Here's a "yahoo" aritcle on last nights episode for anyone interested....

_________________________________________________________________

'Will & Grace' Ups Ante With Live Show
Thursday September 29 9:52 PM ET

The set didn't collapse. No one forgot his lines. Too bad. The cast of "Will & Grace," who do a pretty slick job every week on their filmed sitcom, upped the ante Thursday night by airing the season opener live.

No one fell down. No fire alarm went off in the middle of a punch line. Too bad.

Sure, Debra Messing and Sean Hayes did have fleeting attacks of the giggles. In the first of the night's two live performances (this one staged for the eastern United States), Messing, who plays Grace, got tickled by Hayes, who plays Grace's flamboyantly gay pal, Jack.

"When an opportunity comes," Jack declared on the subject of his dating married men, "I don't question it! I grab it, drop its ring on the nightstand, and swing on it till dawn!"

Hearing that, Messing snickered a bit too long before coaxing out her response.

And in a later scene, when Hayes removed the eye patch he had been wearing to reveal a singed-off eyebrow (it looked funnier than it sounds), he and Messing nearly lost control.

Perhaps the night's biggest surprise presumably scripted was a juicy lip-lock between Eric McCormack (who stars as Will) and guest star Alec Baldwin (playing Will's peculiar boss). Not bad.

The zany half-hour centered on the discovery that the long-lost husband of Karen (Megan Mullally) isn't dead, after all, but alive and well and hiding from the mob.

"But we were at the funeral. We scattered a trash bag full of his ashes!" said a shocked Grace when she heard the news from Will.

"Apparently that was just dirt and Rice Krispies," he explained.

Thus did the NBC sitcom begin its eighth and final season on a fun, and attention-grabbing, note.

Live "stunt" telecasts aren't unknown for established TV series, of course.

In November 1999, "The Drew Carey Show" staged a live improv-laced episode. Two years before that, "ER" produced an ambitious live hour of that medical drama. And for the entire 1992-93 season, the Fox sitcom "Roc," which starred Charles S. Dutton as a city garbage collector, produced all of its weekly half-hours live.

Next week, "Will & Grace" returns to its usual filmed format. And Jack's eye patch should be gone.

Why, you may ask, was he wearing it?

He told his friends he had suffered a mishap the night before on the set of his new talk show: "I tripped making my entrance, knocked over the light and caught the set on fire."

Just for laughs, why couldn't that have happened on Thursday's "Will & Grace"?

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/ap/20050929/112805592000.html

07-22-2005, 06:49 PM	#1
barwars .. Forum Star Join Date: May 04, 2002 Posts: 13,273	'Will & Grace' Goes Live to Open FINAL Season 'Will & Grace' Goes Live to Open FINAL Season (Friday, July 22 03:05 PM) LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) NBC's "Will & Grace" will begin its final season without a net. The show's eighth-season premiere will air live, NBC announced Friday (July 22). The cast will perform the episode twice, once for viewers in the eastern part of the country and later for audiences out West. "This opportunity for a challenging live platform launch for 'Will & Grace' is the perfect way to inaugurate their final season," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says. "On the heels of the amazing Emmy nominations that recognized the series' achievement, we think the audience is primed for a memorable first episode and an equally memorable last year." "Will & Grace" is among the leading nominees for the 57th annual Primetime Emmys, tying ABC's "Desperate Housewives" for the lead among series with 15. The show's nominations include outstanding comedy series and acting nods for Sean Hayes and Megan Mullally. The live episode will pick up where last season's finale left off, with Grace (Debra Messing) considering an affair with a married man (guest star Eric Stoltz, who's reprising his role). Alec Baldwin, who earned a guest-acting Emmy nod for his work on the show, will also return. "We love the idea of a live episode," "Will & Grace" creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick say, "because we get to show the audience of 'Will & Grace' what we've known from day one -- we work with the best cast in network television." The live episode will air at 8:30 p.m. ET Thursday, Sept. 29. http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve...543\|1\|,00.html

08-15-2005, 02:05 AM	#3
slackermonkey the big yellow joint Senior Member Join Date: Oct 05, 2004 Location: Earth Posts: 1,779	A live episode somehow makes sense for "Will & Grace." But I'm kind of curious as to how this whole East/West Coast thing will work, especially on the eventual DVD release.
	__________________ ...Derek TV on DVD Checklist: 05/09 - Scrubs: The Complete Third Season 05/30 - Joey: The Complete First Season 06/13 - Cheers: The Complete Eighth Season 06/13 - Frasier: The Complete Eighth Season 06/20 - Justice League: Season 2 07/25 - Animaniacs: Volume 1 10/?? - Scrubs: The Complete Fourth Season 12/06 - Animaniacs: Volume 2

08-15-2005, 01:56 PM	#4
sitcomfan89 Member Occasional Poster Join Date: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 38	Wow! Should be good. I remeber it was really funny when Drew Carey Show did it's last episode live.
	__________________ From "The Golden Girls" [Rose Blanche & Dorothy are in the dark movies] Rose: I wonder what kind of movie this is... [Off-camera sounds of woman screaming in horror and roaring chainsaw] Dorothy: It's a musical Rose.

09-26-2005, 09:26 AM	#5
Joeylova87 Joey: How ya doin'? Frequent Poster Join Date: Dec 19, 2003 Location: Somewhere here Posts: 283	After this show gets cancelled, there will be no more good shows to watch on Thursday.
	__________________ FRIENDS is #1! Joey: How ya doin'? The Official Friends Page Other shows to check out: Hope and Faith, According to Jim, Charmed, 7th Heaven, American Idol, The Apprentice, Smallville, Gilmore Girls, The Bachelor, Extreme Makeover: The Home Edition

09-29-2005, 10:11 PM	#6
jayman75 I Love the 80s! Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Dec 27, 2000 Location: THE GREAT UNITED STATES Posts: 3,809	It was great... but I swear that Alec Baldwin swings both ways. I mean, tonight, his stint as the Boy Scout Leader on SNL, and there have been other instances I can't begin to name. Maybe that's why he and Kim Basinger got divorced. They can't get rid of Rosario. And Grace looked like she had a paunch. They could have picked a more flattering outfit. And... did something really happen to Megan Mullaly? I thought it was just a write-in until she came out on crutches. Any thoughts???
	__________________ A fan of quality, classic television comedies and holiday specials... The Wonder Years,The Golden Girls,Burns and Allen, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Are You Being Served?, Family Guy, South Park, Designing Women, Dallas, The Facts of Life, Roseanne, Will and Grace, The Twilight Zone, Original Scooby-Doo, Murphy Brown, The Big Bang Theory... Talk to me about one of these shows, and I'm all yours...

08-14-2005, 12:04 PM	#2
iluvjackandkaren Member Frequent Poster Join Date: May 26, 2003 Location: NYC Posts: 122	thanks for posting!! i can't wait!

09-29-2005, 10:31 PM	#7
tvfan0101 Member Forum Regular Join Date: Sep 29, 2003 Posts: 961	I thought it was hilarious. I love live television. Whenever the actors/actresses started laughing and then the audience started laughing, that was great.

09-29-2005, 11:57 PM	#8
snl 70s show fan Member Senior Member Join Date: Jun 14, 2005 Location: in the forman basment Posts: 2,454	it was a great ep if this really is the last season i hope all the eps are as good if not better than this one

09-30-2005, 12:00 AM	#9
Rene #1 Senior Member Join Date: May 22, 2004 Location: cali Posts: 1,849	it wasnt really funny, i chuckled once
	__________________ GO SOX Gob: Tell you what we're gonna do: "Rock Paper Scissors" for it! Michael: No, no I'm not - Gob: One, two, three! Paper covers rock. Michael: It is a rock, though. Should beat everything. Gob: There's not a lot of logic to it. It's kind of like on a boat with "Women and children first." I mean, why should they -

09-30-2005, 12:48 AM	#10
HuntingtonM15 That Bothers Me Moderator Forum Star Join Date: Jun 20, 2003 Location: Metro Detroit Posts: 11,060	I thought it was pretty good. Maybe it was just the whole live thing that I liked, but I did think it was good. Something obviously did happen to Megan, but I'm not sure what.

09-30-2005, 01:19 AM	#11
Joker85 Back in St. Olaf... Frequent Poster Join Date: Oct 18, 2003 Location: Alabama Posts: 481	She said on Ellen what really happened and I can't remember now what it was. But she definitely hurt her foot. As for the live episode, I think they did a great job, and you've got to hand it to all of them for being able to handle themselves so well (particulary Eric and Megan) but it's always funny when the actors crack up like Debra Messing and Sean Hayes did. Overall a good episode. Let's hope they keep up the quality for their final year.

09-30-2005, 01:48 AM	#12
PZelda Two Valeries! <3 Forum Addict Join Date: Jul 15, 2002 Location: I'm STILL missing NYC. :( Posts: 78,223	Yup, Megan did hurt her foot. I heard it was because she was dancing to a commercial at her home and she fell down....SOMEHOW. I'm not even sure how she managed to accomplish such a thing. I loved the whole thing. I thought the TMYK shooting star reference was funny.
	__________________ Cheers behind the couch!

09-30-2005, 08:45 AM	#14
JoshB80 Member Occasional Poster Join Date: Feb 07, 2004 Location: Birmingham, AL Posts: 82	Did anyone record the West Coast airing? I'd like to see this airing and compare it to the East Coast airing. When I went to a taping last summer they would totally rewrite a few scenes if the audience didn't find it funny the first time around. I am just curious if any rewriting was done. If you can help, please let me know. Josh

09-30-2005, 11:29 AM	#15
dynoguy88 Member Forum 3000 Club Member Join Date: Apr 01, 2000 Location: Michigan, USA Posts: 3,674	reply I'm on the east coast so I saw the first airing. It was pretty good. Seeing it live was a treat. Notice how the picture quality was different - like the picture quality on soap operas. I was pretty impressed that the cast held up as well as they did. It really went rather well. When they film it in the normal format, the actors shoot these scenes several times so they can get the best and funniest readings when the show runners edit the episode together - going live is a little risky since you won't always get the best readings and the possibility of flubbed lines. Good for them. Here's a "yahoo" aritcle on last nights episode for anyone interested.... _________________________________________________________________ 'Will & Grace' Ups Ante With Live Show Thursday September 29 9:52 PM ET The set didn't collapse. No one forgot his lines. Too bad. The cast of "Will & Grace," who do a pretty slick job every week on their filmed sitcom, upped the ante Thursday night by airing the season opener live. No one fell down. No fire alarm went off in the middle of a punch line. Too bad. Sure, Debra Messing and Sean Hayes did have fleeting attacks of the giggles. In the first of the night's two live performances (this one staged for the eastern United States), Messing, who plays Grace, got tickled by Hayes, who plays Grace's flamboyantly gay pal, Jack. "When an opportunity comes," Jack declared on the subject of his dating married men, "I don't question it! I grab it, drop its ring on the nightstand, and swing on it till dawn!" Hearing that, Messing snickered a bit too long before coaxing out her response. And in a later scene, when Hayes removed the eye patch he had been wearing to reveal a singed-off eyebrow (it looked funnier than it sounds), he and Messing nearly lost control. Perhaps the night's biggest surprise presumably scripted was a juicy lip-lock between Eric McCormack (who stars as Will) and guest star Alec Baldwin (playing Will's peculiar boss). Not bad. The zany half-hour centered on the discovery that the long-lost husband of Karen (Megan Mullally) isn't dead, after all, but alive and well and hiding from the mob. "But we were at the funeral. We scattered a trash bag full of his ashes!" said a shocked Grace when she heard the news from Will. "Apparently that was just dirt and Rice Krispies," he explained. Thus did the NBC sitcom begin its eighth and final season on a fun, and attention-grabbing, note. Live "stunt" telecasts aren't unknown for established TV series, of course. In November 1999, "The Drew Carey Show" staged a live improv-laced episode. Two years before that, "ER" produced an ambitious live hour of that medical drama. And for the entire 1992-93 season, the Fox sitcom "Roc," which starred Charles S. Dutton as a city garbage collector, produced all of its weekly half-hours live. Next week, "Will & Grace" returns to its usual filmed format. And Jack's eye patch should be gone. Why, you may ask, was he wearing it? He told his friends he had suffered a mishap the night before on the set of his new talk show: "I tripped making my entrance, knocked over the light and caught the set on fire." Just for laughs, why couldn't that have happened on Thursday's "Will & Grace"? http://tv.yahoo.com/news/ap/20050929/112805592000.html