Witty Will and Grace off to a depressing start

TV's hit comedy Will and Grace premiered its eighth season on Thursday, Sept. 16. This first witty episode started where last season left off, with jokes ranging from sex, homosexuals and adultery to immigrants and Irish people.

The season began with a very dramatic start as Grace, played by Debra Messing, mourned over her cheating husband Leo (Harry Connick Jr.). She tells Will (Eric McCormack) to send Leo away from her apartment. A gay man against a straight one, Will tries his best and shouts, "I get very straight when I'm angry!" in an excessively feminine way. Leo ends up just walking in the apartment and convinces Grace to give him a second chance. Will continues to support Grace and plans a dinner to help Grace and her husband relieve the tension. He invites Grace's close friends Jack (Sean Hayes) and Karen (Megan Mullally). Here, the depressing adultery theme was a tad overdone as Leo was repeatedly compared to a piece of meat. Grace wants to order the teriyaki meat that gave her a stomach ache once, and Will argues that you shouldn't make the same mistake twice for about five long minutes of the 30 minute episode.

The themes of this first episode compared to last season were exactly the same. There is a dramatic event every show that usually gets resolved, and crude jokes are made throughout the entire episode. The mood of this episode was heavy, however, compared to previous shows because by the end, Grace could not even look at her husband without knowing that her marriage was over. She left him that same night and went to stay with Will. Apparently Leo's second chance only lasted a day. This was not a typical drama for Will and Grace, since it was on such a serious topic.

The comic relief of this episode featured guest star Jennifer Lopez as herself. All of her lines were cornier than the usual Will and Grace jokes. Jack, who was J-Lo's backup dancer before he was fired, rides the Metro with her. He asks her why she doesn't drive an expensive car to work, and she explains, "I keep it real when I'm in New York," and the sexy star keeps it real on the show, too.

Now that Grace is single again with her sexy flair that's always there, this cliffhanger leaves us not knowing what to expect for the rest of the season, but expectations are high. In past seasons, Will and Grace, produced by Max Mutchnick and David Cohan, was nominated for 49 Emmy awards and 24 Golden Globes. Messing herself won the Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy in 2003. The audience continues to eat up the sex jokes, and Will and Grace only gets better.

Will and Grace airs on NBC on Thursdays at 9/8 p.m.