Dolls and Dolls is the 21st episode of the fifth season, and 119th overall.
As Will gets addicted to pain killers, Grace and Jack try their best to intervene. Karen rooms in with an office manager named Liz to experience new things.
Synopsis
Liz
Feeling she has been missing out on "real life" and wanting to try out ordinary things she never gets to experience as a millionaire, Karen answers the ad for a roommate and moves in with an office manager named Liz. Both eccentric and outlandish, they begin to bond . However after finding out they like the same guy, Liz throws Karen out shortly before finding out that the apartment is owned by Walker Property Management i.e. Karen.
Hooked on the junk
Crack whores are sneaky!
After falling on his clogs, Will is prescribed painkiller medicine. Grace and Jack notice that Will is starting to behave unusually lax and concludes that he is addicted to the medicine. They hide away his pills and try to perform and intervention but Will sneaks away while pretending to get the newspaper.
After Will comes back, Grace makes him realize that he is not himself because he does not act in an obsessive-compulsive manner like he used to, and that he had called his mom back--something he normally never does.
Cast
Main
- Eric McCormack (Will Truman)
- Debra Messing (Grace Adler)
- Sean Hayes (Jack McFarland)
- Megan Mullally (Karen Walker)
Guest
Notes
- Title is a play on the 1955 musical Guys and Dolls with an allusion to "dolls" being a slang term for prescription drugs.
- Liz's scene with Will, Jack and Grace was deleted in syndication but are available in the DVD.
- Megan Mullally has stated that during shooting, Madonna did not know the cast's names except hers (Mullally's), instead referred to the others by their character's names.[1]
- Grace does a good "old-fashioned" party again just like in An Old-Fashioned Piano Party. In this episode she does a "good ol' fashioned folding party" and mentions her "good old-fashioned find-the-bad-smell party".
- The song on Grace's good old-fashioned folding party mix tape is Funky Cold Medina (1989) by Tone Lōc.
Cultural references
- When Grace and Jack ponder if Will might kill them if they leave a water ring on the table, Jack says "first he sees the ring, and then we die," referencing the horror film The Ring.
- Grace refers to Will as Miss Taylor, a strict villain in the musical film Pete's Dragon (1977).
- When Grace mentions that Will "gotta get off, gonna get off this merry-go-round", she alludes to the Valley of the Dolls theme sung Dionne Warwick. The film also tackles addiction to prescription drugs.
- Karen refers to Liz as Lizzie Boredom, after axe murderess Lizzie Borden.
- When Jack meets Liz, he tells her that as a gay man, he is "oddly attracted" to her, alluding to Madonna's gay icon status.
Media
Quotes
| Karen: | What is this place? It's pretty. Where are the fish? |
| Jack: | No, Karen. It is a "laundry-mat." People come here to clean their clothes. Then, they reuse them. |
| Karen: | Why, poor people are just plain clever. I wonder why they can't figure out a way to make more money. |
I tell you, you walk down Columbus Avenue with two rolls of quarters in your pocket, you get a lot of attention. — Will
| Will: | Hey, what're you guys doing? |
| Jack: | It's a good old-fashioned folding party. It was Grace's idea! Take her, she has funny genitals! |
Ooh, crack whores are sneaky! — Grace, after Will tried to trick them
| Liz: | You are going to get me into so much trouble. |
| Karen: | If you're lucky. |
| Liz: | You're crazy. |
| Karen: | Like a fox. |
| Liz: | I doubt it. |
| Karen: | You wish. |
| Liz: | Don't I ever. |
| Karen: | You and what army? Ha ha ha ha! |