Love and Marriage

Love and Marriage is the pilot episode of the series Will & Grace. Initially referred to as Pilot, it was retrospectively re-titled. Best friends Will and Grace are introduced as well as Will's flamboyant friend Jack and Grace's rich assistant Karen.

Grace gets engaged to her boyfriend Danny but Will shares his reservations about him.

Synopsis[]

Will is on the phone with Grace, inviting her over to his place. It is then implied that Grace is living with her boyfriend Danny and Will is gay. They are best friends.

Jack, another friend of Will's, is moving in with him but Will postpones so Grace, who just had a fight with Danny, can stay over. That night, Will and Grace play pyramid with their friends Rob and Ellen, and easily win the game thanks to their irrefutable chemistry together. Grace realizes she never has the same connection with Danny so she decides to break up with him for good. However, she informs Will later that Danny proposed and she said yes.

Grace notices that Will has reservations about her decision to get married and he admits that he thinks she deserves better than Danny, which upsets Grace. Will later goes to Grace's office to apologize and give his blessing but learns from her assistant Karen that she had already gone to the city hall to get married. Grace then comes in wearing a wedding dress in a distraught and hysterical state; she has run away from the wedding and is blaming Will, saying he wants her to be alone like him. Will walks out hurt by this, saying he never thought of himself as being alone.

Grace, still in her wedding dress, apologizes to Will in his office. He comforts her and makes her realize that there is still time for her to meet her perfect match.

They go to a bar where the other patrons think they are a newly wed couple. After they were cheered on to share a kiss, Grace asks Will if he felt anything but he does not.

Cast[]

Main[]

Guest[]

Gary Grubbs (Harlin Polk)
Tom Gallop (Rob)
Leigh-Allyn Baker (Ellen)
Jimm Giannini (Gino)
Todd Eckert (Jurgen Franzblau)
Will Radford (Patron #1/Henry)
Ellen Idelson (Will's Assistant, Ellen, Voice)

Notes[]

The title is a reference to the Frank Sinatra song which was also used as the theme for the sitcom Married... with Children.
Gino's scenes were deleted but he is still credited. He is Grace's builder, who created an over-stuffed chair for her.
In the early draft of the script, Will has a law partner named Higgins. His scenes were removed from the final draft.
The episode features the original title card which will be replaced during the seventh episode.
Grace reveals that she will be 31 years old the next month, implying she was born in 1967.

First appearance of Will and Grace's game night with Rob and Ellen.
Danny appears but his face is not seen; he just walks behind Grace while she is on the phone. Danny, played by Tom Verica, eventually appears on the season's finale episode.
Jack's bird Guapo also appears but his cage is covered. When Jack shakes his cage, white feathers fly out. In later episodes, however, we see that Guapo is a scarlet macaw whose feathers are mostly red, yellow, and blue.
At the end of this episode, Will and Grace go to a bar where the patrons make them kiss. They revisit the same bar again during the finale.
Will mentions his brother who married a girl of which he did not approve. This later becomes the focus when his brother Sam comes to visit in "Big Brother is Coming".
Will recalls the French film he and Grace saw about two lovers who kept missing each other but finally meet on a plane during the last scene. This foreshadows the love story between Grace and Leo who, after their divorce, meet on a plane in season 8.

Cultural references[]

When Grace comes in wearing sweatpants and rubber shoes, Jack refers to her as Sporty Spice (Melanie C of the Spice Girls), who used to dress in the same sporty outfit during the 1990s.
During the poker game, Jack sings a line from "A Room Without Windows" from the musical What Makes Sammy Run? Later, when Jurgen hints he and Will might become a couple, Jack thinks he is humming "If He Walked Into My Life" from the musical Mame.
After Will mentions a Jewish cowboy Jack met on the internet, he says "Shalom, my lonesome prairie dog", combining the Hebrew word for hello (shalom), the phrase "lonesome cowboys", and prairie dogs, a rodent native to North America.
When Will denies having reservations on Grace's engagement, she describes Will as "Lying Man Talking," a reference to the phrase "dead man walking" or the 1995 film of the same name.
While Grace recounts her fight with Danny, Will makes a reference to The Jerry Springer Show which had gained notoriety for violent feuds on set. He also compares her outburst to Barbara De Angelis' 1994 infomercial "Making Love Work".
Trying to explain toy store FAO Schwarz to Rosario on the phone, Karen calls it F. A. O-ye, Schwartz-o.

Media[]

Quotes[]

Will:	Honey, I don't need your man. I got George Clooney.
Grace:	Sorry, babe. He doesn't bat for your team.
Will:	Well, he hasn't seen me pitch.

Shalom, my lonesome prairie dog. — Jack, remembering Rudy, the Jewish cowboy

"You sound just like your mother." When you
want push someone's buttons, that'll do it. — Grace

Will:	Did you and Danny have a fight?
Grace:	Yeah, but I don't want to talk about it right now. I can't even think straight.
Will:	That's funny. Neither can Jack.

Turns out Fiona Apple doesn't particularly like apples. Apple Brown Betty was invented by a guy named Darren, and get this: Bobby Darin's dog was named Fiona. — Will, after watching VH1's Pop-Up Video