Will & Grace - Season Three
Will & Gracestrode into its third season with the kind of  cultural cache TV executives would kill for. These 22 episodes are  littered with hip celebrity guest stars, from Ellen DeGeneres to Sandra  Bernhard to Cher, and the performances of the core quartet--Debra Messing,  Eric McCormack, Karen Mullally, and Sean Hayes--became more comically  exaggerated as they risked pushing their characters (already riddled with  neuroses and snippiness) into the realm of caricatures. But due to clever  writing and confident, full-throttle performances, it doesn't matter. Even  when Jack and Karen's high-handed behavior go beyond anything recognizably  human, audiences love them all the more; no matter how high-strung Will  and Grace become, their well-honed rapport keeps them engaging and  lovable.Wisely, the writers swiftly returned the pair to roommate status  and got Grace out of her ongoing relationship with Will's former boss  (Gregory Hines), bringing the show's focus back on how the pair sublimate  their love lives with the cozy intimacy of friendship--one particularly  strong episode flashes back to how they first met in college, replete with  godawful 80s fashion. But, as ever, it's Jack and Karen who up the comic  ante; Mullally and Hayes are shamelessly self-absorbed and shallow,  exploiting and abusing everyone around them. Jack forces Will to play  Cyrano, feeding him pick-up lines over his salesperson headset; Karen,  worried that some experimental plastic surgery might turn out badly,  manipulates another socialite into getting it first. Not all plotlines  fly--Grace gets into a relationship with an obnoxious neighbor (Woody  Harrelson) that never becomes more than stunt-casting--but the racy wit  flies fast and furious, the slapstick is topnotch, and Karen's hairdo  towers magnificently.--Bret Fetzer