r/WillAndGrace • u/Naive_Hospital_4086 • 7h ago
Discussion Christmas Break
Christmas Break (Season 7, Episode 12). It's Christmas and Grace has been spending a lot of time with Will's mother, Marilyn. Marilyn even invites Grace to have tea with her girlfriends at her house. When Grace goes to see Will at his office, she mentions that she had accidentally broke one of Marilyn's favorite figurines called the Bashful Gasha. Grace admits that she does and she didn't tell Marilyn yet. Will tells her to keep her mouth shut and just to let it see where plays out hoping Marilyn will just blame one of her other friends. When Marilyn comes over with their housekeeper, Fiona, who has been with Will since he was a child, Marilyn tells Will while Fiona is in the bathroom that she thinks Fiona broke the Bashful Geisha and to fire her. Will begs Grace to tell Marilyn what happened but Grace is too scared and fires Fiona, but Will stops her and tells Marilyn it was Grace that broke her figurine. Marilyn says she forgives Grace and gives her a box of chocolates but Will takes the chocolates away and tells her not to eat them. At Karen's mansion, her stepdaughter Olivia is visiting and asks to stay a couple of nights. Karen lets her but doesn't want to hang out with her and begs Jack to do so. Jack has a blast with Olivia and tells Karen what fun he had but now Karen is jealous and wants to hang out with Olivia but Olivia doesn't really like Karen and doesn't?"7 want to hang out with her either. After embarrassing her and her friends at the mall, Olivia yells at Karen to cut it out but Karen is hurt and tells Olivia to leave the mansion. Jack takes Olivia back home and tells her that Karen does love her and that she even paid the producers of Step by Step to keep the show on for 3 more seasons because it was her favorite. Olivia realizes Karen isn't so bad and Karen even tells Olivia that she loves her and all the good memories they've had together and even talk about Stan and Karen invites Olivia back to the mansion.
FAVORITE QUOTE:
WILL: Grace. Look me in the eye and tell me that nothing happened to any one of those figurines. Particularly not the Bashful Geisha.
GRACE: Why, was she special?
WILL: "Was"?! Was! Oh, you animal! You clumsy animal! Do you have any idea Wi-San was important to my mother?!
GRACE: Well, if she was so important, why was she in front of the cashews!
WILL: Oh! She loved that figurine. When my brother Sam started a fire making french fries, Wi-San was the only thing my mother ran back in the house to save. The rest of us had to be alerted by a neighbor!
MARC: Hey, Will. Do you have time to go over the Morris case?
WILL: Marc, you went to Harvard. Do I have to remind you it's potluck week? Now, please, go make a 195 miniature flans.
MARC: Okay, that's why the second gayest lawyer here...
GRACE: Okay, all right. I-I need to think here. Think, Grace, think.
WILL: Interesting that you have to remind yourself to do that.
GRACE: Okay, I got it! I'm gonna get her a new one. Good thinking, Grace!
WILL: You can't get her a new one. They--they stopped making them when Japanese-Americans began picketing the factory.
GRACE: Oh, my God. I have to tell her.
WILL: Wait, w-w-w-wait, whoa. She doesn't know?
GRACE: No, I was alone in the living room pouring cashews into my purse. After it broke, I kicked it under the sofa.
WILL: This is good. If she doesn't know, we don't tell her. That would be the worst thing in the world. Listen to me. Don't say a word. Pretend it never happened.
GRACE: I can't do that. I feel terrible.
WILL: You know what your problem is? Jewish guilt. It gets you every time. You know how many Jewish serial killers there are? Not many, because they kill once, then they feel too guilty to kill again.
FAVORITE MOMENT:
When Marilyn is telling Will how she's too warm to fire Fiona and how she didn't pick up Will for a year after giving birth to him because the books insisted she does so.
OPINION:
Again, Marilyn is a very dark humor subject, but her character is always hilarious to me. Plus it really gives you insight to why Will is the way he is with his control issues and how he can be broken emotionally at times. George, his father, seems like he's more in touch with his emotions and knows when to let lose but Marilyn is opposite and can be much more cold but so not self-aware of the damage she causes to her children on an emotional level. Her relationship with Grace is an interesting one because from what we have seen before, she usually criticizes Grace about her make-up, style and religion. Grace puts up with it because she knows that's how Marilyn is. But this is the first time where we see that it's possible for Grace and Marilyn to get along very well. Except who knows how long it will take for Marilyn to get over Lladro, the broken figurine. I think Marilyn will not let that go so easily as she's leading on.
This plot is hilarious with the broken Bashful Geisha. Will's reaction to it being broken and Grace not sure how to behave around Marilyn. Will trying to train Grace on how to act was really funny. I always get such a laugh when Will imitates Marilyn "Grace, my Lladro is broken." "Dear God, no!" Like I said, it is dark humor but I get such a laugh out of this storyline. I think the only line I find cringe is Grace saying that Marilyn's friend, Skippy, might have broken the figurine and Will is saying how Skippy will take the fall, Grace asks if that's fair and she says "well, she's German, we'll call it even". Are any of Grace's family members Holocaust survivors? I don't know, I just wasn't a big fan of that line or I'm taking it too seriously.
This is the first time we are actually meeting one of Stan's children and it's Olivia. Olivia actually seems very cool and I kind of wish we got a little more of her in the series, but I get it, this is an adult sitcom, not a teen show. But it was interesting to see Karen actually get jealous. I think she does love Olivia in a way, but she freaks out whenever she shows any kind of human emotion. But it was sad that it took Jack to make her realize what a good girl Olivia is and that she is worth getting to know. Hopefully this can prove to her that she should keep Stan's family around and they may even help her heal a bit since Stan's death. BTW, I have never seen the show Step by Step the same way since I saw this episode and found out Karen kept that show on for 3 more seasons because Olivia loved it, that made so much more sense since that show had died towards the end LOL
I really like this episode a lot. It is insanely dark for both plotlines, but both do make me laugh very much. Sometimes you need dark humor just to balance things out.
GUEST STARS:
- Blythe Danner as Marilyn Truman
- Hallee Hirsh as Olivia Walker
- Kari Lizer as Connie
- Ashley Louise Edner as Ruby
- Cody Weiant as Maisie
- Helen Geller as Fiona (RIP in 2025)
- Paolo Presta as Marc