Season Two

Credits | Summary | Quotes | Did You Notice?

"Sweet (and Sour) Charity"

by Episode Guide Writer Sarah I.

Episode #2.18 | Original Airdate 3/28/2000

Written by Adam Barr | Directed by James Burrows | Eric McCormack (Will Truman) | Debra Messing (Grace Adler) | Sean Hayes (Jack McFarland) | Megan Mullally (Karen Walker) | GUEST CAST: Shelley Morrison (Rosario McFarland) | Debra Mooney (Sister Robert) | Mary Pat Gleason (Sally) | Megan Taylor Harvey (Carrot Girl) | Daryl Sabara (Broccoli Boy) | Athena Kihara (Radish Girl) | Ryan Tyler Collier (Boy) | Richard Wharton (Gerald) |

Summary: Joni Mitchell. An accomplished singer/songwriter who has inspired many for decades. And if they're the 105th caller, Will and Grace could be sitting front row at her concert.

Entering the apartment in a mad rush, Will gets to the phone and calls the radio station holding the contest (which wasn't hard to do. He's got their number on speed dial). He gets excited when he gets someone on the other line, only to find out that it's Jack on the phone in another room. Grace gets him off the phone by promising him naked pictures of James Van Der Beek, which she didn't have. Will redials the station and he gets put on hold. Grace makes a promise to God that she would dedicate herself to him. Will wins, and Grace decides to do some charity work...and she decides Will will do it with her.

Jack and Karen have been forced by Grace to donate clothes. Karen finds it extremely hard to part with any of her clothes, because each thing has a lot of sentimental value. Karen soon has to take a phone call from her pharmacist, leaving Jack alone in her closet. He discovers her collection of shoes (which leaves him in awe) and decides to start picking and choosing things to donate there.

Will and Grace are volunteering at a children's play, "Stone Soup." They figure that they'll do the play and then have enough time to get to the concert. That is, until the day of the play and the concert arrives and they've been informed that the play will be starting at a later time, forcing them to miss the concert. Although devastated, they know that they can't turn their backs on the children now.

Karen goes back to her closet after getting dressed, looking for the shoes that would go perfectly with her outfit. Karen immediately chooses her Chanel slingbacks. She opens up the area she keeps her large shoe collection to find that there is a pair missing: her beloved Chanel slingbacks. Panicking, Karen finally realizes what happened to them. Jack donated them to charity.

It's a few hours before the play is to be performed, and Grace bails on Will and goes to the concert. Will is left alone as the play begins and a young girl struggles to read Grace's lines. Suddenly, Grace enters and saves the play, reading the lines she was intended to read. After it is over, Grace explains that she returned because she was asked to leave the concert for singing too loud by Joni Mitchell herself.

Karen drags Jack to a church to find the shoes he donated. Karen finds one of the slingbacks, while another woman named Sally, who is very down on her luck, finds the other. Not willing to give up the shoe without a fight, Karen and Sally settle on a deal for payment for the other shoe: Five.

As Karen is pulling five hundred dollars from her purse, she hears Sally say that she's happy that she's getting five dollars. Karen originally gives her a five-dollar bill, but ends up giving her a few hundred-dollar bills in addition to the five, revealing her soft side.


Quotes
JACK: You don't want to mess with the almighty, Grace. You don't want to go to he-ell. You know what heat and sulfur does to your ha-air.

----

JACK: Oh, my god, Karen. I'm so excited. I've never been in your closet before.
KAREN: Well, don't get your hopes up, honey. You'll just be disappointed.
[KAREN TURNS ON THE LIGHT. THE CLOSET IS HUGE, WITH MULTIPLE ROOMS, A COUCH, A SITTING TABLE, ETC.]
JACK: Oh, my god. If my closet were like this, I never would have come out of it.

----

GRACE: [READING] And the villagers cheered because they knew they'd be enjoying the delicious stone soup that they all made together.
WILL: [WHISPERING] Ok, guys, say your line.
THE CHILDREN [ALL]: [SAD] Aww!
WILL: No, the other line.
THE CHILDREN [ALL]: [CHEERING] Yay!

----

SALLY: Oh, I can't wait. Five whole dollars.
KAREN: Right. Yeah, five whole dollars. You drive a hard bargain. Ok. [PULLS OUT A FIVE DOLLAR BILL] I don't know how that got in there, but here you go, honey.
[KAREN AND SALLY SIMULTANEOUSLY TRADE.]
SALLY: Wow! $5.00. This is my lucky day!
KAREN: Uh, Crazy? Make it your lucky year. [KAREN HANDS HER A FEW HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS]

----

RADISH GIRL: I don't hate you, Grace. I like you. I think you're pretty.
WILL: Out of the mouths of radishes.
GRACE: [PICKS UP RADISH GIRL] You do?
RADISH GIRL: Yes.
GRACE: Oh, that is so sweet. [TO WILL] See? This makes it all worth it.
RADISH GIRL: Yes, and when I grow up, I want to have fake hair just like you.


Did You Notice...
~Does Sally (the woman haggling with Karen over the shoes) look familiar to you? She should; she also appeared in the second season episode "Acting Out" when Jack was in the offices of NBC.
~There is a joke that didn't get that much response. When Grace leaves to catch her cab and Will says, "Go take your...big yellow taxi," that was in reference to Joni Mitchell's hit (and probably best known song) "Big Yellow Taxi." My theory is that a lot of people refer to the song as "They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot," because of its chorus ("Big Yellow Taxi" got its name from the lines "Late last night I heard the screen door slam/And a big yellow taxi took away my old man"). Therefore, the joke didn't get as much of a reaction as it should have.

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