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Next summer, Eric McCormack is directing a romantic comedy based on a screenplay that he’s written. Beyond the movie, McCormack’s production company has development deals for possible new series with two networks, one of them NBC.

Megan Mullally is simply re-locating from NBC-TV prime time to NBC daytime, where she’s scheduled to host a weekday talk show, a la Ellen and Rosie, beginning next September.

Debra Messing isn’t messing around, or even waiting for her series’ final fade out. On the same day that Will & Grace premieres live, Messing, or at least her voice, is starring with the voice of Ashton Kutcher in Open Season, a motion picture from Sony Animation, in a multiplex near you.

As for Sean Hayes, he’s moving on up to the big screen, with at least two theatrical movies, Simon Says, and Shut Up and Sing, scheduled for 2006 release.

The creators and producers of Will & Grace have also promised there will be no spin-off series--no Jack & Karen, or Rosario’s Baby.

While they're all talking about their career futures, but they’re hush-hush about how the final year story lines will unfold. It’s highly unlikely that the gay characters will transcend the sexless wonder status that they’ve maintained through seven lust-deprived seasons. Even the heterosexuals on this show don’t have much sex.

Despite its flaws, most glaringly, the unwillingness to portray gay characters as sexual beings, capable of sustaining meaningful romantic relationships, Will & Grace, by broadcast network standards, has largely been marked by superior acting, directing, and writing.

Things are worsening for gay characters on network sitcoms, so that there’s little on the sitcom horizon as progressive and full-bodied as Will & Grace. Just take a peek at the new gays on the network block. They are minor characters, none of them integral to their series: the fey waiter on Kitchen Confidential, a closeted high school boy on The War at Home, a music biz assistant on Half and Half, an underwear company technician on Twins.

In comparison, Will and Jack are looking better, way better: fully fleshed out, three-dimensional, and core characters, not 30-second per episode caricatures.

Debra Messing recently told Entertainment Tonight how she’d like to see Grace Adler’s story-line end: “I would like Grace to be in bed with George Clooney. In the pilot, we started watching ER and saying how gorgeous George Clooney is. It would just wrap things up.”

If I ruled Will & Grace’s World, here’s how everyone would say their last goodbye: Will and Grace finally learn what the rest of us have known for years--except for sex, they are more compatible than most married couples. They’d wed with the understanding that both are free to find sexual fulfillment elsewhere. Considering the infrequency of their individual sexual encounters, their sex lives would rarely cut into their cuddle time.

Jack would win the Tri-State Lottery and find happiness with a gay Kevin Bacon lookalike. He’d use his winnings to buy Out TV, then transforms it into a premium cable network with a slate of hard R and X-rated content.

Rosario Salazar returns to El Salvador, becoming Principal of the school at which she once taught. She hires a South of the Border Karen Walker wannabe, named Arania Sue Beavercasa, as her hacienda’s housekeeper.

As for Karen Walker, sitcom’s best second banana since Ethel Mertz, she’d end the series as she began: in a gin-soaked haze, her tart tongue, if not her liver, intact.

Will and Grace's eighth and final season debuts on Thursday, September 29

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