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The script says faygel — the word's a punchline to a joke about how the Jewish-grandparent set refers to Will — but McCormack's not so sure. ''I thought it was faygeleh,'' weighs in Brooklyn-born Debra Messing, who plays Grace. The script supervisor — who, thank Yahweh, speaks Yiddish — gives the final judgment: Faygel (literal translation: bird) is okay, but faygeleh (little bird) is the preferred Catskills-era epithet for a gay man. Faygeleh it becomes.

Such disarmingly provocative gay humor may be a network novelty, but females and faygelehs have a long, esteemed tradition. ''This friendship has existed ever since Adam and Eve, and Eve's best gay friend Gary,'' says screenwriter Paul Rudnick (In & Out).

He must've been reading the Really New Testament. But you get the idea. As Object of My Affection author Stephen McCauley has pointed out, the same dynamic powered Christopher Isherwood's 1946 work The Berlin Stories (the inspiration for Cabaret) and Truman Capote's 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's. The difference: Back then, authors dared not speak homosexuality's name, except obliquely. Worse, the resulting films were set almost completely straight.

Things were just as repressed in TV land. As recently as the 1981-83 sitcom Love, Sidney, Tony Randall played a persnickety he's-gay-but-let's-not-tell-the-audience best friend. ''He was just shy,'' laughs Will & Grace exec producer David Kohan. ''He went to shy bars.''

Nowadays, while the big screen brims with gay male characters who are uncloseted and getting a little action (Object and Opposite had full-on boy-boy love scenes), the small screen continues to drag its heels. Not only are the gayest characters written as straight (''Everything about Frasier Crane's life speaks to me as a gay, middle-aged man,'' half-jokes Maupin), but sex and the single gay male is still virgin TV territory. Take Will and Grace: They've moved in together, renovated the bathroom, spoken in witty shorthand (''You are so Markie Post on every single Lifetime movie''), yet neither — fresh out of long-term relationships as they are — has dated so far. ''A lot of press response is, 'Isn't that convenient?''' says McCormack. ''Yeah, it's convenient. The show's called Will & Grace. It gives our audience a chance to get to know us and hopefully love us.''

And do they even need other partners? ''This friendship is a soul-mate ship,'' says Messing. They hug, they flirt, they bicker. They prove that, in a way, the gay-man/straight-woman fandango is the ultimate twist on the age-old romantic comedy: lovers kept apart not by distance, class, or other partners but by sexual orientation. ''Those obstacles aren't convincing in modern times,'' says Maupin. ''The only thing you can come up with that keeps the lead actor and actress from doing it today is homosexuality.'' Best of all, the writers can tease us forever without having to resort to that guaranteed prime-time ratings killer: consummation (see Moonlighting, Lois & Clark, etc.).


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