ELLEN (TV SERIES)

'''Ellen''' (originally titled '''These Friends of Mine''' for season one) is a U.S. television sitcom which ran on the ABC network from March 29, 1994 to July 22, 1998, producing 109 episodes.
The theme song, "So-Called Friend" is by Scottish band Texas. An ongoing gag was that there were different opening credits each episode revolving around Ellen's search for the perfect opening credits.
The title role of Ellen Morgan, played by stand-up comedian Ellen DeGeneres, was a neurotic bookstore owner in her thirties. The series centered around Ellen dealing with her quirky friends, her family and the problems of daily life.
The show was not connected to ''The Ellen Show'', which was Ellen DeGeneres' second sitcom which ran in 2001-2002.

Contents

Episodes

Reruns

Coming out episode

Characters

Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres)

Appearing only in the first eleven episodes and in two in season three, Holly is Ellen's friend. She's somewhat bashful.

Adam appears in the first three seasons. He is Ellen's roommate and they have been friends since college. Adam is a photographer who is totally unsuccessful with women and is frequently dumped. In season three Adam moves to England to work as a photographer for The Sun Times, but upon his departure, he reveals that he was harboring a crush on Ellen.

One of Ellens friends who works in a department store. In season two, Anita becomes engaged and disappears from the show.

Ellen's father. He is often somewhat clueless about what is going on around him. In the latest seasons, he and his relationship with Lois changes. They were to divorce, but they kept putting it off, until Ellen made them. Harold and Lois then fell back in love and didn't divorce at all.

Ellen's mother. She and Ellen have a relationship similar to that of Ellen and Audrey. Ellen goes out of her way to avoid her mother but tries to avoid hurting her feelings at the same time.

Ellen's red-haired gay friend. Peter first appears in season two, when Ellen volunteers at the "Helping Hand" Charity. Always hyper-enthusiastic and with a never-flagging positive outlook, Peter often inadvertently functions as Ellen's moral compass, and accidentally "outs' her to her friends on the famous Coming Out episode: "Ellen, just tell them you're gay!"

Ed appeared in season four only as the new manager of Ellen's bookstore. He was a strict business type who frequently butted heads with Ellen over their management styles.

DVD releases

References

External links

Episodes

★ List of Ellen episodes

★ List of Ellen guest star episodes

Reruns

Reruns of the show first started airing on Lifetime in the fall of 1999, and stopped in 2001. Starting October 4, 2003, during DeGeneres's surge in popularity through her role in ''Finding Nemo'' and her new daytime talk show, Lifetime began airing reruns again, on 1:00-2:00 Sunday mornings, starting with the second season. Before long, it went into the 1:30-2:00 time slot Monday-Friday. The reruns stopped two episodes into the controversial final season. Oxygen then picked up the entire series to air starting October 4, 2004, daily at midnight and noon. As of June 18, 2007, the show continues to air 8:00-11:00 Monday mornings in the US. Reruns of the show in the UK are currently on ABC1. These are shown only on weekend mornings, along with other Touchstone Pictures productions.

Coming out episode

In 1997, ''Ellen'' made television history when Ellen, the character, came out as a lesbian in the famous "Puppy Episode." (DeGeneres herself had come out earlier that year on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' and in ''TIME''.) To ensure a memorable moment, the coming out scene was made into a gag where, at an airport, Ellen turns and tells Laura Dern "I'm gay!" - only to realize that she had turned right into the intercom microphone, announcing her sexuality to the entire terminal.
The revelation ignited a storm of controversy, prompting ABC to place a parental advisory at the beginning of each episode.
''Ellen'' was successful enough in its early seasons to warrant annual renewal, due largely to DeGeneres' perceived appeal and comic ability, but it was never a huge critical or ratings success. Only with Ellen's coming out did the show make its way into the wide public consciousness and hit a critical plateau. However, after the initial coming out frenzy the show's ratings declined somewhat and ABC began feeling the pain of an organized backlash from religious conservative groups regarding the "gay content" being exhibited. While the final episodes of ''Ellen'' continued breaking new ground and winning awards, they were also widely criticized for focusing too much on gay issues^[1] -- a criticism begun in anti-gay circles but which spread to the mainstream media. Eventually, even some members of the gay community, such as GLAAD media director Chastity Bono, began to criticize the show's tone as well ^[2]. Soon after, ABC pulled the show from the air in May 1998 after five seasons.

Characters

Note - The initial season of the show featured several characters that disappeared without explanation.

Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres)

Ellen Morgan is the main character of the sitcom. In season one, Ellen works in a Los Angeles bookstore called "Buy the Book." In the second season, she purchases the bookstore from her boss and becomes its owner. Throughout season four, hints were made to her sexuality and near the end of the season in "The Puppy Episode," Ellen announced she was a lesbian. For the first four seasons, Ellen lived in an apartment with roommate Adam and later with her cousin Spence. In the final season, she bought her own house.
Ellen's personality was likeable and cheerful, also somewhat clumsy and awkward, and with a persistent need to be liked. Her trademark behavior (and the main object of her comedy) was that she would digress in a rambling and babbling fashion, especially when nervous or embarrassed. An example of both her clumsiness and her need to please is found in the episode where she had Martha Stewart over for Thanksgiving Dinner and Ellen became highly stressed trying to organize the perfect dinner. In the final season, after she came out of the closet, many fans found that Ellen became too serious and dramatic, dropping the easygoing and cheerful demeanour that made her popular to begin with.
=== Paige Clark (Joely Fisher) ===
Appearing in seasons two through five, Paige is Ellen's somewhat neurotic, vain and promiscuous best friend who works for a movie studio. Paige planned to tie the knot with her boyfriend Matt, but dumped him at the altar after beginning an affair with Ellen's cousin Spence. When Ellen comes out of the closet, Paige has the hardest time dealing with it (even harder than Ellen's parents). In the fifth season, Paige finally comes to terms with it.
=== Holly (Holly Fulger)

Appearing only in the first eleven episodes and in two in season three, Holly is Ellen's friend. She's somewhat bashful.

Adam Green (Arye Gross)

Adam appears in the first three seasons. He is Ellen's roommate and they have been friends since college. Adam is a photographer who is totally unsuccessful with women and is frequently dumped. In season three Adam moves to England to work as a photographer for The Sun Times, but upon his departure, he reveals that he was harboring a crush on Ellen.

Joe Farrell (David Anthony Higgins) ===
Joe is a Canadian who appeared from season one onwards to run the coffee counter in the bookstore. He is somewhat sarcastic, mischievous and dour.
=== Audrey Penney (Clea Lewis) ===
Audrey is Ellen's annoying friend with whom she has a love-hate relationship. Her catchphrase was the perky greeting "Hello, ELLEN!". Initially, Audrey was known for being negative about everything in an irritatingly nice and positive way. In the latter seasons of the show, she was portrayed as excessively perky and positive, much to Ellen's annoyance. When Ellen comes out, she is extremely supportive (saying "I for one think it's SUPER!") and throws herself into the LGBT culture, ironically with more reverence than Ellen did. She comes from a well-off family, though she rejected her inheritance so that she could continue being an assistant at Buy The Book. In season one, Ellen refers to Audrey's husband, but he never appears and Audrey later dates several people, including Adam and Ron Palillo, who played himself over several episodes. In one episode (in Season 4), Ellen, Audrey and Paige took a pregnancy test, to make Paige feel better about her thinking to be expecting. For a few moments it was thought that Audrey was the one pregnant, but eventually it was disclosed that none of the characters were pregnant and that the test had produced a false-positive result.
=== Spence Kovak (Jeremy Piven) ===
Ellen's cousin, he joined the cast from 1995 onwards. His arrival into Ellen's life coincides with the aftermath of a Los Angeles earthquake. Spence was training as a Doctor, but was fired from his job and continued to be negative and hard on himself. He would later train as a lawyer. He and Paige had a love-hate relationship that started as constant fighting but later they became lovers.
=== Anita (Maggie Wheeler)

One of Ellens friends who works in a department store. In season two, Anita becomes engaged and disappears from the show.

Harold Morgan (Steven Gilborn)

Ellen's father. He is often somewhat clueless about what is going on around him. In the latest seasons, he and his relationship with Lois changes. They were to divorce, but they kept putting it off, until Ellen made them. Harold and Lois then fell back in love and didn't divorce at all.

Lois Morgan (Alice Hirson)

Ellen's mother. She and Ellen have a relationship similar to that of Ellen and Audrey. Ellen goes out of her way to avoid her mother but tries to avoid hurting her feelings at the same time.

Peter Barnes (Patrick Bristow)

Ellen's red-haired gay friend. Peter first appears in season two, when Ellen volunteers at the "Helping Hand" Charity. Always hyper-enthusiastic and with a never-flagging positive outlook, Peter often inadvertently functions as Ellen's moral compass, and accidentally "outs' her to her friends on the famous Coming Out episode: "Ellen, just tell them you're gay!"

Ed Billick (Bruce Campbell)

Ed appeared in season four only as the new manager of Ellen's bookstore. He was a strict business type who frequently butted heads with Ellen over their management styles.

Laurie Manning (Lisa Darr) ===
Ellen's girlfriend. Laurie appears in eight episodes in the fifth and final season of Ellen. She and her daughter Holly (Kayla Murphy) become an increasingly important part of Ellen's life.

DVD releases

A&E Home Video has released the entire series on DVD in Region 1.

DVD Name	Ep #	Region 1	Region 2
The Complete Season One	13	September 28 2004	N/A
The Complete Season Two	24	February 22 2005	N/A
The Complete Season Three	25	February 28 2006	N/A
The Complete Season Four	25	September 26 2006	N/A
The Complete Season Five	22	November 28 2006	N/A

References

1. Ellen in in Jump The Shark
2. Planet Out

External links

★

★

★ "Out?", an October 1996 ''Entertainment Weekly'' cover story about rumors surrounding the show's fourth season.

★ TV Review: Ellen, an October 1997 ''Entertainment Weekly'' article discussing the fifth season of ''Ellen'' and ABC's additional of parental-advisory warnings to some episodes.