By Fred Leland
October 19, 2001
Ellen DeGeneres is one of my favorite comedians, but I groaned several times while watching the pilot for her new show (The Ellen Show) on CBS. Oh yes she's Gay, but now she's the former head of several failed dot.coms, who goes back to her roots (thank you RuPaul,) and ends up staying. She finds employment as a career counselor at the local high school and tries to fit in with a crabby principal, her old fling turned teacher, and a Lesbian P.E. coach.
I'm thrilled to tell you that by the third show, and now the fifth, everything has gelled together: the cast has their timing down, and the jokes have me throwing my head back and laughing heartily, it's so chock full of jokes I feel exhausted by the time the credits come round. Although Ellen (Ellen Richmond) is the focus of the show, Cloris Leachman (Dot Richmond) steals the show as Ellen's mother. Dot is like the rest of Clark (the fictitious town in the Midwest,) which means she finds Ellen's big city ways quite alien to her, but she rocks to her own beat too. In one of my favorite scenes: Ellen's office has been taken over by the passive aggressive Home Economics teacher, Pam. Dot walks in, says "Hiya cupcake," picks one up from a pan, notices her daughter and says "Oh hi dear." It's hard to convey how funny this scene was, but often Ellen's character is amazed by her mother's private world and how often she gets snapped out of it.
The person out of water has been done before, but the new Ellen show is snappy thanks to T.V. veterans like Carol Leifer and Mitchell Hurwitz (DeGeneres' CO-Executive Producers.) The Ellen Show is rounded out with a great supporting cast. Martin Mull plays Mr. Munn, the slightly sour school principal, which is a type of character that Mull has played often but he's so good at it and it works here. I don't know who the idiot was at CBS that canceled Welcome to New York, but Jim Gaffigan is back on television as Rusty Carnouk, Ellen's former teenage suitor. However Rusty the adult, is a chubby dimwitted rube of a teacher who might still have a crush on Ellen. Kerri Kenney (Viva Variety and The State) plays Pam, the sweet passive aggressive android with a fetish for all things domestic, who resents that Ellen's office is the area she wanted to use to expand her kitchen. Diane Delano ("Popular") plays Bunny, a female PE teacher who mistakenly thinks that there's some sort of chemistry between herself and Ellen, just because Ellen happens to be Gay too. Although you could argue that Bunny is a stereotype Delano plays her with a style, like a linebacker in a miniskirt -something about it doesn't seem quite right. Finally there is Catherine Richmond (played by Emily Rutherfurd,) who is the baby of the family and feels a little jealous that her big sister is moving back home. Catherine is a wallflower and most of the jokes involving her, revolve around Ellen trying to get her out of her shell or trying to stuff her back into it when Catherine goes too far.
I find it hard to second-guess network television anymore, I mean I'm definitely outside of the clique that finds "Friends" entertaining. And this is yet another television season of bad ideas trotted out as networks try to fill their schedules with stuff other than reruns of established shows. But The Ellen Show is a great show that warrants strong backing by CBS. And September 11th supposedly has turned us into a bunch of couch potatoes on Friday nights, so maybe Ellen's second television outing will continue to find its audience.
