Chapter 4 THE PUPPY EPISODE
In 1996, the fourth season of the hit sitcom Ellen didn't get off on the right track -- the ratings of the show's season opener dropped 27 percent from the previous year, and critics were already harping that the show was getting stale. Producers even hinted that another shake-up was on the horizon. Behind the scenes, Ellen DeGeneres had thought long and hard about having her character, Ellen Morgan, finally come out of the closet and admit her preferred sexuality. She even talked to her mom, who was concerned that Ellen might be jeopardizing her entire career. Some gossip publications suggested that the producers had thrown the idea around for years. Entertainment Weekly also reported that former staffers said Ellen DeGeneres wasn't ready to come out yet and was nervous about anything that hinted of her character's lesbianism, including one episode in which Ellen schemes about how to become better friends with a woman she has just met. Tabloids reported that Ellen was uncomfortable with some suggestive scenes and had them rewritten.
Thanks to media pressure and the fact that Ellen wanted to be true to herself, she began exploring the idea of coming out with her television persona and in real life. "The only reason I did that is because, you know, the press -- no offense -- is very inquisitive, and I was constantly trying to dodge questions and hide. And I just didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to feel a sense of shame," she said. "So I decided to come out really for personal reasons, then the show kind of, you know, it seemed like a fun idea to do with the show. I was very naive in thinking it wouldn't be a big deal. It was a huge deal."
Perhaps it was easier to make this proclamation through Ellen's on-screen character first, or perhaps by announcing that Ellen Morgan was gay, Ellen DeGeneres could relate more to Ellen Morgan, something that the producers believed might be missing from the show. Maybe once Ellen's character came out of the closet, the show's ratings would gain a boost. It was becoming more noticeable that the character Ellen Morgan didn't have chemistry with her male dates on the show, and marrying her off wasn't a possibility. "The same thing that applies to Ellen applies to every other situation comedy: who you are as a person comes through that glass screen," said Harbert. "All the big sitcom stars, from Lucille Ball to Jerry Seinfeld, basically played who they are. We asked Ellen to do a very hard thing, which was play something other than who she was. It created problems from the start."
When Ellen finally announced her decision to her staff to make the pivotal character change during this season, the producers' positive feedback was exciting. Mark Driscoll, who had been writing for the show since it premiered as These Friends of Mine in 1994 and was promoted to executive producer, was thrilled and knew that this was the missing piece to a hit show.
However, convincing ABC and Disney -- a family-oriented company -- was going to be a difficult task. While the meetings were top secret, it was joked that Ellen should get a puppy. "Yeah. That's good," recalls executive producer Mark Driscoll. "It was an indication of just how lost the show was that they would be excited by Ellen buying a puppy." Once the episode was approved, and as an inside joke, the writers titled the Ellen-comes-out show as "The Puppy Episode." Ellen teased the media about the coming out and dropped not-so-subtle hints of what was about to happen. According to GLAAD, Ellen appeared as a guest on The Rosie O'Donnell Show and said jokingly that her alter-ego, Ellen Morgan, would be coming out on her sitcom later in the season: "Yes, the rumors are true; we'll be revealing that my character is Llll ... ebanese, because she enjoys both baba ganoush and Casey Kasem." GLAAD also reported that O'Donnell, who had not yet come out publicly, responded by saying that since she is also a big fan of Casey Kasem, "maybe I'm Lebanese, too." Ellen told Rosie that she thought she might be Lebanese. Ellen would also answer reporters' questions with, "No, we're adding a new character named Les Bian."
Jennifer Reed, contributor to Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film and Television, was excited about the prospect that both Ellens were coming out: "This was very exciting news for this lesbian, and for many of my queer friends. The hints and rumors worked very well to get us to watch for what would come next. The excitement was inseparable from our unconfirmed knowledge, our assumption that Ellen DeGeneres was herself a lesbian. Taken together, this created a very queer atmosphere. It was based mostly on the open secret, the wink, the anticipation -- and it played itself out both on the show and in the media about the show."
In 1997, Ellen told talk show host Larry King that the media and viewer tease was not supposed to last almost the entire season. Instead, it was supposed to be short term, with the coming out episode as episode 10. Instead, waiting for approval from the corporation pushed the launch date back further and further, so the teasing continued.
However, once television critics got word that there would be a gay main character on the show, they expressed concern as to whether the show would succeed. Rich Heldenfels of Knight Ridder Newspapers explained that making Ellen Morgan gay wouldn't necessarily make her -- or the show -- funny: "Having a gay character doesn't make Spin City a good show or Mad About You a bad one. The same thing applies to Ellen. Everyone involved needs to figure out how a gay Ellen Morgan makes this show better, even if the publicity brings people to the show, they won't come back if what they see isn't funny."
Ellen and the producers decided that Ellen Morgan's coming out would take place during a special one-hour season finale on April 30, 1997. "For me," she said, "this has been the most freeing experience because people can't hurt me anymore. I don't have to worry about somebody saying something about me, or a reporter trying to find out information ... I don't have anything to be scared of, which I think outweighs whatever else happens in my career."
Fellow comedians thought that Ellen was making the right move, too. "She's one of the funniest women on the planet," says lesbian comic Suzanne Westenhoefer. "But the show's been mediocre at best. Ellen's coming out would be Christmas for gay people." Unfortunately, not everyone felt as free about the decision as Ellen did, and she started to get a sample of what the backlash to her life-altering decision might be. The San Jose Mercury News quoted L. Brent Bozzell III, founder of Alexandria, Virginia-based Media Research Center, who said Ellen Morgan's coming out created a sense of horror. Bozzell rallied big names in the Christian conservative movement against the coming out of Ellen Morgan. He believed a majority of viewers were appalled that "there are some elements in Hollywood who are bent, come hell or high water, on thrusting garbage down the throats of children. The world is full of decent homosexuals," Bozell said. "That's not the issue. The issue is their lifestyle. By portraying that lifestyle as perfectly normal, decent and acceptable, an indecency is being perpetuated."
It was hard to understand the negative reaction to a gay television character when, after all, Ellen DeGeneres wasn't the first to portray a gay character on television. In 1977, comedian Billy Crystal played Jodie Dallas, a gay man, on the ABC sitcom Soap, a weekly half-hour prime-time comedy. There was a tremendous amount of backlash, which involved the mobilization of several organizations that were against the show. Nonetheless, reports showed that the network received 32,000 letters of complaint before the show's premiere, and 8 out of 195 ABC affiliates refused to air the show.
In 1991, the award-winning longtime drama L.A. Law featured a kiss between two women characters, portrayed by actresses Michelle Greene and Amanda Donohoe. According to the New York Times, when the CBS series Picket Fences showed a kiss between two teenage girls, the network insisted the scene be shot in semidarkness.
One sitcom that created quite a stir over a gay-themed episode was Roseanne, an Emmy Award-winning sitcom on ABC from 1988 to 1997 starring stand-up comic Roseanne Barr, who portrayed Roseanne Conner. In a 1994 episode, Roseanne Conner visited a gay bar for the first time with her bisexual friend Nancy (who was played by comedian Sandra Bernhard). During the episode, Roseanne innocently danced with a woman, played by Mariel Hemingway, and when they took a break and sat at a table, Hemingway kissed her.
ABC threatened not to air the episode, but Roseanne stood her ground and insisted that she would take the episode to another network. ABC withdrew their threat and aired the episode with a viewer advisory. The ratings for the show were high -- approximately 33 million viewers -- and the complaints were lower than originally anticipated.
On the long-running sitcom Friends, Ross's ex-wife left him for another woman. On January 18, 1996, Friends ran the episode "The One with the Lesbian Wedding," in which Ross's lesbian ex-wife, Carol, married her lover, Susan, in a wedding officiated by Candice Gingrich, the gay sister of the then House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In his book, Gay TV and Straight America, author Ron Becker explains how running this episode during that television season was anticlimactic since there were many other gay-themed television shows.
Regardless of the prevalence of gay characters in recent television sitcoms and dramas, Ellen Morgan's coming out was a landmark moment in television history. Ellen would be the first television show to feature a gay lead actress in a sitcom. It didn't come without its opponents, though. Similar to what happened with Soap, antigay activists launched their own campaign to keep the Ellen episode off the air. Organizations associated with the religious right took out a full page ad in Variety condemning the show.
To combat the negativity, GLAAD worked with a local Birmingham gay pride organization to help 3,000 local fans watch the banned telecast via satellite. They launched a "Let Ellen Out!" campaign to create grassroots support and developed Ellen Watch, a Web page dedicated to following the title character's journey in her coming out process. GLAAD organized "Come Out with Ellen" house parties in more than 1,500 households nationwide and signature parties in New York; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Kansas City, Missouri; and San Francisco. These parties brought together more than 4,000 people and the Ellen cast to watch the event live.
Ellen's brother, Vance, was more concerned about her safety. However, he hoped that Ellen would achieve her goals with this episode and send a positive message about the gay and lesbian community to the American public.
"It was 7 p.m. (three days before filming), and someone says there is someone on the phone claiming to be Oprah Winfrey. I pick up the phone expecting it to be a hoax, and I hear Tammy? Oprah! and we begin to discuss the possibility. This is one of the 25 most influential people in America, so once we got her we knew the potential was gonna be huge," said Tamara Billick, casting director.
"Huge" was the understatement of the year, but not everyone thought that the episode would be a good thing. Time magazine asked various creators and producers for their opinions. Dick Wolf, creator of Law & Order, predicted that Ellen would suffer from the change. Bruce Helford, producer of Drew Carey's sitcom, admitted that he wouldn't have been so bold, calling it only a temporary spike in the ratings if the rest of the show still isn't funny. Only time would tell.