The series, broadcast from 1994 to 1998, tells the story of Ellen Morgan, owner of a bookstore, performed by Ellen DeGeneres. It is the first show that includes a lesbian actress who plays a lesbian character.
The premiere comes in the same line with “Daddy’s girl”, the series that would premiere later that year with a gay actor who plays a gay character, and also in the year where the first season of “Friends” is released, which features the first lesbian marriage on television, or when Anna Friel’s gay kiss occurs in “Brookside”.
DeGeneres, who also wrote and created the series, met with the ABC executives who broadcast the story to propose that the character reveal his sexual identity; the reaction was not only negative, but they proposed “Let him buy himself a puppy, but not to mention that it comes out of the closet,” according to Vanity Fair.
Thus was born “The Puppy Episode”, with Laura Dern, where the character of the comedian took over as a lesbian in front of more than 42 million viewers in prime time. Hours before the episode, DeGeneres performed on Oprah Winfrey’s (Oprah’s Master Class), where she revealed her sexual orientation in real life. “I’m so proud to be a part of this. I’m so proud,” the reporter told him.
The truth is that he represented a before and after in the world of Hollywood. Faced with the claim of advertisers and religious groups, ABC put a parental notice at the beginning of each episode and were even criticized for focusing “too much on gay issues”. ABC thus canceled the show in May 1998 after five seasons. It wasn’t the only series that suffered that fate: it also happened with “Tales of the City,” the queer series that received criticism from certain sectors for treating LGBT issues and was eventually canceled.
The heteropatriarcal industry affected actresses. As Pink News pointed out, Dern entered a “blacklist” where she was relegated to small roles. The actress, in a 2019 interview for Vulture, acknowledged the professional pothole: “They offered me the gold and the Moor and just stopped. Which is pretty strong,” and he also explained that both came to receive death threats, work and security issues. In Ellen’s case, her talk show began just five years after the series finale.
The truth is that the episode represented a historic event for television and for the struggle in the United States for rights and diversity. The phrase “Yep, I’m gay” expressed by the character was the cover of Time magazine and Sarah Kate Ellis, president of GLAAD, said for The Hollywood Reporter: “This was a watershed moment for LGBTQ visibility and social progress in our country. It was also a turning point for me; when I came out of the closet my father said ‘like Ellen?’ Ellen’s visibility made the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ a little less frightening and, because of Ellen, women like me felt empowered to tell our truth.”
