Word: caste
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...series of TV interviews last fall, previously scheduled to promote a new CD but suddenly subjected to intense scrutiny because of the coming-out rumors, DeGeneres joked awkwardly that she was Lebanese, or that the real news was that a character named Les Bian would be joining Ellen's cast. She even kidded her own teasing reticence on an episode of The Larry Sanders Show that had her hopping into bed for man-woman sex with the fictional male talk-show host...
...those characters are either peripheral or part of an ensemble. Like Mary Richards before her, Ellen Morgan functions as her show's center, around whom the rest of the cast revolves--structurally, Ellen Morgan is Mary Richards, except she likes girls. She provides the window into the show's comedic world; she is the character we are asked to identify with, the person to whom we are asked to give tacit approval. That's why, in a country that still has a lot of conflicts about homosexuality, this formerly innocuous, intermittently funny series is now pushing buttons...
...vulgar or immoral, depending on one's vantage point and what, of course, one is viewing (Chicago Hope? Married...With Children? A made-for-TV movie starring Tori Spelling as a hooker?) The medium--and America--has patently come a long way from the 1952-53 season, when the cast of I Love Lucy couldn't utter the word pregnant during Little Ricky's gestation period, or 1965 when, a year after network TV got its first double marital bed on Bewitched, Barbara Eden was forbidden by NBC to show her belly button on I Dream of Jeannie...
...getting at something that has long plagued Ellen, which sometimes feels like Seinfeld after a game of telephone. Although the show debuted three years ago in the Nielsens top five as These Friends of Mine, the sitcom has since stumbled through a number of cast, staff and time-slot changes, never quite jelling creatively, even by DeGeneres' estimation, and settling into the ratings' upper midrange. A major problem has been the indistinct character of Ellen Morgan, who seems to drift wackily through each show without ever offering much in the way of believable motivation, even in the elastic sense that...
Director Anthony Page doesn't allow McTeer's virtuoso turn to overshadow a fine supporting cast, particularly Owen Teale (who also appeared in the London production) as Torvald. He's uptight and patronizing but far from a foolish figure. When he stands alone after Nora leaves, we feel the full impact of the play's emotionally complex climax: both triumph (a woman freed) and tragedy (a family broken), a cause for cheers and for weeping. Most theatergoers will simply let out a slow exhale, after an evening that takes the breath away...