Word: lesbian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...part of the Walt Disney Co.). Dealing with controversy isn't usually a TV executive's strongest suit. It's not that there aren't already gay characters on television. There are--so many, in fact (22 as of February, according to the Advocate, a national gay-and-lesbian magazine, from the lovelorn Smithers on The Simpsons to the lovelorn Matt on Melrose Place), that one of Ellen's producers offers the half-joking observation that homosexuals "have become the new stock character, like the African-American pal at the workplace...
Well, they could have wagered a few easy guesses. The news that Ellen Morgan would come out brought predictable applause from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which is building a national "Come Out with Ellen" day around the episode; and predictable denunciations from the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who referred to the star in gentlemanly fashion as "Ellen DeGenerate," and from the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, whose American Family Association has issued barely veiled threats to boycott Ellen's advertisers. A stalwart ABC says it nevertheless expects that Ellen will be fully sponsored, although two occasional advertisers on Ellen...
...population is still very uncomfortable with." Bruce Helford, the Drew Carey producer, is more bullish: "I think there will be a big spike in the ratings. But if it's just one big thing and then they go back to the same show, and she's a lesbian, but the same old things happen to her, the boost won't last...
...before not only the character knew it but DeGeneres and the writers as well? According to Dava Savel, one of Ellen's three executive producers, sparks often flew between DeGeneres and female guests. She cites in particular an episode with Janeane Garafalo. "There wasn't supposed to be a lesbian thing at all, but afterward we were watching the tape and we were like, 'Whoa...
...things in the '90s, when gay characters on TV tend to be proud, assertive and more or less uplifting. It's surely not happenstance that Melrose Place's Matt is the only character on the show with any kind of grace or nobility, nor that a pair of secondary lesbian characters on Friends have the most stable relationship on the show, as do, for that matter, a secondary pair of gay male characters on Ellen. Ellen Morgan, on the other hand, ends her coming-out episode sitting awkwardly in a lesbian coffeehouse, unsure of how to comport herself in this...