Word: morgane
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Finally, after things dragged on all winter, ABC announced last month that the character of Ellen Morgan would indeed be coming out in a special one-hour episode on the last day of April, just in time for sweeps. That resolved, DeGeneres, who had felt constrained from speaking frankly about the issue while her sitcom's fate was still in the balance, is coming out too. "For me," she says, "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...
...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...
...ever before--dating back, at least, to then Vice President Dan Quayle's famous 1992 speech in which he lambasted the character Murphy Brown for choosing to have a child out of wedlock. One can endlessly debate the question of whether television influences society or reflects it: Does Ellen Morgan's coming out in what is still our massest medium legitimize homosexuality, or does the sponsorship of a bottom-line business like ABC merely reflect its acceptance by a significant portion of the population? Clearly, the answer is both, that TV and culture play off each other in ways that...
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...
...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 usually applies to sitcoms. For a while she owned a bookstore, but the profession seemed more an arbitrary choice to inject "workplace humor." After the second season...