The Puppy Episode
Encyclopedia
"The Puppy Episode" is a two-part episode of the situation comedy
television series Ellen
. The episode details lead character Ellen Morgan's realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out
. It was the 22nd and 23rd episode of the series' 4th season. The episode was written by series star Ellen DeGeneres
with Mark Driscoll
, Tracy Newman
, Dava Savel
and Jonathan Stark
and directed by Gil Junger
. It originally aired on ABC
on April 30, 1997.
DeGeneres began negotiating with ABC in 1996 to have Morgan come out. When word of the negotiations got out, DeGeneres found herself at the center of intense speculation about when she or her character, or both, would come out. With DeGeneres hinting at her and her character's coming out both within the show and off-screen, the rumors were confirmed when the episode went into production in March 1997.
Despite threats from advertisers and religious groups, "The Puppy Episode" was an enormous ratings success, won multiple awards and became a cultural phenomenon. Regardless of the episode's success, DeGeneres and her show quickly garnered criticism for being "too gay"; the series was canceled after one more season and DeGeneres and guest star Laura Dern
faced career backlash.
The next day, Ellen tells her friends at the bookstore that she and Richard had amazing sex. She tells her therapist the truth, that she could not have sex with Richard. Ellen laments that she just wants someone that she clicks with. Her therapist asks if she has ever clicked with anyone and Ellen replies, "Susan."
A message from Richard that he is leaving town ahead of schedule sends Ellen rushing to the airport to see Susan. Ellen tells Susan that she was right and struggles to say the word. Finally, Ellen is able to say, "I'm gay", inadvertently broadcasting her announcement over the airport public address system. Ellen assumes that Susan will be leaving with Richard but in fact Susan will be staying in town for several more days.
Ellen has a dream in which she is grocery shopping. She is offered a special lesbian discount on melons, her sexuality is announced to the other shoppers, she is offered a granola bar, she is beckoned toward a checkout lane with a pink triangular
sign reading "10 lesbians or less" and given her grocery total of "a lesbian twenty-nine" ($11.29). She discusses the dream with her therapist and realizes that she's been suppressing her sexuality for many years. Her therapist encourages her to come out to her friends but Ellen is worried about not being accepted. "I mean, you never see a cake that says 'Good for you, you're gay!'" To which her therapist says, "Good for you. You're gay."
Ellen has her friends over to come out to them. Before they arrive, she comes out to her gay neighbor Peter. When everyone else arrives, Ellen balks at telling them but Peter outs
her, exclaiming "For god's sake, Ellen, tell them you're gay!" Ellen confirms that it's true and her friends are all supportive of her, although her friend Paige is hesitant.
The next day Ellen and Susan are at the bookstore. Susan tells Ellen that she does have feelings for her but she is in a long-term relationship. Ellen is heartbroken and Susan leaves. To cheer her up, her friends take her to a lesbian coffeehouse. There Ellen mistakenly thinks her waitress is coming on to her and is chagrined when a woman flirts with Paige instead of her.
Under the closing credits, Susan leads Ellen over to Melissa Etheridge, who confirms that Ellen is gay and, after completing the necessary paperwork, awards Susan a toaster oven.
of dating and relationships. One producer suggested that since the character showed no inclination toward dating, she should get a puppy. "It was an indication of just how lost the show was that network executives would be excited by Ellen buying a puppy", said executive producer Mark Driscoll. It was this suggestion that served as the source of the coming out episode's name. In the summer of 1996 DeGeneres and the show's other writers opened negotiations with ABC and its parent company, Disney, to have Ellen Morgan come out during season four. Word of the secret negotiations leaked in September of that year, sparking a storm of speculation as to whether the character, the actress, or both would come out. The LGBT media watchdog group Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
(GLAAD) launched a "Let Ellen Out!" campaign, including an "Ellen Watch" website. Disney rejected the first draft of the script, with Disney executive Dean Valentine stating that it did not go far enough. Director Junger reported that Valentine said "'If we're going to do it, let's do it.' Once he said to go as far as we could, it became great fun to write." Once final approval from Disney was secured, ABC announced on March 3, 1997 that Ellen Morgan would be coming out. "The Puppy Episode" went into production on March 7. Guest stars sought to be a part of the project. According to writer/producer Driscoll, "Suddenly all these talented actors were lining up to be in the episode. It had a buzz around it that it would be an historic episode. When Oprah came on—and she was so wonderful and open and giving—it suddenly had this great weight to it."
With word of the episode out, backlash began. The studio received at least one bomb threat and Driscoll received a telephone call informing him he was going to Hell
. DeGeneres was followed by car to the studio on at least one occasion by a "suspicious man". Some within the entertainment industry assumed that the coming out was simply a ratings stunt, to which DeGeneres responded, "I did it selfishly for myself and because I thought it was a great thing for the show, which desperately needed a point of view."
DeGeneres began dropping hints in the episodes leading up to "The Puppy Episode" that she was planning to come out in real life and have her character come out as well, including such sight gags as Ellen Morgan stumbling into an actual closet so that she could come out of it. She also invited comment with her off-screen actions, as when she kissed k.d. lang
while presenting her with an award at a Los Angeles
Gay and Lesbian Center function in early 1997. DeGeneres finally officially came out in TIME
magazine, with an April 14, 1997 cover emblazoned with the words, "Yep, I'm Gay". She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show
with then-girlfriend Anne Heche
the day "The Puppy Episode" was set to air.
DeGeneres commented on her months of hinting at her sexuality and the media frenzy within the episode itself, giving Ellen Morgan's friends lines like "Ellen, are you coming out or not?!" and "Yeah, quit jerking us around and come out already!" Morgan's therapist comments that if Morgan does not come out she will "continue to have these dreams and then it's going to show up in your waking life as these little clues that get more and more obvious. And eventually tiresome." and that Morgan can not blame her reluctance to come out on the media.
pressured ABC to drop the storyline and Ellen sponsors not to advertise; two occasional advertisers, J. C. Penney
and Chrysler
, decided not to buy time during the episode. Another sponsor, Wendy's
, decided not to advertise on Ellen again at all. Despite these losses of potential advertisers, ABC turned away ads from two LGBT
-oriented sponsors, the Human Rights Campaign
(HRC) and lesbian vacation company Olivia Cruises
. Jerry Falwell
called DeGeneres "Ellen Degenerate", to which DeGeneres responded, "I've been getting that since the fourth grade. I guess I'm happy I could give him work." GLAAD organized "Come Out With Ellen" house parties across the United States and HRC created "Ellen Coming Out House Party" kits that included invitations, posters and an Ellen trivia game. HRC had initially planned to send out about 300 kits. Deluged with requests, they ended up sending out about 3,000. ABC affiliate WBMA-LP
in Birmingham, Alabama
, citing "family values", first sought ABC's permission to move the episode out of prime-time to a late-night slot. When ABC declined the request, the affiliate refused to air the episode at all. Local LGBT organization Pride Birmingham arranged for a satellite feed of the episode and rented a 5,000-seat theatre for a viewing party, which sold out. Local activists circulated a petition requesting that Abilene, Texas
-area affiliate KTXS-TV
not air the episode but were unsuccessful.
"The Puppy Episode" was the highest-rated
episode ever of Ellen, drawing some 42 million viewers. "The Puppy Episode" won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and a second for Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing. The episode won a Peabody Award
and DeGeneres won a GLAAD Media Award in 1998. Ellen Morgan's coming out has been described as "the most hyped, anticipated, and possibly influential gay moment on television". GLAAD credits Ellen with paving the way for such LGBT-themed programming as Will and Grace, The L Word
and Ugly Betty
and it has been suggested that Ellen and these other series presenting LGBT characters have helped to reduce societal prejudice against LGBT people. The episode was ranked #46 on TV Guide
s list of "TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time".
Following "The Puppy Episode", Ellen was renewed for another season. ABC prefaced each episode of season five with a parental advisory warning. DeGeneres strongly criticized ABC for including the warnings, saying in an interview with Entertainment Weekly
, "It was like this voice like you're entering some kind of radiation center. It was very offensive, and you don't think that's going to affect ratings?" DeGeneres further noted what she believed to be hypocrisy on the part of ABC, citing episodes of ABC series The Drew Carey Show
and Spin City
which included two men kissing (the Carey episode was even promoted using the kiss). "There's no disclaimer on [the Carey show] at all, because it's two heterosexual men, and they're making fun of heterosexuality...[Spin City aired without a disclaimer] because neither (Michael J. Fox
nor Michael Boatman
) is really gay in real life." Episodes after "The Puppy Episode" dealt with Ellen's coming out to her parents and boss, quitting her job at the bookstore and finding a series of new jobs. Other episodes dealt with her search for a romantic partner and learning more about the LGBT community. Even some gay people began criticizing the amount of gay content in the series, including Chastity Bono, who was at the time working for GLAAD. Bono was quoted as saying, "[Ellen] is so gay it's excluding a large part of our society. A lot of the stuff on it is somewhat of an inside joke. It's one thing to have a gay lead character, but it's another when every episode deals with specific gay issues." Bono would later say that her comments were taken out of context. Ellen was canceled after its fifth season.
With the cancellation of Ellen, DeGeneres focused her energy on stand-up comedy, where she had begun her career. She returned to network television in 2001 with the short-lived The Ellen Show
, in which her character Ellen Richmond was openly lesbian from the start, before finding renewed success with her talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show
.
Guest star Laura Dern
faced backlash over her appearance. In a 2007 interview for Degeneres's talk show commemorating the tenth anniversary of "The Puppy Episode," Dern stated that she did not work for a year and a half because of playing Susan. Nonetheless, Dern said that she was grateful for the "extraordinary experience and opportunity" of being a part of the episode. Speaking of her experience, DeGeneres said, "It was a huge step in my life. I think people sensed the honesty in it. I think it helped a lot of people, and still to this day I hear about parents and children being able to have an honest conversation through watching that show. That's ultimately what television can be: It can get conversations started."
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
television series Ellen
Ellen (TV series)
Ellen is a U.S. television sitcom that ran on the ABC network from March 29, 1994 to July 22, 1998, producing 109 episodes.The theme song, "So Called Friend" is by Scottish band Texas...
. The episode details lead character Ellen Morgan's realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
. It was the 22nd and 23rd episode of the series' 4th season. The episode was written by series star Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American stand-up comedienne, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was also a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season....
with Mark Driscoll
Mark Driscoll (screenwriter)
Mark Driscoll is an American television producer and writer, born February 3, 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Boston Latin School and took a post graduate year at the Phillips Exeter Academy. Driscoll graduated from Harvard University in 1982; during his time there he was a member of the...
, Tracy Newman
Tracy Newman
Tracy Newman is an American television producer and writer. Her credits include Cheers, The Nanny, The Drew Carey Show and Ellen for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for co-writing "The Puppy Episode". All of the aforementioned work was with fellow writer and producer Jonathan Stark...
, Dava Savel
Dava Savel
Dava Savel is an American television producer and writer. She has written and produced for Will & Grace, That's So Raven, Sonny with a Chance, Dharma & Greg, Grace Under Fire, Dream On and Ellen for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for co-writing "The Puppy Episode".-External links:...
and Jonathan Stark
Jonathan Stark (actor)
Gordon Johnston “Jonathan” Stark is an American television producer, screenwriter, and actor. He created - along with his writing partner, Tracy Newman - the sitcom According to Jim and won an Emmy for his co-writing on "The Puppy Episode" in which Ellen DeGeneres's character Ellen Morgan came out...
and directed by Gil Junger
Gil Junger
Gil Junger is an American director for Touchstone Pictures, most famous for 10 Things I Hate About You, his directorial film debut...
. It originally aired on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
on April 30, 1997.
DeGeneres began negotiating with ABC in 1996 to have Morgan come out. When word of the negotiations got out, DeGeneres found herself at the center of intense speculation about when she or her character, or both, would come out. With DeGeneres hinting at her and her character's coming out both within the show and off-screen, the rumors were confirmed when the episode went into production in March 1997.
Despite threats from advertisers and religious groups, "The Puppy Episode" was an enormous ratings success, won multiple awards and became a cultural phenomenon. Regardless of the episode's success, DeGeneres and her show quickly garnered criticism for being "too gay"; the series was canceled after one more season and DeGeneres and guest star Laura Dern
Laura Dern
Laura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
faced career backlash.
Plot
Ellen goes out to dinner with her old friend Richard, a reporter who is in town to cover a story. His producer, Susan, joins them for dessert and she and Ellen hit it off. Ellen goes back to Richard's hotel room. He comes on to her and, uncomfortable, Ellen leaves. She runs into Susan in the hall and returns with her to her room. They continue to enjoy each other's company until Susan tells Ellen that she's gay and that she thought Ellen might be too. Ellen denies it and suggests that Susan is trying to "recruit" her. Susan sarcastically says that she'll have to call "national headquarters" and let them know Ellen got away. "Damn, just one more and I would have gotten that toaster oven." An agitated Ellen leaves Susan's room and returns to Richard's room, determined to have sex with him to prove to herself she is not gay.The next day, Ellen tells her friends at the bookstore that she and Richard had amazing sex. She tells her therapist the truth, that she could not have sex with Richard. Ellen laments that she just wants someone that she clicks with. Her therapist asks if she has ever clicked with anyone and Ellen replies, "Susan."
A message from Richard that he is leaving town ahead of schedule sends Ellen rushing to the airport to see Susan. Ellen tells Susan that she was right and struggles to say the word. Finally, Ellen is able to say, "I'm gay", inadvertently broadcasting her announcement over the airport public address system. Ellen assumes that Susan will be leaving with Richard but in fact Susan will be staying in town for several more days.
Ellen has a dream in which she is grocery shopping. She is offered a special lesbian discount on melons, her sexuality is announced to the other shoppers, she is offered a granola bar, she is beckoned toward a checkout lane with a pink triangular
Pink triangle
The pink triangle was one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, used to identify male prisoners who were sent there because of their homosexuality. Every prisoner had to wear a downward-pointing triangle on his or her jacket, the colour of which was to categorise him or her by "kind"...
sign reading "10 lesbians or less" and given her grocery total of "a lesbian twenty-nine" ($11.29). She discusses the dream with her therapist and realizes that she's been suppressing her sexuality for many years. Her therapist encourages her to come out to her friends but Ellen is worried about not being accepted. "I mean, you never see a cake that says 'Good for you, you're gay!'" To which her therapist says, "Good for you. You're gay."
Ellen has her friends over to come out to them. Before they arrive, she comes out to her gay neighbor Peter. When everyone else arrives, Ellen balks at telling them but Peter outs
Outing
Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's true sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. Outing gives rise to issues of privacy, choice, hypocrisy, and harm in addition to sparking debate on what constitutes common good in efforts...
her, exclaiming "For god's sake, Ellen, tell them you're gay!" Ellen confirms that it's true and her friends are all supportive of her, although her friend Paige is hesitant.
The next day Ellen and Susan are at the bookstore. Susan tells Ellen that she does have feelings for her but she is in a long-term relationship. Ellen is heartbroken and Susan leaves. To cheer her up, her friends take her to a lesbian coffeehouse. There Ellen mistakenly thinks her waitress is coming on to her and is chagrined when a woman flirts with Paige instead of her.
Under the closing credits, Susan leads Ellen over to Melissa Etheridge, who confirms that Ellen is gay and, after completing the necessary paperwork, awards Susan a toaster oven.
Guest stars
- Steven EckholdtSteven EckholdtSteven Eckholdt is an American actor of German descent.Eckholdt began his screen career in the mid 1980s. Primarily known for television roles, his main screen appearances include L.A. Law, Melrose Place, It's Like, You Know..., Providence, The West Wing and The L Word...
– Richard - Laura DernLaura DernLaura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
– Susan - Oprah WinfreyOprah WinfreyOprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...
– Therapist - Billy Bob ThorntonBilly Bob ThorntonBilly Bob Thornton is an American actor, screenwriter, director and musician. Thornton gained early recognition as a cast member on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire and in several early 1990s films including On Deadly Ground and Tombstone...
– The Grocer - Jenny ShimizuJenny ShimizuJenny Lynn Shimizu is an American model and actress. She was born in San Jose, California.- Career :While working as a mechanic she was approached to model for the Calvin Klein CK1 fragrance ads and model Calvin Klein fashions...
– The Woman in the Aisle - Demi MooreDemi MooreDemi Guynes Kutcher , known professionally as Demi Moore, is an American actress. After minor roles in film and a role in the soap opera General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...
– The Sample Lady - k.d. langK.D. LangKathryn Dawn Lang, OC , known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress...
– The First Cashier / The Singer / Janine - Gina GershonGina GershonGina L. Gershon is an American film, television and stage actress, singer and author, known for her roles in the films Cocktail , Showgirls , Bound , Best of the Best 3: No Turning Back , Face/Off , The Insider , Demonlover , Category 7: The End of the World , P.S...
– The Second Cashier - Jorja FoxJorja FoxJorja-An Fox , is an American actress, musician and songwriter. She first came to prominence as a guest star on the television drama ER, portraying the recurring role of Dr. Maggie Doyle from 1996 to 1999. This was followed by another critical success in the recurring role of Secret Service Agent...
– The Attractive Woman - Dwight YoakamDwight YoakamDwight David Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter, actor and film director, most famous for his pioneering country music...
– Bagboy - Betty DeGeneresBetty DeGeneresBetty DeGeneres is an LGBT-rights activist from New Orleans, Louisiana. She is the mother of Ellen and Vance DeGeneres, and the first non-gay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project and an active member of PFLAG...
– Woman at Airport - Melissa EtheridgeMelissa EtheridgeMelissa Lou Etheridge is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician.Etheridge is known for her mixture of confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals...
– Herself
Production
By the end of the third season of Ellen, producers were becoming frustrated by the series' lack of focus and the lack of interest that the character Ellen Morgan displayed toward the standard sitcom tropesTrope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...
of dating and relationships. One producer suggested that since the character showed no inclination toward dating, she should get a puppy. "It was an indication of just how lost the show was that network executives would be excited by Ellen buying a puppy", said executive producer Mark Driscoll. It was this suggestion that served as the source of the coming out episode's name. In the summer of 1996 DeGeneres and the show's other writers opened negotiations with ABC and its parent company, Disney, to have Ellen Morgan come out during season four. Word of the secret negotiations leaked in September of that year, sparking a storm of speculation as to whether the character, the actress, or both would come out. The LGBT media watchdog group Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is a non-governmental media monitoring organization which promotes the image of LGBT people in the media...
(GLAAD) launched a "Let Ellen Out!" campaign, including an "Ellen Watch" website. Disney rejected the first draft of the script, with Disney executive Dean Valentine stating that it did not go far enough. Director Junger reported that Valentine said "'If we're going to do it, let's do it.' Once he said to go as far as we could, it became great fun to write." Once final approval from Disney was secured, ABC announced on March 3, 1997 that Ellen Morgan would be coming out. "The Puppy Episode" went into production on March 7. Guest stars sought to be a part of the project. According to writer/producer Driscoll, "Suddenly all these talented actors were lining up to be in the episode. It had a buzz around it that it would be an historic episode. When Oprah came on—and she was so wonderful and open and giving—it suddenly had this great weight to it."
With word of the episode out, backlash began. The studio received at least one bomb threat and Driscoll received a telephone call informing him he was going to Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
. DeGeneres was followed by car to the studio on at least one occasion by a "suspicious man". Some within the entertainment industry assumed that the coming out was simply a ratings stunt, to which DeGeneres responded, "I did it selfishly for myself and because I thought it was a great thing for the show, which desperately needed a point of view."
DeGeneres began dropping hints in the episodes leading up to "The Puppy Episode" that she was planning to come out in real life and have her character come out as well, including such sight gags as Ellen Morgan stumbling into an actual closet so that she could come out of it. She also invited comment with her off-screen actions, as when she kissed k.d. lang
K.D. Lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang, OC , known by her stage name k.d. lang, is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress...
while presenting her with an award at a Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
Gay and Lesbian Center function in early 1997. DeGeneres finally officially came out in TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine, with an April 14, 1997 cover emblazoned with the words, "Yep, I'm Gay". She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
with then-girlfriend Anne Heche
Anne Heche
Anne Celeste Heche is an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She started her career on the daytime soap opera Another World, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Heche gradually landed supporting roles in feature films, and in 1997 appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer,...
the day "The Puppy Episode" was set to air.
DeGeneres commented on her months of hinting at her sexuality and the media frenzy within the episode itself, giving Ellen Morgan's friends lines like "Ellen, are you coming out or not?!" and "Yeah, quit jerking us around and come out already!" Morgan's therapist comments that if Morgan does not come out she will "continue to have these dreams and then it's going to show up in your waking life as these little clues that get more and more obvious. And eventually tiresome." and that Morgan can not blame her reluctance to come out on the media.
Reception
"The Puppy Episode" and DeGeneres's attendant coming out generated enormous publicity before the show aired. Right-wing groups like the American Family AssociationAmerican Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
pressured ABC to drop the storyline and Ellen sponsors not to advertise; two occasional advertisers, J. C. Penney
J. C. Penney
-External links:*...
and Chrysler
Chrysler
Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....
, decided not to buy time during the episode. Another sponsor, Wendy's
Wendy's
Wendy's is an international fast food chain restaurant founded by Dave Thomas on November 15, 1969, in Columbus, Ohio, United States. The company decided to move its headquarters to Dublin, Ohio, on January 29, 2006. It has been owned by Triarc since 2008...
, decided not to advertise on Ellen again at all. Despite these losses of potential advertisers, ABC turned away ads from two LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
-oriented sponsors, the Human Rights Campaign
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign is the United States' largest LGBT advocacy group and lobbying organization; according to the HRC, it has more than one million members and supporters...
(HRC) and lesbian vacation company Olivia Cruises
Olivia (company)
Olivia is a travel company which sells cruises and resort vacations marketed towards lesbian customers. It was founded by Judy Dlugacz in 1973 as a women’s record label, Olivia Records. It offered its first all-woman cruise in 1990 and remains the only company in the world offering cruises catering...
. Jerry Falwell
Jerry Falwell
Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. was an evangelical fundamentalist Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and a conservative commentator from the United States. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia...
called DeGeneres "Ellen Degenerate", to which DeGeneres responded, "I've been getting that since the fourth grade. I guess I'm happy I could give him work." GLAAD organized "Come Out With Ellen" house parties across the United States and HRC created "Ellen Coming Out House Party" kits that included invitations, posters and an Ellen trivia game. HRC had initially planned to send out about 300 kits. Deluged with requests, they ended up sending out about 3,000. ABC affiliate WBMA-LP
WBMA-LP
WBMA-LD, channel 58, is the ABC television affiliate for Birmingham and central Alabama. Its transmitter is located in Birmingham, while its studio is in Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham....
in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
, citing "family values", first sought ABC's permission to move the episode out of prime-time to a late-night slot. When ABC declined the request, the affiliate refused to air the episode at all. Local LGBT organization Pride Birmingham arranged for a satellite feed of the episode and rented a 5,000-seat theatre for a viewing party, which sold out. Local activists circulated a petition requesting that Abilene, Texas
Abilene, Texas
Abilene is a city in Taylor and Jones counties in west central Texas. The population was 117,063 at the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Abilene Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a 2006 estimated population of 158,063. It is the county seat of Taylor County...
-area affiliate KTXS-TV
KTXS-TV
KTXS-TV is the ABC television affiliate for the Abilene/Sweetwater/Brownwood market. The station is licensed to Sweetwater, and broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 20 from a broadcasting tower near Trent, Texas....
not air the episode but were unsuccessful.
"The Puppy Episode" was the highest-rated
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
episode ever of Ellen, drawing some 42 million viewers. "The Puppy Episode" won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and a second for Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing. The episode won a Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
and DeGeneres won a GLAAD Media Award in 1998. Ellen Morgan's coming out has been described as "the most hyped, anticipated, and possibly influential gay moment on television". GLAAD credits Ellen with paving the way for such LGBT-themed programming as Will and Grace, The L Word
The L Word
The L Word is an American co-production television drama series originally shown on Showtime portraying the lives of a group of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their friends, family and lovers in the trendy Greater Los Angeles, California city of West Hollywood...
and Ugly Betty
Ugly Betty
Ugly Betty is an American comedy-drama television series developed by Silvio Horta, which premiered on ABC on September 28, 2006, and ended on April 14, 2010. The series revolves around the character Betty Suarez and is based on Fernando Gaitán's Colombian telenovela soap opera Yo soy Betty, la fea...
and it has been suggested that Ellen and these other series presenting LGBT characters have helped to reduce societal prejudice against LGBT people. The episode was ranked #46 on TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
s list of "TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time".
Following "The Puppy Episode", Ellen was renewed for another season. ABC prefaced each episode of season five with a parental advisory warning. DeGeneres strongly criticized ABC for including the warnings, saying in an interview with Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, "It was like this voice like you're entering some kind of radiation center. It was very offensive, and you don't think that's going to affect ratings?" DeGeneres further noted what she believed to be hypocrisy on the part of ABC, citing episodes of ABC series The Drew Carey Show
The Drew Carey Show
The Drew Carey Show is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1995 to 2004. The show was set in Cleveland, Ohio, and revolved around the retail office and home life of "everyman" Drew Carey, a fictionalized version of the actor....
and Spin City
Spin City
Spin City is an American sitcom television series that aired from September 17, 1996 until April 30, 2002 on the ABC network. Created by Gary David Goldberg and Bill Lawrence, the show was based on a fictional local government running New York City, and originally starred Michael J. Fox as Mike...
which included two men kissing (the Carey episode was even promoted using the kiss). "There's no disclaimer on [the Carey show] at all, because it's two heterosexual men, and they're making fun of heterosexuality...[Spin City aired without a disclaimer] because neither (Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox, OC is a Canadian American actor, author, producer, activist and voice-over artist. With a film and television career spanning from the late 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy ; Alex P...
nor Michael Boatman
Michael Boatman
Michael Patrick Boatman is an Image Award-nominated American actor and writer. He is best known for his roles as U.S. Army Specialist Samuel Beckett in the ABC drama series China Beach, as New York City mayoral aide Carter Heywood in the ABC sitcom Spin City, and as sports agent Stanley Babson in...
) is really gay in real life." Episodes after "The Puppy Episode" dealt with Ellen's coming out to her parents and boss, quitting her job at the bookstore and finding a series of new jobs. Other episodes dealt with her search for a romantic partner and learning more about the LGBT community. Even some gay people began criticizing the amount of gay content in the series, including Chastity Bono, who was at the time working for GLAAD. Bono was quoted as saying, "[Ellen] is so gay it's excluding a large part of our society. A lot of the stuff on it is somewhat of an inside joke. It's one thing to have a gay lead character, but it's another when every episode deals with specific gay issues." Bono would later say that her comments were taken out of context. Ellen was canceled after its fifth season.
With the cancellation of Ellen, DeGeneres focused her energy on stand-up comedy, where she had begun her career. She returned to network television in 2001 with the short-lived The Ellen Show
The Ellen Show
The Ellen Show is a television sitcom starring Ellen DeGeneres that aired during the 2001–2002 season on CBS. It was DeGeneres's second attempt at a sitcom, after Ellen on ABC , but it was unable to garner strong ratings and was quickly cancelled.After coming out of the closet as a lesbian on her...
, in which her character Ellen Richmond was openly lesbian from the start, before finding renewed success with her talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, often shortened to Ellen, is an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it is produced by Telepictures and airs in syndication, including stations owned by NBC Universal. For its first five seasons, the show...
.
Guest star Laura Dern
Laura Dern
Laura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
faced backlash over her appearance. In a 2007 interview for Degeneres's talk show commemorating the tenth anniversary of "The Puppy Episode," Dern stated that she did not work for a year and a half because of playing Susan. Nonetheless, Dern said that she was grateful for the "extraordinary experience and opportunity" of being a part of the episode. Speaking of her experience, DeGeneres said, "It was a huge step in my life. I think people sensed the honesty in it. I think it helped a lot of people, and still to this day I hear about parents and children being able to have an honest conversation through watching that show. That's ultimately what television can be: It can get conversations started."
External links
- The Puppy Episode, part 1 and part 2 at Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...