Ellen DeGeneres’ new Netflix comedy special, “For Your Approval,” begins with a nostalgic look back at her long career. We see DeGeneres in her dressing room, reminiscing about her first appearance on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” She then walks down a hallway, passing monitors displaying clips from her 1990s sitcom, including her character’s coming out as a lesbian.
As she climbs a staircase emblazoned with headlines about the sitcom’s 1998 cancellation, DeGeneres hears voices like Barbara Walters’ and Diane Sawyer’s describing the controversy. At the top of the staircase, a brave smile appears on her face as Dory, her “Finding Nemo” character, encourages her to “Just keep swimming.”
This opening spectacle seems at odds with DeGeneres’ humble, down-to-earth stage persona. The package goes on to chronicle the success of her talk show, which launched in 2003, and the reporting around the workplace culture at the “Ellen” talk show before it went off-air in 2022.
There’s an uncomfortable feeling of being on a ride with someone who lives within her own mythology.
The special is marketed as DeGeneres’ last, and she thanks the audience for allowing her “to say goodbye on my terms.” She addresses a lot on her mind, even when not explicitly discussing her talk show’s conclusion. An early bit about the challenges of parallel parking seems intended to draw the audience’s attention to safer ground, away from the dramas that accompanied her leaving her daytime show. However, her reference to “the deep shame you feel when you give up and drive away” resonates beyond the parking space.
DeGeneres then moves on to observations about windshield wipers and the personalities of pigeons and butterflies. This understated, unflashy approach has made it ironic that she’s twice become a cultural lightning rod, first for her openness about her sexuality, and then for her reputation as a harsh and demanding boss. After the first blowup, DeGeneres leaned into her chill, just-chatting aspect of comedy. Contrary to her claim onstage that she was “kicked out of show business,” she continued to have success in the five years after “Ellen” was canceled.
It seems harder for DeGeneres to defend herself now, in part because she seems less interested. A major aspect of the special is discussion of aging, and DeGeneres, closing her career, seems uninterested in defending herself along specific terms. She bristles at the criticism she received and notes that it was unfair and unreasonable to expect her, a career comedian, to also be a boss in a workplace. She makes a joke about how her love of scaring people looks different in retrospect, but it’s a bit too convoluted and clouded by what’s actually reported to have happened to land.
DeGeneres is on steadier ground when discussing universally relatable topics. Addressing her mother’s dementia, for which she is in a care facility, is carried across with evident emotion and mordant wit. She seems frustrated that her persona — the talk-show games, chatty bonhomie, big checks handed out to audience members, “Be Kind” — blossomed beyond her control, though the way she chose to end each episode was firmly within her grasp.
“For Your Approval” is executive produced by DeGeneres and Ben Winston, the current chieftain of celebrity-worship television. In DeGeneres, Winston has found a subject for whom there is still enough extant affection to give her power over her audience. Late in the special, DeGeneres lists her complications, culminating in the declaration “I’m tough and I’m impatient and I’m demanding. I’m direct.
I’m a strong woman.” The standing ovation that follows is allowed to go on, and on — and on.
DeGeneres is strong and has been through a lot, but articles about the work culture at her office are available for anyone who’d like to dig into them. To come back and talk about whatever was on her mind without addressing the substance was a choice available to her, and would probably have been fine.
To dig all the way in would certainly be intriguing. But to allude to having been maltreated and “thrown out of show business” while dancing around what exactly happened on her set requires both nimbleness and a bit of nerve. “For Your Approval” is a frustrating watch and a bum note to go out on.
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