Ellen's Back! Everybody Laugh!

DeGeneres is finally ready to speak. Are audiences ready to listen?

No, there’s no reference or mention of the Dakota Johnson “that’s not the truth, Ellen” moment that many see as the inciting incident in the downfall of comedian Ellen DeGeneres. In fact, if you came to DeGeneres’s new Netflix special for a stand-up version of mentioning it all, you’ll leave disappointed.

Ellen does not enter the stage looking to be understood. No, her goal is to reclaim the laughter she long conjured and believes is still hers. The way her face contours into a smile, almost Grinch-like, when her joke lands with the audience is a study in self-satisfaction.

As soon as the special was announced, I was immediately pre-seated, glued to the screen in waiting to see how DeGeneres would weave together this moment. “This new special is spectacular,” a comedian friend of mine wrote on his IG story (I asked him if I could name him and he said “no lol.”) This had me intrigued at the thought that maybe, just maybe, DeGeneres could uncancel herself not by apologizing or owning up to any of the allegations lobbed against her, but by simply doing the thing she once did best: being funny.

DeGeneres would like you to believe it’s her decision. “I have a choice of people remembering me as someone who was mean or someone who was beloved… and I choose that,” she says, referring to the latter. It’s a clever maneuver, recognizing the conversation that engulfed and threatened to sink her legacy, while also claiming the steering wheel and declaring her legacy hers, and hers alone, to etch. That’s, of course, not how it works. That’s not to say the special is devoid of introspection when it comes to all that transpired in the intervening years. It’s just that it’s mostly chock full of meditations on her pet chickens, parking frustrations, sweatpants at home, why parties should start earlier, tiny font on menus and other observational bits that helped launch DeGeneres into the pantheon of comedic greats nearly four decades ago. Of course, that’s by artful design: Show the people the thing that made them fall in love with you in the first place. 

Is it a successful balance of comedy and introspection? That depends on your original appetite for DeGeneres’s brand of humor — one that feels, from my perspective, rather dated. However, I can also acknowledge that her approach is studied, crafted, well-designed and well-executed. But is it funny?