‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ finally comes to an end
The daytime talk show, ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ has concluded after airing for 19 seasons.
As the show’s host, Ellen DeGeneres had announced in May 2021 that this season would be the last.
Comedian Ellen DeGeneres leaves message for fans
The episode was taped in late April ahead of airing on Thursday, and featured Billie Eilish, Pink, and Jennifer Aniston, who was also DeGeneres’ first-ever guest on the show.
It opened with video snippets from prior seasons, and ended with DeGeneres with her wife Portia de Rossi bidding farewell to an audience.
In her final monologue for the show, DeGeneres addressed the legacy of her eponymous show.
When the show debuted in 2003, it was one of the first daytime talk shows to feature an openly gay host.
“When we started this show I couldn’t say ‘gay’ on the show. I was not allowed to say ‘gay’,” she said.
“I said it at home a lot. ‘What are we having for our gay breakfast?’ Or ‘pass the gay salt.’ [Or] ‘Has anyone seen the gay remote?’ — things like that,” she continued.
She added, “I couldn’t say we, because that implied that I was with someone. Sure couldn’t say wife, that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married. And now I say wife all the time.”
She further said, “Twenty five years ago, they canceled my sitcom because they didn’t want a lesbian to be in primetime once a week. So I said ‘Ok, I’ll be in daytime every day, how ’bout that?’”
The Ellen DeGeneres Show leaves behind a complicated legacy
While the show had become a positive household name in the years since its beginning, its image had deteriorated in recent years due to allegations of being a toxic workplace despite DeGeneres’ “Be Kind” motto.
One current and ten former employees testified anonymously in BuzzFeed News in July 2022 of the harassment, racism, fear, and intimidation they faced under the show’s producers and senior managers.
While NBC News was able to find multiple former staffers that confirmed these reports, these staffers stated that they could not speak publicly on the issue due to nondisclosure agreements and fear.
This led to an investigation by the employee relations team of WarnerMedia, the parent company of Warner Bros. Television, and a third party.
The result was the ouster of three top producers on the show, Ed Glavin, Kevin Leman, and Jonathan Norman.
Additionally, in 2019, DeGeneres herself came under fire for defending her friendship with former president George W. Bush.
Bush had supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, among other anti-LGBTQ stances.
DeGeneres had also been criticized for interviewing comedian Kevin Hart in spite of a number of anti-gay tweets that had resurfaced back then.
Due to these circumstances, the show’s finale was met with conflicting responses online, with push and pull between fans and critics of both the comedian and the show itself.