Ellen’s Farewell Tour Is Already a Whiny, Tone-Deaf Disaster

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Struggling to say something nice about Ellen. - “That could’ve been a 30 Rock joke” is our new reality. - More great Girls5eva content. - Could the Friends reunion BE any weirder? - Two Wendy Williams are better than one. Ellen’s Farewell Tour Is Already a Whiny, Tone-Deaf Disaster Ellen DeGeneres’ [talk show is ending](, as it should and as the fates, [allegations of a toxic environment](, and Dakota Johnson foretold. The upcoming season 19 of the series, which has produced over 3,000 episodes, will be its last. It tees up a goodbye tour for a host who radically changed daytime television, the entertainment industry, and, when it comes to acceptance of the LGBT community, our entire culture. Now she is mostly known as the person who, according to reports, [turned out to be the tyrant]( that had long been whispered about, [announcing her departure]( while complaining about the circumstances. Eighteen years ago, Ellen danced into TV history on the first episode of her talk show. Now, she’s sulking her way out. The dancing, this time, seems to be happening on the show’s grave. If you saw the news of the show ending on social media, it was likely accompanied by a celebratory meme photo of Dakota Johnson looking smug. While, knowing how daytime television and pre-interviews work, there’s no reason not to assume that DeGeneres didn’t know what was about to happen, [a 2019 interview with the actress]( featured Johnson calling out DeGeneres for lying about not receiving an invite to her birthday party. [Alternate text] It unleashed the floodgates: old rumors of DeGeneres’ diva-like behavior resurfaced and, soon after, [reports came out]( about the show’s toxic workplace environment, producers’ sexual misconduct, and more anecdotes about the host’s unreasonable demands. In a [Hollywood Reporter interview]( announcing the end of her show and in subsequent interviews [with both Oprah Winfrey]( and [Today’s Savannah Guthrie]( that aired Thursday, DeGeneres has said that she decided two years ago that this upcoming season would be her last and that the torrent of criticism she has received in the last year had nothing to do with the choice. It’s tempting, given all the recent drama, to insert a GIF of Dakota Johnson saying, “Actually, no, that’s not the truth, Ellen” in response. And that’s a shame. Because for as much scandal as The Ellen DeGeneres Show has been mired in recently, it was also—and for a very long time—a great talk show. After her interviews on Thursday, DeGeneres has made it almost impossible to remember that. On Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, in which the host announced the end of the series, Oprah Winfrey was the guest. It’s a poignant bookend to this chapter of DeGeneres’ career. Winfrey guest-starred on the episode of the sitcom Ellen in which [DeGeneres came out as gay]( in 1997. (May we all rely on Oprah to be our therapist while negotiating seismic life choices.) [   ]( Nearly 25 years later, and after DeGeneres fought back from being essentially blacklisted in the industry for daring to be openly gay at the top of her career, Winfrey resumed her role as the sounding board for a monumental career decision. It should be an occasion for emotional remembrances of all that was suffered, all that was triumphed, and all that was accomplished. But, damn, DeGeneres is making that hard. Their interview was perfectly sweet. It turns out it’s been nearly 10 years to the day that Winfrey announced she was ending The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the two talked through their processes in coming to their respective shows, and the parts of hosting daytime TV that they do or will miss. But the genuine sentiment is overshadowed by deeply cynical interviews with The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday and Savannah Guthrie on Thursday’s episode of Today. DeGeneres queued up similar talking points in both conversations, though her talk with Guthrie seemed especially tone-deaf. Not that it matters, but I believe that the negative press of the last year didn’t play a part in stopping her show. “If it was why I was quitting, I would not have come back this year,” she told Guthrie. Two years ago, she wanted to leave but caved to a three-year contract that will take her into the final season. She thought about not coming back, saying she was devastated by those reports. “I am a kind person. I am a person who likes to make people happy. I am a people pleaser. This is who I am.” Each time the allegations about her behavior were brought up, there was an incredibly off-putting flippancy in DeGeneres’ responses. She kept referring to stories from low-level employees about not looking her in the eye as ridiculous, something that she at first laughed at, assuming it would go away. She equated the avalanche of continued stories to a conspiracy or an agenda. “It was too orchestrated,” she said. “It was too coordinated.” She even told Guthrie she believed it was easy clickbait—“What if the ‘Be Kind’ Lady isn’t kind?”—and misogynistic. She said she was being unfairly targeted because she is a successful woman in Hollywood. “I never had any complaints about anything for 17 years and then all at once, everything happened,” she told Guthrie at one point. “All I’ve ever heard from every guest who comes on this show is what a happy atmosphere this is and what a happy place it is,” she said at another. A few things about that. One, if you are a person who has even been tangentially associated with the entertainment industry over the past decade, you have heard the whispers—which eventually grew to the volume of a banshee’s wail—of DeGeneres being difficult, demanding, and entitled toward people who work for her. But beyond that, it takes a certain privilege and blindness to reality to assume that because Sofia Vergara and Taylor Swift never noticed that junior employees were being harassed, abused, or taken advantage of, there was no such problem in the workplace. In fact, each time she has been asked about the allegations of a toxic work environment, DeGeneres has brought the conversation back to her personal insult that people found her mean. The effect is a dismissal of the people who worked for her and felt harmed. So here we are, wondering where the lines are drawn between this total lack of accountability, the schadenfreude people seem to be delighting in as the show ends, and remembering that this show was legitimately great—and ushered a transition in how we thought not only about daytime television, but the entire industry. In 2003 when the show began, the idea of kindness was revolutionary. Truthfully, so was the audacity of fun. This was the heyday of Jerry Springer’s derangement porn. The View was must-watch television for its bickering and obsession with salacious “Hot Topics.” Even on “inspirational” shows like Oprah’s or Montell Williams’, episodes centered around turning extraordinary life circumstances into zoo exhibits: reuniting adopted children with birth parents, women who escaped kidnappings or home invasions, what it’s like to be gay/trans/divorced/fat/biracial/depressed/conjoined/atheist in America. It’s hard not to view the reference as a distraction from the allegations, but DeGeneres reminded Guthrie that her whole “Be Kind” ethos was rooted in wanting to stem the tide of hatred our culture was drowning in. “At the time there were a lot of young gay, young boys, either being killed or being bullied into suicide because they were gay,” she said. “It was happening a lot. That’s why I started saying Be Kind to each other.” While, yes, sunniness has always been a hallmark of daytime TV, there was something different about the energy that DeGeneres brought to her job. It wasn’t just the philanthropy that became a calling card of the show. It was the idea that celebrities could be our friends because that’s how DeGeneres’ conversations with them made you feel. It makes sense that, in the wake of the news of her departure, people are championing new daytime additions Kelly Clarkson and Drew Barrymore as her heirs apparent. We may have lost the illusion that DeGeneres is nothing but kind, buoyant, and our midday BFF. But that hasn’t yet happened with them. The most tragic thing about the 18-year trajectory of The Ellen DeGeneres Show is that disintegration from a celebration of joy to a surrender to cynicism. What has really irked me, both at the beginning of this farewell tour and in the stand-up special she released in 2018, is her resentment for ever introducing kindness to her brand. The “Be Kind Lady” is “a ridiculous title to have,” she tells Guthrie. “I can’t honk my horn or else the Be Kind Lady honked at me.” It’s frustrating not just because it soils her own legacy—if she wants to do that, more power to her. But it perpetuates the assumption that jadedness, sarcasm, meanness, abusiveness, or even just apathy and mediocrity is the only thing that works or lasts. Being decent is not an impossible standard. The worst fallacy of Hollywood is the idea that being a role model is a burden. That’s such lazy, selfish nonsense. Honk your horn until you make yourself deaf, Ellen. Just don’t mistreat your employees. There’s still a year left to remember all the ways in which The Ellen DeGeneres Show changed TV. Taking a cue from DeGeneres herself, here’s my cynical take on that: Someone needs to work with her on her talking points. All TV Is Just 30 Rock Now “Twenty-five super-hot moms. 50 eighth grade boys. No rules.” MILF Island was one of [30 Rock’s best jokes](, a fake reality series dreamed up by [Alec {NAME}’s Jack Donaghy]( that was so outlandish in premise it could only be a comedy-series gag, but so cynically observant about where society was heading in its craven tastes that it only barely counts as satire. [Alternate text] You could say the same about God Cop (“Crime just got a worst new friend”), the game show Homonym! (“au pair” or “oh, pear”), and Black Frasier (no tagline needed). Jenna Maroney’s ridiculous stint on America’s Kidz Got Singing is even given a self-referential send-up in Tina Fey’s [new series Girls5eva](, on which Renée Elise Goldsberry’s character is hired to judge American Warrior Singer: “I loved your vocals and your backstory was moving, but you left your neck unprotected so it’s a no from me.” Who knew how prescient all of those jokes would be in the age of the streaming boom, in which new streaming services and content to fill them are announced every day and the bar for what discerning viewers will actually watch is apparently in the basement. The announcement this week that NBC would be making an actual televised game show [called Ultimate Slip ’N Slide](, based on the summer backyard toy, would seem outrageous had game-show versions of putt-putt golf, tag, and even “the floor is lava” not already existed. (To be fair, [Floor Is Lava is a delight](.) But this week also saw the [announcement of Unidentified with Demi Lovato](, in which the pop singer and her friend and sister “help uncover the truth about the UFO phenomena” on Peacock—a TV-development Mad Libs that Liz Lemon herself would give the famous eye roll. And Peacock is really on one. This week it also announced Baking It, a series in which contestants will be judged on their baking skills by actual grandmas; The Kids Tonight Show, a version of Jimmy Fallon’s late-night series hosted by and programmed by children; and America Ninja Warrior Junior, which barely skirts being its own 30 Rock joke. There has never been more television and, more importantly, more great television. Or, as Jack Donaghy predicted, you could just watch adults belly flop onto a lubricated slide while cameras roll. Never Not Thinking About Girls5eva The great thing about having binged the entirety of Girls5eva three times in its first week of release is that now the constant ticker tape of anxieties, regrets, and stresses that run through my head is soundtracked by the show’s ridiculous earworm theme song. In the shower? “I’m gonna be famous five-eva…” Doing the dishes? “Cuz forever’s too short…” Walking down the street. Cooking dinner. Writing this newsletter. There is not a moment in the day that I am not singing those two lines to myself on a loop. The good news is that on Thursday, a full version of the song and an [accompanying music video](—a pitch-perfect homage/skewering of Y2K girl-group videos—was released, and the lyrics are, of course, amazing: “People staring at us / Thinking that we’re badass / Watchin’ as we wave goodbye / Our stomachs are the flattest.” In related, equally wonderful news, Girls5eva star Sara Bareilles released a concert video performed from the Hollywood Bowl. The arena was empty because, you know, pandemic, but it was meant to usher in hope for the future of gathering together. You will likely cry intensely while watching it, since it is impossible not to when Sara Bareilles sings. Try. I dare you. The surprise delight of Amidst the Chaos: Live From the Hollywood Bowl, however, was the cast of Girls5eva—Bareilles, Goldsberry, Paula Pell, and Busy Philipps—performing “Four Stars” live together, and then the singing backup for Bareilles as she closed the show with “Brave.” It’s all just a very happy thing that I can’t recommend enough that you watch. ([Watch here](.) The Friends Cast Is Reuniting, Or Maybe They All Died I cannot explain the depth to which I have no idea what in the world is going on with this Friends reunion. It was announced this week that it will premiere May 27. Yay! That’s soon! That announcement was also accompanied by the [world’s weirdest trailer](, with footage of the cast from behind walking in slow motion at dusk while music plays that is so morose it would be out of place at a funeral. Is the Friends cast reuniting? Or did they all die? Based on the trailer, who could say. [Alternate text] In other reunion news, the special will feature appearances from James Corden, BTS, Lady Gaga, Reese Witherspoon, Cindy Crawford, and, of course, Malala Yousafzai. Malala Yousafzai, famously Team They Were On a Break! It is, as [Jarett Wieselman said on Twitter](, “the most random collection of names since Renée Zellweger’s Oscar acceptance speech.” When Wendy Met Wendy I truly believe that if I stare at this photo of Wendy Williams with her Madame Tussaud’s wax-figure likeness long enough, I may unlock the secret to life’s fulfilment at the center of humanity’s existence. [Alternate text] [Alternate text] - The Underground Railroad: It’s an astonishing series. But take your time; it’s tough. (Fri. on Amazon) - High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: Before she was the “driver’s license” girl, Olivia Rodrigo was the star of this shockingly smart and funny series. (Fri. on Disney+) - Pride: A remarkable attempt at chronicling 60+ years of LGBT history. (Fri. on FX) [Alternate text] - The Woman in the Window: Putting Amy Adams in a bad movie should be a felony. (Fri. on Netflix) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.