Ellen

I didn't rate it because I have no idea how to rate this series.

Season 1 was pretty solid, and my personal favorite. The style was close to Friends', and it was pretty fun. Anita and Holly and Adam were all fun and ordinary nice people. They're like your best friends - fun and nice and when you're together you just have these sort of silly funny moments. It wasn't as good as Friends, and also a bit inferior to the first few seasons of How I met your mother, but it was quite good. A 7 or an 8.

The following seasons had a different gang, and it really seemed that they tried to be funny simply by giving all the characters some rare and annoying qualities. After a few episodes, it really gets boring watching Audrey's weirdness and Spence's bipolar disorder. But they did this for the entire length of the show's existence, which gradually dropped the show from 7 to 4. I think 7 was when Adam was still on the show, and 4 was towards the end of season 4.

Season 5 was a complete disaster. I have nothing against gay people. And I'm okay with Ellen DeGeneres' decision, even though it was a bit inconsistent since her character was perfectly straight in the first few seasons. But the show just became super boring and annoying when everything had to revolve around Ellen's sexuality. I get it that LGBT equality is important to you, but nobody's watching a comedy to get educated about civil rights. Seriously, Ellen, your show did not get cancelled because you came out. It got cancelled because it was boring and annoying. I hate to be mean but it really became a 1 or a 2 at the end of the show.

Together with Seinfeld and Friends, it's another top American comedy show that we are viewing frequently in the U.K. recently. When I say "top", I mean "top notch". In the 70's and 80's I was used to switching off American comedies, but these 3 shows have made me reconsider my bias! I particularly like the way Ellen introduces so many irrelevancies into her dialogue, she kind of says what other people would only think but not dare say for fear of being boring. At some point in the series she declares herself to be gay, and while it obviously changes the direction of the show a little, it doesn't get heavy going about it and is still as funny as ever no matter what your tendencies. I love all the other characters too; the show was better for the entry of Audrey, Paige and cousin Adam - they each have their own very identifiable traits that enrich the plot. The cousin is particularly funny, especially in scenes together with Paige.

This was one of the funniest shows I had ever seen until the last season. The characters were hilarious, the was an amazing chemistry between the whole cast, and the scripts were well written. In the last season, however, it went from being a show about Ellen and her friends, to a show about Ellen being gay, and *nothing* else! This not only took away from the show's dynamic, but it completely alienated almost all of her audience. I think it was a poor choice to focus only on her sexuality. I hope that her new CBS show is more like the first three years of her old one.

Ellen DeGeneres' "Ellen" showcased the versatility of one of the best comedians of the 90s. She exhibited the physical comedy of a modern day Lucille Ball, dry wit descended from Jack Benny, and jabbing one-liners like Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam were whispering in her ears.

The supporting cast (especially Piven and Fisher) and guest stars played well off DeGeneres. When the writers finally got a handle on the cast the writing was priceless. They weren't afraid to drop in wry insights among the "jokes."

"Ellen" was a groundbreaking sitcom, and like most pioneering shows, it wasn't supported by a fearful network. It's unfortunate that Ellen's sexuality became the focus of the press and the show. Maybe if the show wasn't constantly trying to break free of network restrictions and fear the writers and actors could have taken "Ellen" into a strong finish. Instead it petered out. Nevertheless, catch any episodes you can on cable.

During most of its run, "Ellen" was set in a book store owned by the title character, and it was one of the funniest situation comedies to be produced for U.S. television. It had a variety of regular characters, each a well developed mix of comedy stereotype traits and realistic individual traits. The varied cast provided lots of opportunities for comedy plot twists.

Ellen's personal gift was humorously portraying the moments of mild embarrassment everyone experiences -- much of comedy is based on embarrassment, after all. But Ellen didn't stop with mild embarrassment. Instead of keeping quiet and hoping no one would notice her blunders, or hoping they'd forget, she tried to talk her way out of them. Of course, she was hopelessly inept at talking herself out of an embarrassing situation, and escalated each mild blush scene into a personal disaster for her, and hilarious comedy for viewers.

The show, to me, most resembled the old Lucille Ball comedies. But I had a hard time identifying with Lucy's setting in the distant past, which exists only in black and white television and the nostalgia-clouded memories of people older than I am. Ellen, by contrast, was set in a familiar approximation of the modern world, which is funnier to me because it's a world I understand.

In its final season, the show changed its focus from comedy to civil rights. It started out almost as funny as before, but the civil rights message quickly crowded out the comedy. I applaud her political message, but by neglecting the comedy Ellen DeGeneres effectively cancelled her own show, and any chance she had of using it as a political soapbox. I and others watched the show because it was funny, and in the final season in the hopes that it would become funny again. I didn't want to watch her pitch a civil rights message I had accepted years earlier.

Perhaps it's difficult to deliver a message, while still entertaining, but it can be done. Most "Home Improvement" episodes contain a family moral of some sort, but never at the expense of the humor. Giving a choice between presenting a moral and making people laugh, "Home Improvement" went for the laugh, although it didn't go for the laughs to the point of presenting (for lack of a better term) an anti-moral. Given the same choice, "Ellen" usually chose the civil rights moral instead, and the comedy lost. It's possible to make a comedy with a gay star and lead character, and deliver Ellen's civil rights position, but comedy has to come first for the show to succeed.

One exception to the badness of the final season was the farewell episode. It set aside the efforts to deliver a civil rights message, and tried to be funny again. It demonstrated that Ellen had not lost her comedic gift, but had instead set it aside in favor of her political interests.

A now-moot question to ABC: Why were there viewer discretion notices before the show? It had less adult content (sexual or other) than almost any other shows then on television. The only shows of that time period I knew of with less adult content were "Simpsons", "King of the Hill", and "Home Improvement". Occasional scenes of women kissing women don't need a viewer discretion warning. Or if they do, almost all of ABC's surviving series need even stronger warnings.

While ABC deserves mockery for its stupid viewer discretion warnings, it deserves no blame for cancelling the show -- it had become a low-rated, unfunny comedy, for which Ellen DeGeneres deserves most of the blame. Still, before the final season, "Ellen" was comedy genius.