Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval

Pathetic excuse of a forced comeback, with zero accountability. After all this time she learned nothing and still thinks she's above everyone else. It's not even about being unapologetically herself, it's just another bully being proud of what they did. I'm tired of seeing people like her on the screen.

She was as unfunny in this standup as she was in the Ellen DeGeneres show. I suspect this won't be, in fact, her last stand up or show of any kind.

At this point she's just desperately trying to keep herself relevant and trending. No, DeGenerate, you do not have my approval. I actually hope this was your last.

She is generally quite funny. I Always had a soft spot for Ellen. But she has lost any meaningful content or insightful observation. She became extremely boring and monotone through the years, losing touch with the world. In this totally pointless show, she Talks about irrelevant things like parking a car in front of a restaurant. The only fun joke I can remember is about pigeons. "I am disappointed in you piegeons!" ... The rest is not that it is unrelatable, is Ellen that doesn't relate to anything outside her narrow, very boring and uninspiring (by the sound of it) millionaire life. She does the same character she know well to do, but without any life or wit. Perhaps it is good that this was goodbye.

For comedic content that lands, I'd actually give it a 7 or 8. But two things detract from that. The first is the super-annoying audience. It's obvious that the vast majority of them are her sychophant TV followers, who squeal like pigs at her every utterance and thinks she is god personified. It's unbearable the way they fill the theater with shrieks at her every utterance. They are the polar opposite of hecklers, but just as disturbing. But that's not on her, she can't help who her fans are. What she can help is how she responds to them, which is the second flaw in this special. The last 20 minutes is just sheer pandering to them, with feel-good cliches about how she has learned to love and accept herself, how she will survive. It's an icky, cringy thing to witness the way she and her cult followers get each other off (figuratively). So unless you want to feel like you're at an "Ellen" (TV talk show) reunion, watch the first 40 minutes...and then try to remember her as just one of the better comedians.

Yes, the show was entertaining but it was not much of a stand up comedy show. It was more like a humorous TED Talk. I actually stopped it and checked to see if it WAS a TED Talk.

I did find that the audience responded more with cheers and clapping than they did with laughter. It almost seemed like they were wanting to encourage her and make her feel better. Thankfully you are able to skip past the long winded standing ovations because, as others have commented, it did get to be pretty annoying.

That being said...I didn't mind her stories and I was able to do other things while I was listening to her talk.

Ellen switches between observational comedy and show business comedy. Her observations are the same topics you've heard other comedians talk about before: driving annoyances, restaurant annoyances. Yawn. It plays like a poor man's Seinfeld. Her show business material is her defending herself against people calling her mean by saying she's only human. What a cop out. She constantly reminds the audience that she's gay to gain sympathy and hide her narcissism. She also drags bits out too long. We don't need 10 minutes of pigeon material. If this is her final special, she went out with a whimper. Her final message to the audience is that she doesn't care what they think. We know; she's been telling that to her staff for years. Ellen exits the stage like an old horse being put out to pasture. A sad end to a long career.