LOOKING FOR AN OUT

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Ellen DeGeneres made the rounds of the hipper talk shows last week in what appeared to be the coyest exercise in trial ballooning since Colin Powell's book tour. Her new comedy CD, Taste This, was the ostensible reason for DeGeneres' visits with David Letterman, Rosie O'Donnell and Conan O'Brien, but the sitcom star reserved her vigor for teasing--and testing--audiences with what has become the Grand Question of the TV season: Will Ellen Morgan, the sneaker-loving, jewelry-avoiding bookstore manager that DeGeneres plays on her ABC series Ellen, soon realize that for her, the world will hold only Ms. Rights?

DeGeneres neither confirmed nor denied the rumor that her alter ego would come out of the closet--a possibility that TV Guide publicized a few weeks ago. Instead, DeGeneres pirouetted around the reports with prepackaged quips she used over and over in her appearances: "The character does find out--and this is where the confusion comes in--that she is Lebanese."

The possibility has already sparked censure from the religious right and clamorous support from homosexual activists primarily because Ellen Morgan would be the first gay lead character ever on TV. Disney, the show's producer, and ABC remain silent on the sitcom's plans. All the network will say is that it has yet to see a script with a lesbian story line. Some industry executives speculate, however, that the network leaked the notion of outing Ellen to test advertiser reaction. DeGeneres has reportedly never been comfortable with the dating subplots of her TV vehicle, and now that rerun rights have been sold to Lifetime in a relatively disappointing deal, she has little to lose by making Ellen Morgan a lesbian.

"It was depressing, that song and dance she did on the talk shows," noted cultural critic and openly bisexual Camille Paglia. "She was asking America, 'Is it O.K.? Will you still like me if...?' It was wimpy. It robbed the act of any courage." But then Ellen, a onetime Top 10 show that plummeted to 39th in the ratings last season, has never been marked by bold confidence. Aimless and conceptually muddled from the outset, when it debuted as These Friends of Mine in March 1994, the sitcom has become so creatively stultified that a controversy over homosexuality is truly the least of its problems.

An almost-Seinfeld without the defining dark snap or subtext, Ellen has always centered on DeGeneres and a coterie of grating, too-unkempt-for-their-age pals and hangers-on, but the cast and creative team have undergone major overhauls since the show's beginnings. The current characters have little chemistry and seem like odd, unfathomable choices to support DeGeneres. Why Ellen, a neurotic but sensible woman in her late 30s, rooms with her temperamental frat-boyish cousin Spence (Jeremy Piven) in her Los Angeles apartment is anyone's guess.

The comedy's plotting has a similarly maddening arbitrariness. An episode last season had Martha Stewart arrive as an unexpected guest at a dinner party of Ellen's. A cooking disaster ensued early on, but just as Ellen finally got things under control, she inexplicably started throwing Cornish game hens at her invitees. The show could have taken any number of inventive turns--think of what Frasier or The Simpsons could do with Martha Stewart--but instead it went illogically toward bland farce.

Ellen has suffered creatively in part because DeGeneres has failed to adapt successfully the essence of her dynamic stand-up routines to the narrative demands of situation comedy. Meandering and digression were the bedrock of DeGeneres' act, and she indulges those instincts too thoughtlessly on the show. Moreover, the genderlessness that so distinguished the comedian's humor from that of far too many female comics who rely on awful self-deprecating jokes about the evil that men do has not worked as well for a lead character in a sitcom, who must have some kind of romantic life if the writers are going to fill out 22 episodes a year. But the DeGeneres character has always seemed so uninterested in men that plot lines throwing her into the madcap world of dating just seemed strained and silly.

Coming out may at least give Ellen Morgan a sex drive, not to mention a new relationship to the rest of the world, and therein a well of some comic potential. Then again, the show's creators have shown themselves so intent on aping Seinfeld's ironic, distanced tone--treating all events from book-club fiascos to marriage with the same absence of weight--that making Ellen gay might prove, in these hands, to be just another quirky, ultimately inconsequential tic, like having Ellen decide that from now on she will eat only couscous or drink Squirt.

Creative issues aside, it's also unclear whether coming out would affect Ellen's bottom line for good or ill. The American Family Association's Donald Wildmon has hinted at a boycott of the show's advertisers. Some sponsors remain circumspect about what they will do if a lesbian plot line develops, but important ones like Microsoft say they would stick with Ellen for the long haul. A poll conducted by ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY showed that 72% of respondents "would not be personally offended if a lead character on a TV show were gay," and Letterman's studio audience cheered the idea of Ellen's coming out.

But if Ellen's producers thought the brouhaha surrounding the show would prompt a ratings spurt when it began its fourth season on Sept. 18, they were sorely mistaken. Up against cbs's The Nanny for the first time, Ellen's ratings dropped 28% from last season's premiere. In fact, the show ranked 52nd for the week--13 places behind the aging Family Matters. Of course, it should be noted that ratings were down for nearly all of abc's prime-time shows that week, one more indication that DeGeneres needs a lot more than an outing to save her show. Maybe what she really needs is a hot date with Fran Drescher.

--With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles