That Gay Episode: ‘Ellen’s’ Gutsy Coming Out Ep Is Still Fearlessly Funny

Wikipedia’s list of “very special” LGBT episodes ends with Ellen’s “The Puppy Episode” for a reason. Before then, gay representation was a relay race, a baton passed from show to show. Some runners were slow (1972’s forgotten The Corner Bar, which featured the first recurring gay character), some were fast (Roseanne’s multiple queer supporting characters), some got tripped up (1981’s short-lived Love, Sydney, a gay lead in a show restricted from hinting at homosexuality). After years of starts and stops, Ellen DeGeneres carried the baton over the finish line on April 30, 1997.

“The Puppy Episode” was the gay moon landing; we all remember where we were when it happened–or, in my case, where we weren’t. Thirteen-year-old me didn’t watch the episode, even though Ellen was one of my favorite shows. I can remember the disapproving tone in my parents’ voices as they talked about her coming out over dinner in McDonald’s. I got the message: being gay wasn’t okay. It was scandalous, a topic necessitating a hushed tone when discussed in a fast food restaurant.I stopped watching Ellen and I didn’t watch “The Puppy Episode.”

Everyone knew this was coming. Hints popped up on the show and in DeGeneres’ personal life in the months leading up to the episode. DeGeneres officially came out on the cover of Time magazine two weeks before this two-parter aired. The episode addresses the hullabaloo in the first lines of dialogue. While an offscreen Ellen preps to reunite with an old college bud, her friends (Joely Fisher and David Anthony Higgins) wait impatiently.

Ellen goes on a not-really-a-date with Richard (Steven Eckholdt, the infamous Mark from Friends’ Ross/Rachel saga). Things come alive when Richard’s co-worker Susan (Laura Dern) stops by. She’s awkward and warm and, most importantly, receptive of Ellen’s nonstop humor. The two instantly hit it off. Susan even plucks a fallen eyelash from Ellen’s cheek for her to wish on. Richard, and the audience, wonders why he’s there.

Still, Ellen goes up to Richard’s room–and he makes a pass at her. This doesn’t fly with Ellen, who stumbles out into the hallway and bumps into Susan. After having a blast at dinner with their dueling Sling Blade impressions, the two go into Susan’s room and pick up where they left off. Ellen asks Susan if she has ever hooked up with Richard, which leads to The Reveal:

And The Reeling:

Ellen sits in this moment for nine seconds, an eternity in the snappy world of sitcoms. Even if they’re terms I just coined, the Reveal and the Reeling are real things. This exact thing happened to me and, most likely, a lot of others. Mine came during senior year of college. Like Ellen with Susan, I clicked with a guy while working at the campus TV station. We would go on late night trips to Steak ‘n Shake, which is where he told me he was bisexual. Like Ellen, my mind reeled as I stared at romantic potential. If I wanted to go for it with a man–well, here was a man. Ellen, here’s a woman.

Susan tells Ellen that she thought she was gay too, and Ellen reacts a lot like Chandler did, panicking and analyzing the frequency of her gay vibes. She does so while anxiously overfilling a glass with ice cubes.

To prove her straightness, Ellen makes a break for it and ends up back at Richard’s room. There, as Ellen later tells her friends, she conquers him sexually, satisfying her thirst for “man/woman sex.” Her friends buy her story, but her therapist (played by Oprah Winfrey!) sees through this facade.

Oprah’s not having it!

Ellen comes clean about what really happened in a moment that blew me away. The show flashes back to the dimly lit hotel room. The camera pulls away from a forlorn looking Richard, revealing a despondent Ellen in the foreground. Her face is lit from below, highlighting her despair. It’s grounded, it’s real, and it’s sad. The shot is set up for a painful admission of failure. Ellen speaks:

It’s an erectile dysfunction joke.

They set you up for Very Special Episode drama and deliver a brilliantly timed joke. That’s what this entire two-parter is. The most iconic moment is undoubtedly Ellen’s coming-out-by-loudspeaker, but this moment right here dazzled me with how it played with the audience’s expectation. This episode is funny and important, but it’s funny first because Ellen is funny first.

Oprah (her therapist doesn’t have a name, but “Oprah” fits) asks Ellen if she’s ever clicked with anyone before. Ellen says she clicked with… Susan. So when Ellen learns that Susan’s flying out of town, she rushes to the airport to tell her about all the clicking. Ellen confronts Susan and even though she’s eager to come out, she can’t find the words. Well, she knows the word she has to say, but–in another moment ripped from my life–she finds the word hard to say. Ellen musters up the courage, leans in (and accidentally onto a PA mic) and comes out:

History made.

Thirty seconds of applause after that moment, too.

It’s then that we learn that Susan has three more days in town–and Ellen still has 30 minutes left in this episode. Usually the character coming out is a guest star, meaning we don’t get to see the follow-up. By putting the coming out moment at the halfway point, Ellen confirms they’re going where no sitcoms have ever gone before: they’re gonna follow the titular character as she comes out.

Part two wastes no time getting real gay. Melissa Etheridge serenades DeGeneres during the intro, which then transitions into dream sequence that captures the internal panic after you realize you’re gay. Dream Ellen is hyper aware of her every step, convinced that everyone knows she’s gay. Dream Susan shows off some melons, k.d. lang seductively calls Ellen towards the “10 Lesbians or Less” lane, and actors from cult classic queer movies (Bound’s Gina Gershon and Foxfire’s Jenny Shimizu) cameo. Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, and an unrecognizably dweeby Demi Moore also appear.

Back in therapy, Oprah asks Ellen when she first thought she might be gay. Ellen says Susan’s the first… except for that girl in freshman English and another girl in junior high and the cast of Personal Best. Because this is a gay person telling a coming out story, there’s a universality in the hyper specificity of the dream sequence and therapy scene. Straight people get to experience the disorientation of coming out by comedic proxy; seriously, this is what it’s like. I remember going to work at Books-A-Million the day after my first gay kiss, worried my co-workers would notice I was shelving paperbacks in a flaming way. I suddenly didn’t know how to dress, stand, or interact with any men. My mind went through a Sixth Sense-esque slideshow, reframing old memories now that my gay twist had happened. Yeah, you had a crush on Dr. Alan Grant in the fourth grade, dude. “The Puppy Episode” gets all of that anxiety right–and it’s also funny.

At Oprah’s suggestion, Ellen readies herself to come out to her friends.

Her friends don’t let her down, for the most part. Peter (Patrick Bristow) is happy for Ellen and also not surprised. The excitable Audrey (Clea Lewis) eagerly accepts Ellen’s identity, and Joe (Higgins) and Spence (Jeremy Piven) give Ellen a hug and then conclude a presumably years old bet about her orientation. The only person that’s shaken is Ellen’s best friend Paige (Fisher), who hides her shock with a smile. With the bandaid ripped off, Ellen is ready to make the most of Susan’s remaining time in town. There’s just one problem:

One heart to heart later and Susan’s gone. Ellen’s come out, and while she’s still the same Ellen we’ve always known, her life is fundamentally different. Ellen’s friends, including the pride-filled Audrey and the hesitant Paige, take her to a lesbian coffee house to cheer her up. While Ellen’s new to “her world,” she learns that some things never change: she still riffs with Joe, deals with Audrey’s relentless perkiness, and has potential suitors sidestep her to get to Paige. As she tells Oprah in one final therapy scene, Ellen feels like a “tremendous weight” has been lifted.

That’s what this Ellen episode did: it lifted a tremendous weight. “The Puppy Episode” was the most-watched show that week, with an audience of 36.2 million viewers. A perpetually underserved viewership finally saw their story on television, and millions of straight spectators saw a bold (and still hilarious) hour of television. Unfortunately those new viewers didn’t stick around. Ratings dipped slightly when Ellen came back for Season 5 in the fall of 1997, and plummeted from there. The series’ final episode was burned off in the summer of 1998, seen by only 5.6 million people.

Ellen DeGeneres blazed the trail that Will & Grace sashayed down when it debuted just two months after Ellen’s cancellation. Twenty years later, there are more LGBTQ characters on television than ever in all sorts of roles. There’s still nowhere near enough, and network television continues to be a tricky place for representation. But this revolution–one that’s given us so many memorable LGBTQ characters–all started with Ellen and one truly iconic airport announcement.

Photos: Amazon

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