Ellen: Adam's Birthday

Ellen: Adam's Birthday
ABC
November 16, 1994
Sitcom
DVD
B

Maria Semple's story is the first where it feels like the series is finding itself.  There were funny and otherwise entertaining episodes before, but this one goes a little deeper.  Ellen throws a 32nd birthday party for Adam, but it makes him feel like his life hasn't progressed since college.  He decides that he needs to move out, after living with Ellen for over a decade. The separation is hard on them, her especially, and Adam, after a stint in a retirement home, moves across the hall from Ellen.  The episode teases the viewers with the possibility that the longtime roommates might become less platonic, but the still below appears to be either from a deleted scene or something that appeared during publicity for the episode.  (On the episode on the DVD, and I believe this is the version that aired, they come close to kissing, vertically, a couple times.)


Noelle Hamilton is an uncredited Customer again.  Billye Ree Wallace, who was a nameless Woman on Who's the Boss? four years earlier, is Polly here, while Bill Calvert was Patrick on WtB in '88 and is a presumably entirely different Patrick here.  (He was also a Patrick on China Beach, and that's out of 35 acting credits.)  Seventy-five-year-old Patrick Cranshaw, who'd been playing an old man at least since Green Acres, is Irving here.