Sunday, November 19, 2017

Ellen: When Ellen Talks, People Listen

Image result for Ellen: When Ellen Talks, People Listen
Ed Begley, Jr. as himself
Ellen: When Ellen Talks, People Listen
ABC
July 15, 1998
Sitcom
DVD
C

Mike Larsen wrote this pointless episode in which he plays the Paper Suit Guy.  It's set at the radio station (KPOV), so Kevin McDonald and Susan Norfleet return as Chuck and Julie.  Ellen speaks out on her radio show about how people aren't willing to help each other, so she strikes a chord, transforming L.A. and helping Paige meet a nice guy played by Judge Reinhold.  But the experience sours and we're left with a message of what?  We should reach out to each other even though it'll probably go badly?  Someone else might've made this darkly funny, or at least sharpened the Begley self-parody, but it's understandable why this first aired during the summer.  (It's the penultimate episode.)

Old Woman Amzie Strickland was already playing old on two episodes of The Bob Newhart Show and one episode of Three's Company (as Gladys Moore, "Jack's Other Mother"), and she was on That Girl twice.  Diana Theodore, who had an unknown role on Roseanne in 1995, plays a Young Woman here.  And, yes, that's Jane Brucker being marginally funnier than she was on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, here playing the news reporter Mimi Samuel.

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