DeGeneres plays Internet exec Ellen Richmond, whose Los Angeles-based dot.com company suddenly goes belly-up and circumstances have her returning to her small-town roots in Clark, where her mother, Dot (Cloris Leachman) and younger sister, Catherine (The New Adventures of Old Christine's Emily Rutherfurd) still reside. A mixture of nostalgia and aimlessness compel Ellen to take a guidance counseling job at her old high school, where former schoolmate and wannabe boyfriend Rusty (Jim Gaffigan) blithely refuses to accept Ellen's sexual orientation, and where she's often at odds with school principal Mr. Munn (Martin Mull), butch lesbian gym teacher Bunny (Diane Delano), and mousey arts & crafts teacher Pam (Reno 911!'s Kerri Kenney).

The show's comedy relies heavily on Ellen's unfazed, subtly mocking reactions to its characters' many eccentricities, and how their small town tastes and attitudes are so bizarrely out of step with the rest of the world.

And therein lays the show's fundamental problem. To series creators DeGeneres and Carol Leifer, small-town values = eccentric behavior and chronic un-hipness, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you think about it. DeGeneres's exquisitely timed, halting delivery is somewhat akin to that of Bob Newhart, and like Newhart's two highly successful sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart (especially), The Ellen Show's creators seem to be after something similar, with lead Ellen playing the, er, straight-man to an assortment of oddballs. But where Newhart's shows contrasted the bland, somewhat square Bob and his TV wives with those shows' crazy supporting players, The Ellen Show unwisely operates under the assumption that Ellen Richmond is hipper (though still not quite hip herself) than everyone around her, and that everyone else is basically a small-town rube of one sort or another, with mother Dot dottily un-hip, sister Catherine naively un-hip, Pam psychotically un-hip, Rusty pathetically un-hip, etc. Needless to say, this air of superiority doesn't endear one either to Ellen or to or any of the other characters.

And where Newhart's great (often hilariously understated) reactions to the madness around him were generally rooted in embarrassment, confusion, and in trying to maintain a basic politeness in trying situations. DeGeneres's style is more cutting, a cheerful sardonicism toward those around her and, subsequently, not ingratiating.

The show might have worked had it either been brought more down to earth or gone the opposite extreme, populated by hard-core wackos. Each episode gets warm and fuzzy near the end but never seems to believe it itself, let alone fool the audience. Something more rooted in the way adult children can't relate to their parents and are typically judgmental of their adult siblings might have offered a wealth of material for Degeneres & Co. The scenes with her and Leachman recall those Albert Brooks hilariously explored this fertile soil in his 1996 film Mother, but missing entirely is Brooks' dead-on grasp of the pain and humor of such relationships.

All this is a shame because The Ellen Show does have its share of laugh-out-loud jokes and a great cast that includes sitcom veterans Leachman and Mull.

Video & Audio

The Ellen Show is presented as a bare-bones, single-sided set with all 18 shows spread over two discs. The 16:9 enhanced image is very pleasant, and the stereo soundtrack is up to 2001-02 standards. There are, alas, no subtitle or alternate language options.

There are also no Extra Features. One of these days some really smart special features producer is going to get together a failed show's writing staff for an audio commentary that talks about what went wrong, why a particular show doesn't work, and the process that led to that series not quite working. The Ellen Show, a near-miss, would seem like a prime candidate for this.

Parting Thoughts

Despite its many faults, The Ellen Show is reasonably funny and pleasant enough that it comes recommended for those looking for easy laughs. As sitcoms go this is a low priority, but not bad.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.