Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval’ On Netflix, In Which A Comedy Legend Wants To Be Beloved Once Again

Although she had the most popular daytime talk show in America for years, Ellen DeGeneres didn’t get to go out the way she had hoped, after reports surfaced that her employees suffered under harsh workplace conditions behind the scenes. Two years later, DeGeneres decided she wanted to have the last word the best way she knew how, by going on tour and making one final stand-up special.

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The Gist: So for her final special, and first in six years, DeGeneres is determined to make the most of her victory lap. Starting with a three-minute montage of clips and news clippings highlighting her highs and lows in show business over four decades, from her first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson through to the end of her daytime talker.

Onstage, she reflects on getting “kicked out of show business” not once, but twice, what she has done with herself since leaving daytime TV, and what she has learned about fame and herself in the process.

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What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: The idea that TV’s “Queen of Nice” might be mean may find DeGeneres reminding you of a certain daytime talk-show host who came out before her, but Ellen’s stand-up here comes closer to the style of say, Jerry Seinfeld, than Rosie O’Donnell, in terms of balancing observational humor with being self-reflective on their respectively intense fame and the pitfalls of it.

Memorable Jokes: DeGeneres may not dance, but she certainly dances around the topic of her likability from the top of the performance, noting wryly: “You know, I used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me… I realize now, looking back, I said that at the height of my popularity.” She then attempts to make her plight more relatable to us by comparing her scrutiny to that of someone trying and failing to parallel park their car in public, then takes that premise and broadens it out to other automobile misunderstandings, and then again to not knowing certain things.

For her part, DeGeneres has learned a thing or two about chickens since raising some in the wake of her departure from daytime TV. A few fun facts later, she jokes she’s “got to save some for the memoir,” and pretending to stall, pulls out notes from her pants pocket before beginning to address why and how she left The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2022.

She has some casual observations about how we talk about the importance of being honest while at the same time using honesty as a buffer to say unsavory things to one another, and tell ourselves that it’s tougher to tell the truth when she thinks it’s actually more difficult not to be fully open and forthright, citing her own closeted adulthood in show business. Eventually, she reminds us all that telling the truth may set you free, but that in her case, coming out as a lesbian on her hit ABC sitcom in 1997 came with repercussions: “I was free for three years. Nobody would hire me.”

There are plenty of lighter bits, too, even when dancing around the darker parts of her personality. Such as when DeGeneres goes to therapy or wonders if she has OCD, or when she explores the relative potential of pigeons compared to other animals and insects, or when she blames her attention-deficit disorders and inability to carry conversations with people in real life to her many years of having commercial breaks break up those chats on set.

And at 66, she’s more than willing to poke fun at how aging has impacted her body and her interests. And even though caring for aging parents can be quite tragic, DeGeneres finds a lot of comedy in the idea that her mother, who has dementia, lives in a facility where they thought to book a magician to “trick” the elderly resident patients.

Our Take: The opening montage of clips as DeGeneres heads from her dressing room to the stage is meant to remind us and her alike of her comedic legacy. She has voiced Dory, hosted the Oscars, done so much in TV and as a stand-up, but as the clip from her previous Netflix special foreshadowed: “I can never do anything unkind ever now, ever.”

DeGeneres still has the chops as a shrewd observational comedian, but can she effectively chop away at her own mystique? Yes and no. It’s telling that among her executive producers and consultants are Ben Winston and Ian Karmel, who perviously worked with James Corden, another talk-show host with seemingly precarious likability issues off-camera.

And do we really want defensiveness from someone as rich and as famous as DeGeneres, who already had one actual comeback in show-business after Hollywood turned their collective backs on her for coming out in 1997, when the ending of her daytime talker came about not because of who DeGeneres is innately, but because of how she was as a boss? Deflecting with sarcasm about how “you can’t be mean in show business” or “you can’t be gay in show business” may generate sympathy laughs or even applause breaks, but they’re far from revelatory or even remarkable moments.

Going after clickbait-y headlines is all well-intentioned and useful, but to what end? I mean, where does DeGeneres take it? Her zinger about the relative trustworthiness of a childless lesbian stand-up comedian would have so much more zip if she’d been able to tie it in topically to the “childless cat lady” election memes. And while she gets sizable laughs making fun of men for getting away with making ridiculous public scenes by playing air guitar or imagining their golf swings, DeGeneres gets far less mileage with more shallow thoughts about somehow not knowing what it means to be in charge. Especially after enjoying such a lengthy career with sizable ups and downs.

But because of all of that, she has earned lots of applause breaks from her fans who showed up for on her final tour and Netflix special taping. Among them, we see a reaction shot of Oprah, even. “That’s how you know you’re old. You get the applause,” DeGeneres acknowledges at one point. And she leans into it by claiming that despite the fact that fame sometimes means losing control of your own narrative, she remains a strong woman. That line earned her a standing ovation. “I’m proud of who I’ve become,” she told her adoring fans.

While the thought of having people think she was mean “was devastating to me, and consumed me for a long time,” she claims that for the sake of her mental health, she cannot care so much what others think of her.

And yet, she also admits she wants to be beloved. Why? “There is nothing better than being surrounded by endorphins and joy.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. DeGeneres says she had no intentions of doing anything after leaving her TV show, but it’s for the best for us and for her that she decided to take a victory lap with this last stand-up tour. Every entertainer who is beloved should take such a lap while they can still enjoy it. As DeGeneres said: “I’m so glad I got to say goodbye on my terms.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First .

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