Ellen comedy special on Netflix

[Anonymous]

Ellen Degeneres has a new standup special on Netflix.

I found the intro really obnoxious. It's a compilation of her career playing while she walks to the stage and when it gets to the stuff about her getting cancelled it shows her looking very emotional and upset. And then she goes out on stage. I don't like it because it's not funny and feels self indulgent and this is a stand up show.

However the show itself is actually pretty funny. It's mostly very much her old style of standup -- observational humore about cars and parking and chickens and other random topics. But she does touch on being cancelled and other more personal topics like coming out on her sitcom. It's all well written and delivered -- she's a pro. She is clearly still very much upset about what happened to her career and a lot of it does serve as a kind of defense of herself. But she doesn't come off as wallowing and most importantly -- it's funny.

I don't know how I feel about Ellen. I found her talk show really cloying and fake. Also when all the revelations about her being a bad boss and having a toxic workplace came out I was just coming off a job with a a really toxic environment and I was primed to be like "f*** Ellen." But watching the special made me appreciate her as a joke writer and stand up. She's genuinely good at it and made me laugh which is the whole point. She's probably not a great boss because most people are not. Perhaps she should just do stand-up instead. Lots of stand ups are mean or jerks and it's really not a problem.

[Anonymous]

I loved her from the 90’s. Never watched the talk show and was very disappointed to learn how she really is. I hope she did some work on herself and learned some things. I always found her funny.

[Anonymous]

She is a narcissist and I will watch nothing she is in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She is a narcissist and I will watch nothing she is in.

I don't really care if you watch anything with Ellen but I'm trying to imagine on not consuming entertainment that doesn't involve narcissists and I have to assume it would be very limiting. What do you think compels people to go into a job where the whole point is lots of people sitting around paying close attention to you?

[Anonymous]

It’s supposedly her last stand up special and she made it sound like she’s quitting acting/working altogether. So, while very indulgent, the weird career-retrospective intro and focus on her cancellation for being mean made sense: it’s her swan song and she wanted to clear the air and preserve her legacy.

She’s 66. And she’s rich. She can check out of Hollywood and coast if she wants to…but I wouldn’t be surprised if she resurfaces in a project in the next couple years.

She explores her mental health in the special: childhood issues/trauma, ADD, OCD, gay, canceled twice, etc.

[Anonymous]

I thought it was wonderful.

And there are two sides to every story.

[Anonymous]

The PR around her now focuses on her recent diagnoses of osteoporosis, ADHD, and OCD. From her interviews, it sounded like she was saying there was a connection between being a bad boss and her disorders.

If so, that sends a message we can’t be good people or bosses if we have ADHD or OCD.

I recognize this as a legacy-preserving move, and I have no idea what really happened with her management of people. If it was not true, couldn’t she has sued for liable? And did she?

I’ve noticed Trump doesn’t always threaten to sue people, and that’s when I assume the allegation is true and there’s proof.

[Anonymous]

I will add that her treatment of certain guests on her show speaks for itself and that treatment tended toward the abusive at times. That can’t be blamed on ADHD or OCD.

I saw with my own eyes how she treated people and it went beyond jokes. But only with certain people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought it was wonderful.

And there are two sides to every story.

I know a family friend who worked on her show as a writer. She was NOT a nice person. I find her “poor me” act in poor taste. She got cancelled because she was the ultimate hypocrite. Her whole schtick was based on how she was sooo nice and she asked her audience to embrace kindness. When in real life, she wasn’t just a strong or perfectionist woman being judged more harshly than a man - she was an @$$hole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The PR around her now focuses on her recent diagnoses of osteoporosis, ADHD, and OCD. From her interviews, it sounded like she was saying there was a connection between being a bad boss and her disorders.

If so, that sends a message we can’t be good people or bosses if we have ADHD or OCD.

I recognize this as a legacy-preserving move, and I have no idea what really happened with her management of people. If it was not true, couldn’t she has sued for liable? And did she?

I’ve noticed Trump doesn’t always threaten to sue people, and that’s when I assume the allegation is true and there’s proof.

Did you watch the special?

I do think she's making an effort to explain away the allegations and there is an element of excuse-making. She does talk about her ADHD and OCD and how that looked when she had the talk show. But she also talks about how the show had a culture of pranking and scaring each other. And then she kind of frames all of this as something that can be looked at multiple ways. Like pranks at work could be seen as building camaraderie and good for morale. Or they could be seen as terrorizing workers and exploiting hierarchies to do it. A boss's OCD tendencies can be viewed as a form of professionalism and commitment to a strong work product. Or it can be seen as someone projecting their disordered thinking onto others. ADHD can be really helpful for someone hosting a variety show that requires them to be interested in lots of different things every day and always coming up with new ideas. It could also inhibit their ability to recognize when things aren't going well or when their behavior is negatively impacting others. All of it can be true at the same time. I thought it was interesting even if it also came off as a little whiny in the set because I do think this is probably fairly close to the truth -- yes she bullied and terrorized people who worked for her but also she wasn't really aware she was doing it at the time and her perspective as the host of the show and her OCD and ADHD may have made it hard for her to see what she was doing.

I once experienced some pretty severe workplace bullying by a boss and colleague that screwed me up for a long time (if I'm honest I'm still struggling with it in some capacity a decade later). These women started false rumors about me that not only destroyed my reputation in that workplace but led to other colleagues treating me like I was a terrible human being. I absolutely feel that what they did was wrong and that they used their hierarchical position in the org to destroy people they viewed as personally threatening or intimidating (not just me). What they did was wrong. But having spent a bunch of time in therapy and on my own thinking about the situation I also feel pretty confident that they had issues going on with themselves that basically made it impossible for them to see what was wrong with what they were doing. They also had a built in support system in each other which enabled them to always assure the other that the extremely sketchy and inappropriate things they were doing were okay. One of them has ADHD and the other has some issues that I think might potentially add up to a personality disorder (owing to childhood trauma). These explanations don't make what they did okay but in a weird way they do help me feel better because it really wasn't about me. It was about people with major issues being placed in positions of authority with too little accountability.

And that's how I read the Ellen situations too -- she probably was a horrible boss and also she probably had no idea how awful she was and also were it not for her celebrity and the way talk shows are structured she might never have hurt anyone. Workplaces need accountability and hers didn't have that and in the end that hurt her employees but also ruined her career.

[Anonymous]

It's ridiculous to say she probably had no idea how awful she was. She didn't care one iota about how awful she was. She was the star and expected to be treated like a goddess. Her pranks were bullying. She is a miserable mean person and doesn't like people particularly anyone near her. She can not blame this on ADHD and OCD.

I'm not watching her special. Did she admit she was a mean bully or did she make excuses for her behavior?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's ridiculous to say she probably had no idea how awful she was. She didn't care one iota about how awful she was. She was the star and expected to be treated like a goddess. Her pranks were bullying. She is a miserable mean person and doesn't like people particularly anyone near her. She can not blame this on ADHD and OCD.

I'm not watching her special. Did she admit she was a mean bully or did she make excuses for her behavior?

Ok but this thread is about the special.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She is a narcissist and I will watch nothing she is in.

You don’t watch narcissists? So you don’t watch anything.

[Anonymous]

I thought it was a weird choice for netflix to pick up. I won't be watching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought it was a weird choice for netflix to pick up. I won't be watching.

same. After seeing accounts of how she treated people, I can't support her.