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DVD Ellen - The Complete Season One
The first television season of Ellen was actually called These Friends of Mine, and while the series sought to define itself through various tones and shades of comedy, the best episodes captured a middle ground between Seinfeld and Friends. Ellen DeGeneres is both a brilliant centerpiece and generous ensemble player, constantly finding fresh ways to mine laughs from her ever-rambling, guilt-ridden, and perpetually dissatisfied heroine. As Ellen Morgan, bookstore employee and platonic roommate of semi-loser Adam (Arye Gross), DeGeneres finds plenty of opportunity to explore humiliation. In the pilot episode, Ellen's unhappiness with her bad photo on a driver's license prompts an obsessive (and unsuccessful) quest to beautify her ID. "The Promotion" finds Ellen and her posse (besides Gross, costars in these first 13 programs include Maggie Wheeler and Holly Fulger) trying to figure out how to bribe Ellen's boss into giving her a job boost, a futile adventure that ends (don't ask how) in a bad way at the Mexican border.
Among the best episodes is the Seinfeld-ian "The Mugging," starring Mariska Hargitay as a gorgeous woman mugged on her way to Adam and Ellen's front door. A cowardly Adam saw the crime and not only fails to help, he won't admit being an eyewitness lest he lose his shot at romancing the victim. Along those same black-comedy lines, "The Anchor" finds Ellen neurotically pursuing a friendship with a woman she can't stand, simply because the latter heard Ellen speaking badly of her. The 13 shows in this set are presented out of season one's chronological order, but that makes little difference to the best material here. --Tom Keogh
I enjoy this show. The adorable Adam and Page are what make this show so good, and Jeremy Piven does not comeonto the show untill later.. Maybe season two is better, as this is when these characters arrive with the actors we know. .Page is played best by Joely Fischer.. the Desperate Housewives star. .Ari Gross is unreplaceable.. Ellen is also not replaceable, and what a powerful and wonderful person. The shenanigans of these actors make this a classic. No hardcore issues at this point with Lesbianism and whatnot. Easy to watch with your mom. Ellen will always be a genius and the beloved "Lucy" of "I love Lucy" is evoked for inspiration for this series. Ellen will always cheer me up, Vanes
Very very funny
I'm a huge fan of Ellen, but I had never seen any of the sitcom until I bought this DVD. It was well worth it. I love Ellen's sense of humor--it's extremely positive. I also like how she's still true to her sexuality in this season, even though she's playing a straight woman. With all of her potential boyfriends, then something goes wrong. And, again, I really like how positive her sense of humor is. Ellen makes people happy.
Brilliant Show, Lousy DVD
It is indisputable that “Ellen” is one of the best, funniest, most important US-sitcoms ever, which makes the policies of releasing it on DVD completely incomprehensible.
First of all it took years for the first two seasons to be released at all (which of course is/was the case with other important sitcoms as well and might have legal reasons, I don’t know).
Then the first two seasons are released in the USA and technically they are a real disappointment: bad picture quality, obviously no re-mastering at all, plain, boringly designed menus, one language track only, no subtitles, almost no additional materiel at all. To say the truth this DVD-set is hardly any better than my old tapes of the episodes from German television, these even having the advantage of both the English and the German language track. All this does no justice at all to this groundbreaking show.
Why is one of the best sitcoms ever being treated so unlovingly? Why hasn’t it been released in Europe yet? Why has there been more than half a year since the release of the second season without any hint of the third or fourth or fifth...??? I just don’t get it!
Why can’t Ellen get the same treatment on DVD as e.g. Seinfeld, the DVD releases of which are superb. Important as Seinfeld might be, I don’t think that it is any funnier, wittier, cleverer or more important for US cultural history than Ellen, in my opinion it often even plays in a much lower league, lacking the spontaneity and wit of Ellen DeGeneres, who is not only a much better actor than Jerry Seinfeld (concerning facial expressions and body language alone Seinfeld seems to be made of wood), but also the better, more sophisticated comedian (just compare “SeinLanguage” to “My Point... And I Do Have One” to see what I mean).
I would just like to stand up and say: Please, release the other seasons of Ellen in a quicker pace, and release them in a quality the sitcom and its fans deserve!
Ellen: The Complete Season Two is a little less populous than season 1 (there's a net loss of one cast member). But in every important respect the 1990s ABC sitcom starring Ellen DeGeneres as bookstore owner and adorable neurotic Ellen Morgan carries on the show's familiar charm and intelligence. Fans will surely notice the unmentioned departure of Ellen's buddies Holly (Holly Fulger) and Anita (Maggie Wheeler), as well as the out-of-nowhere appearance of new best gal pal Paige (Joely Fisher). But Arye Gross provides strong continuity as returning second banana and platonic friend Adam, the underachieving photographer who moves out of Ellen's apartment in season 2's eighth episode ("Adam's Birthday"), yet never seems to be gone afterward.
For the most part, season 2's scripts,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ellen Degeneres DVD Release Date: Released the 22 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With a loose, free-associative flow, Ellen DeGeneres glides through her 2003 HBO special, Here and Now. In just the first 10 minutes she touches on procrastination, new paint colors, television commercials, and mental disorders--topics that fit into the show's subtitle, Modern Life and Other Inconveniences. By the end, she's also spun out sneaky jokes about cell phones, memory loss, elevators, vocal inflections, pickle jars, and social embarrassment. Her genius is that she never seems like a genius; on the contrary, DeGeneres seems like your next door neighbor pointing out the obvious, yet somehow an hour whizzes by in complete enjoyment. It's peerless observational humor--nothing groundbreaking or piercingly satirical, but simply fun. --Bret FetzerMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Joel Gallen DVD Release Date: Released the 01 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This post-coming-out performance fully acknowledges Ellen DeGeneres's status as America's most famous lesbian, but it is nevertheless imbued with a sense of fun. For instance, rather than describe the experience of closet-exiting on her self-titled situation comedy in the late 1990s, she performs an amusing "interpretive dance." She uses her trademark goofiness to ruminate on the necessity of directions on shampoo bottles, ant road rage, and the possible nightmarish consequences of buying cheese. While the performance is not orientation-specific, the comedienne spends a fair amount of time on sex-related issues, including jokes about blow-up dolls and people who videotape their relations. She does venture into the political with an appeal for same-sex marriage and a monologue on... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Joel Gallen DVD Release Date: Released the 07 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Four years after Showtime made gay men the focus of its original series Queer as Folk, it was time for a little turnabout with The L Word (bad title, great show). Centering around a tight-knit group of lesbians in Los Angeles, this drama was far removed from its working-class male counterpart in both style and content. While the men of QAF enjoyed a fabulous if melodramatic life on the middle-class streets of Pittsburgh, the women of The L Word lived it up in sunny California, with gorgeous houses, glamorous careers, and sexy wardrobes. Ironically, though, The L Word adhered more to the everyday drama of ensemble shows like thirtysomething than the soap opera antics of QAF, and the results were surprisingly heartfelt and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jennifer Beals DVD Release Date: Released the 09 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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