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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres

Carefully distracted setups from a comic exiled from daytime television.

Portrait credit:

Photo: Toglenn / CC-BY-SA-4.0

6 specials · 1990–2024

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Her delivery relies on looking a little lost. She will start a thought, abandon it halfway through, stare at the floor, and circle back to a punchline you forgot she was setting up. The hesitations do the heavy lifting. She stumbles over her own sentences on purpose, letting a premise trail off so the silence can get the laugh.

Specials

On stage

She spent 19 years as the dancing, affable center of daytime television. Then a toxic workplace scandal ended her talk show and closed out her daytime empire.

Her place in the culture is tied directly to that fallout. She returned to standup playing to loyalists, no longer trying to convince anyone she lives a normal life.

Her early material was precise observational comedy dressed up as scattered musings. She became the first woman invited to Johnny Carson’s couch in 1986 off a bit where she calls God on the phone. That routine gets its biggest laughs from the blank space where she simply pretends to listen to the other end of the line.

In her late-career specials, she uses that same wandering cadence to talk about aging and getting canceled. It creates a bizarre friction. The delivery still says she is just a slightly confused person figuring things out, but the material is about surviving a public scandal from behind massive security gates. She gets her best laughs now when she drops the relatable act entirely and admits how strange her life actually is.

Turning points

  1. 1986 Johnny Carson Tonight Show Debut

    DeGeneres earned national acclaim after performing her 'Phone Call to God' bit on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, receiving Carson's direct praise and an open return invitation.

  2. Coming Out on Ellen Sitcom

    DeGeneres publicly came out on Time magazine and in 'The Puppy Episode' of Ellen, drawing 42 million viewers as the first openly gay actor playing an openly gay TV protagonist.

  3. 2020–2022

    Workplace Allegations and Show Conclusion

    Reports detailing a toxic workplace culture behind The Ellen DeGeneres Show led to public apologies and the eventual conclusion of the syndicated program in 2022.

At a glance

Born
, Metairie, Louisiana
On stage
since 1981
Style
observational, deadpan, satire, clean
Breakout
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1986 Stand-Up Appearance)
Topics
Elsewhere
Wikipedia

Fans also like

  • Bob Newhart

    Both performers master an understated, deadpan comedic delivery built on poker-faced reactions and mild-mannered flustered confusion.

    Photo: Jim Wallace (Smithsonian Institution) / CC-BY-2.0

  • Jerry Seinfeld

    Both share a genial, accessible observational sensibility focused on the absurdities of daily routine that successfully translated into landmark eponymous 1990s sitcoms.

    Photo: slgckgc / CC-BY-2.0

  • Paul Reiser

    Both comics emerged from the 1980s club scene specializing in friendly, pleasant, and relatable conversational humor.

Also on screen

1989–1990
Open House Real estate firm staff member
1994–1998
Ellen Ellen Morgan
Mr. Wrong Martha Alston
2001–2002
The Ellen Show Ellen Richmond
Finding Nemo Dory (voice)

A clip to start with

Memorable Monologue: Small Talk

3 min · 611K views · on TheEllenShow