Ellen Will Have A Very Awkward Return

We wrote a couple of months ago about the flurry of allegations against The Ellen Show and Ellen Degeneres of harboring a toxic workplace environment that seemed on par with a supervillain organization. But even that might be too kind a characterization, because the name "Foot Clan," for example, might imply some sort of union. Stories of Ellen's shittiness had gotten so bad in fact, (accusations of racism, accusations of sexism, leaving employees in the dark about pay during the beginning of COVID, accusations of laying traps for household workers) that there were rumors someone else might replace her.

Those rumors, however, can now be put to rest. You can pack up your "James Corden for Daytime Television" banners and stuff them in your closet until Maury kicks it. Ellen is coming back, and she's coming back with a vengeance.

Well, maybe not a vengeance. As the tweet states above, it looks like Ellen is going to talk about it, and it is hard to see how this talk goes over smoothly. Normally, Ellen could strangle a tiger cub on stage and still be met with the deranged laughter and uproarious applause of her studio audience, but the show is returning without a studio crowd (for obvious reasons). For the regular viewing public watching from home, it's going to get pretty uncomfortable when Ellen sits down in her big lounge chair and says, "So, some people might have told you that I've fostered a climate of abuse within my show. Sorry about that. But, as I told my staff on a zoom call last month, I'm actually kind of an introvert. See, I'm not an asshole. I'm just shy. How about we all do a dance!"

This, but in an empty room.

Perhaps Ellen really is just shy, and the stories from this Twitter thread that's 2000 tweets long depicting her as the meanest person in Hollywood that hasn't been put on a registry are all just part of one big, wacky misunderstanding. I'd say it is unlikely (not that she's shy, but that her shyness is so severe that it caused thousands of separate accounts of people hating her), but I actually could see it as possible. But if Ellen really wants to clear her name, then she should have her aggrieved former staff members come out on stage with her and tell their side of the story too. If Ellen wants to make an apology, then Ellen should make it to them, not to us.

Otherwise, this is just another example of Ellen using her platform to say one thing (like be kind) and then getting away with doing another (like doing anything but.)

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Top Image: Wiki Commons