A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Dead but still working: Ed Sullivan hosts two specials Y E S T E R D A Y Bulworth Reviewed by Charles Taylor Warren Beatty runs amok as a politician in South Central (05/15/98) Art amnesia? By Alyssa Katz Was it rape or was it love? Feminists quarrel with a dreamy French film about a woman painter's life (05/15/98) R E C E N T_. T E L E V I S I O N Cheerio, "Seinfeld" By Joyce Millman Saying goodbye to the greatest sitcom of all time (05/04/98) Tubbythumping By Joyce Millman Let the Teletubbies bashing begin (04/03/98) Let my people go -- to the movies By Joyce Millman A new cable documentary profiles the Jewish immigrants who founded Hollywood, but lost their cultural identity (03/19/98) Dawson's crock By Joyce Millman Funded by deep-pocket publicity, the puerile "Dawson's Creek" has tricked some TV critics into treating it like a hit (03/16/98) Are you a crystal vase? By Joyce Millman If you can answer these 20 questions, you've watched way too much of the Olympics (02/18/98) BROWSE THE TV ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES

YOU GO, GIRLS | PAGE 2 OF 2 But all the hoopla couldn't conceal the fact that the Murphy-as-mother plot was a mess even before Quayle stuck his foot in it. For its first three seasons, Murphy sent a rare and valuable TV message: a woman could be complete and successful without having a child. So when Murphy got pregnant, and then chose to have the baby, it felt like a betrayal; English and Bergen failed to follow through on everything we thought their creation stood for. Worse, the post-birth episodes were as insulting to single mothers -- to all mothers -- as Quayle's words had been. It was embarrassing to watch Murphy's lack of maternalism played for broad laughs. With the usually resourceful and strong Murphy acting implausibly clueless (even for a sitcom) when it came to caring for her kid, the show seemed to be suggesting that a woman could be either good at her career or good at motherhood -- but not both. Once again, English and Bergen (who had lobbied for the pregnancy story line) had let viewers down by trying not to offend either side in the debate between working moms and stay-at-home moms. Having nothing useful to say about the realities of motherhood, working or otherwise, the show ceased to matter to many of its original supporters. English and Bergen knew they'd made a serious mistake, too; when ratings started to slide (the show never again equaled the 17.9 average it posted in the pregnancy/birth season), Murphy's son was shunted off into a dark corner, mentioned only in passing for entire seasons. But it wasn't the Murphy motherhood fiasco that finally killed "Murphy Brown," it was the fact that it was locked into such a rigid formula: Murphy, good; Republicans, bad. When Bush and Quayle were voted out of office in 1992, "Murphy Brown" lost its chief punching bags. The show never recovered; the barbs tossed at President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore lacked conviction. Instead, the show turned its focus from Murphy against the political conservatives to stilted stories about Murphy trying to find a good nanny and Murphy fighting the network bosses over the integrity of "FYI." In the final season, English returned to the show after several years to give Murphy a new enemy, breast cancer, which, if you view the show as being about the universal stages in the life of Everywoman, was pretty depressing. Murphy smoked medicinal pot and hurled verbal darts at doctors and her disease. The breast cancer story line was an attempt to call attention to one of the most important women's issues of the moment, but it wasn't exactly comedy. It was a throwback to the forced sermonizing of Norman Lear's issue sitcoms of the '70s. Over the past few years, the world just became too complicated for the show's either/or approach. "Murphy Brown" could never adequately depict the way old-guard feminists and younger feminists were often at odds with each other, because, in order for the show to work within its oversimplified framework, Murphy always had to be sympathetic, triumphant and right. The broadcast journalism establishment of which Murphy was the queen was also getting harder and harder to depict in a flattering light. In the final episode, Murphy and anchor Jim Dial (played by Charles Kimbrough, who seems to have been constipated for the past 10 years) realize TV news is changing and decide to move on, signaling the end of their beloved "FYI." But mourning the end of this glossy, fluff-laden fictional newsmagazine is like mourning the end of "Dateline NBC." Are they kidding? The biggest problem with "Murphy Brown," though, was that Murphy never seemed like a person; she was a symbol of her times, more a superficial slogan than a character. And as such, she's destined to become a TV relic, like Archie Bunker and Maude. Watching the syndicated reruns from five, eight, 10 years ago, "Murphy Brown" already seems hopelessly dated and irrelevant. It's the TV equivalent of the 1989 shoulder-padded power blazer you've got hidden in the back of the closet. If Murphy was writ too large to be believed, DeGeneres' Ellen Morgan was always a person who seemed in danger of disappearing from self-effacement. For the first three years of her show (which debuted under the title "These Friends of Mine" in 1994), Ellen didn't stand for anything. She was just a lovable klutz who couldn't seem to find a place for herself in the world. "Ellen" was as ill-defined as its closeted lesbian star; it only got interesting -- it only made sense -- when the lesbian rumors started becoming more prominent and you watched the show as a coded gay sitcom. Then it became a hilarious dyke slapstick, with Ellen as the lesbian Lucy Ricardo using contorted body language to subvert conventional sitcom/societal roles. Ellen Morgan's coming out on April 30, 1997, was one of the great leaps forward for TV, as well as a courageous act of personal rebirth for DeGeneres. No one, least of all DeGeneres, expected an out-gay "Ellen" to be renewed for another season, but it was. The novelty soon wore off and the curiosity seekers departed, leaving the show's ratings foundering. All season, DeGeneres blamed ABC for lack of support, complaining when the network put "mature content" warning labels on episodes. ABC did overreact with the warning labels, but it's doubtful they scared off viewers in droves -- content warnings usually have the opposite effect. No, the new lesbianized "Ellen" was still the same old uneven show it had always been (although for different reasons), and that's why viewership was dropping. Some weeks, the gaycentric humor was hilarious and accessible for a wide audience (the one where Emma Thompson "comes out," for instance). Other weeks, it was heavy-handed, preachy and self-congratulatory, with Ellen and her girlfriend Laurie facing an endless stream of homophobic friends and relatives. And it was staggeringly repetitive too; in episode after episode, Ellen and Laurie kept having the same fight about Ellen's fear of commitment. "Ellen" wasn't canceled because it had become a gay show, it was canceled because it had become a dull show. Still, as the first gay lead on a TV series, DeGeneres has nothing to be ashamed of. She found herself; she fought the good fight; she contributed something important and lasting. She should consider herself lucky that she's getting out before the pendulum of opinion and taste swings out of her favor. You know what the saddest thing is about "Murphy Brown" leaving the air after 10 years? That "feminism" is back to being a dirty word. SALON | May 18, 1998