Murphy Brown (final episode May 18, 9 p.m., CBS) 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

[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ] __________Time's up for "Murphy Brown" __________and "Ellen," but they were once TV's __________women of the hour You might not have noticed, but there are other big-deal sitcoms closing up shop this month, too. The cancellation of ABC's "Ellen," which had its final episode May 13, and the voluntary end of CBS's "Murphy Brown" (airing its finale Monday night) means goodbye to two of TV's most significant female sitcom characters. But it would be easier to give them their due if they both hadn't overstayed their welcome. "Murphy Brown" has been in decline, in terms of both ratings and quality, for at least half of its 10-year run. As for "Ellen," it gave us one of the defining moments of TV history last April when Ellen DeGeneres' character, Ellen Morgan, declared her lesbianism. Nearly 40 million viewers watched the coming-out episode, but the show's ratings dwindled back down to an average of 12.4 million viewers this season. DeGeneres has been outspoken about her belief that the cancellation is a result of homophobia on the part of ABC. But that doesn't really explain where the viewers went. So here's a theory: Americans have a highly developed sense of TV history. They always tune in for the big, hyped moments -- the births, the weddings, the deaths, the long-awaited consummations of passion. But when the moment passes, so does the sense of urgency: Been there, watched that. "Ellen," with its too-frequent changes of concept and cast, never developed a substantial core audience to sustain it when the coming-out hype wore off. "Murphy Brown," meanwhile, alienated more and more of its early fans with bad plot decisions and clichéd stories as the series plodded on. The unabashedly feminist "Murphy Brown" debuted in 1988 at the end of a decade marked by the constant chipping away at women's rights by conservative forces. "Feminism" was a dirty word then, and the media latched on to Candice Bergen's straight-shooting journalist as a sort of poster girl for a revived women's movement. And creator/writer Diane English was happy to oblige. "Murphy Brown" was laden with buzzwords from the glory days of baby-boomer liberalism: Woodward and Bernstein, Gloria Steinem, Motown, Woodstock, "the '60s." Sure, Murphy's cynical, uppity-woman schtick was just updated "Maude" without the floor-length vests, but, hey, it pushed right-wing buttons. Indeed, the show will be best remembered for goading a sitting vice president into a debate with a fictional character. On May 19, 1992, the day after unmarried Murphy gave birth to a son in the show's season finale, Dan Quayle delivered a speech in which he accused this whitest of TV characters for "contributing to the breakdown of family values" in the inner cities, and condemned the show for portraying single motherhood as a "lifestyle choice" that "mocked the importance of fathers." It was satisfying to see the Bush administration's attempt to blame TV for a complex social problem like teen pregnancy backfire in a hail of public ridicule. But the satisfaction was short-lived. At the Emmys in September 1992, English and Bergen (accepting awards for best comedy series and best actress) led a tacky and immature barrage of anti-Quayle jabs (referring to the vice president's "potato" gaffe, Bergen thanked her show's writers for "not only writing these great words but spelling them correctly"). And the 1992-93 season opener of "Murphy Brown," in which Murphy directly responded to Quayle's remarks, was a self-righteous groaner, with Murphy bringing an assemblage of nontraditional families onto her newsmagazine, "FYI," and scolding Quayle for insulting their family values. N E X T_P A G E _| Murphy's betrayal