Ellen Degeneres Is Still Relatable
After 15 years away from the stand-up scene, Ellen Degeneres returns for an amusing hour-long Netflix special. With jokes about her fame, relationship, driving and even ketchup, Ellen’s routine is a suitably personal reflection of her life. Relatable is a deeply thematic comedy, one that asks a simple question – Is Ellen Degeneres still relatable?
A burst of rapturous applause opens the show, with a lovely point of view shot showing the sheer delight on the faces of thousands of fans. From here the show begins with a slightly nervy Ellen riffing on her fame and fortune. If I’m honest, this segment did drag on a little for my liking but after about 10 or 15 minutes, Ellen quickly gets into her groove and the routine improves dramatically as she grows in confidence.
Ellen’s style is clever – one that mixes real life issues with a comedic tongue and relatable content. This theme around being relatable is something that plays heavily over the entire show and reflects the mindset of Ellen herself. Can she still connect to the ordinary person even after all the incredible things she’s achieved in her career? The short answer is yes, yes she can. One of my personal highlights involved her riff on the pronunciation of “library” and a very cleverly written segment on vegans.
While the stand-up has some good content, some of the jokes feel slightly manufactured and not wholly original. Ellen’s jokes around a junk drawer are eerily similar to Michael McIntyre’s sketch about the “man-drawer” several years ago. The joke around step-ladders is something that’s been done before and a couple of other jokes don’t quite hit the mark.
Ellen DeGeneres is a great personality and even with a couple of flaws in her stand-up routine, there’s no denying this 60-year-old woman has had an amazing career. Her relatable stand-up routine is further evidence that she’s still funny, can still come up with original comedy while riffing on the difficult moments in personal life in an admirable way. It’s not perfect, it’s a little rough around the edges but it still manages to hit that comedic sweet spot.
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