This month marks the 20th anniversary of Ellen DeGeneres coming out in person and as her character on television. Let’s not forget, too, that her show also gave us one of earliest (though not the first) representations of an LGBTQ parent and their child on TV.
Ellen’s coming-out episode, “The Puppy Episode,” aired 20 years ago this Sunday, April 30, making her a pioneer as the first out character (and actor) to star in a television series. That’s worth celebrating in and of itself.
In the next season, however, we’re introduced to Ellen’s new girlfriend, Laurie (Lisa Darr), who is a single mom raising her 12-year-old daughter, Holly (Kayla Murphy). In the November 12, 1997, episode, “Public Display of Affection,” Ellen and Holly meet for the first time, and Ellen tries to bond with her. It’s a deliberately awkward scene, as would be almost any scene with a child and their parent’s new love interest, but it’s funny and ultimately positive. Holly gives us a matter-of-fact explanation of assisted insemination, complete with turkey-baster analogy, and later berates Ellen for being afraid to hold her mom’s hand in public. Coming out is always a multi-faceted process, so let’s take a minute here to appreciate Holly’s role in Ellen’s fictional coming out—and to applaud the real kids with LGBTQ parents who help their parents come out even as they themselves have their own coming out process about their family.
Ellen was not the first television show to include a fictional LGBTQ parent or prospective parent. It was preceded by Friends, Sisters, Soap, Roseanne, NYPD Blue, and a few television movies and docu-dramas (That Certain Summer, Other Mothers, A Question of Love, Two Mothers for Zachary, Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story), but it’s the first I can recall that focuses on both a child older than infancy and one who is not angst-ridden about their parents’ sexuality. It feels like a definite broadening in the representation of children with LGBTQ parents.
At the same time, let’s acknowledge, as Sarah Warn of After Ellen did in 2003, that if all lesbians on television are mothers, that’s also limiting. (The same might also be said today for LGBTQ people across the spectrum.) Still, we need to see some LGBTQ parents and our children, as long as our stories feel authentic, positive, and varied. Holly’s well-adjusted, proud take on being the child of a lesbian is a wonderful thing.
Watch below (the key segment starts at about 7:45). (Then go watch this video from 2014 in which writer Emma Tattenbaum-Fine recalls watching the Puppy Episode with her two moms.)