No apologies and not particularly funny: Ellen DeGeneres' shameless return to standup | Stage

Ellen DeGeneres begins as she plans to continue in her new — and reportedly final — standup special. Her journey from dressing room to stage is portrayed as a trip down memory lane, past clips of her first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, snapshots of the uproar when she came out as a lesbian in 1997, and then a recap of her most recent controversy — when allegations of a toxic work culture torpedoed her daytime talk show four years ago. For Your Approval is DeGeneres' reckoning with that rejection and her status as “the most hated woman in America.” And like the opening sequence, it frames that reckoning entirely in terms of our host's journey and her victimhood. Those looking for apologies or humility will have to look elsewhere.

As a study in subterfuge, self-mythologizing—and world-class audience subservience—For Your Approval is hard to beat. If, like me, you can't stand stand-up comedy that relies on applause rather than laughter—well, it will take considerable patience to sit through to the end. The scandal that destroyed her TV vehicle has clearly not dampened the enthusiasm of DeGeneres's many fans, who cheer and applaud her every utterance here; not just those about healing from her “retirement from show business” but also the mediocre jokes about butterflies and parallel parking. It slows the performance down terribly. “Stop clapping,” I shouted at the screen, letting the comedy continue.

And in between all the raunchy self-justification, there's comedy too: stand-up comedy of the kind that first won Ellen the favor of Americans. She talks about raising chickens, a hobby that fills her newfound free time. She talks about her obsessive compulsive disorder and her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and how they cancel each other out. She talks about the increasing frailty of her body and her mother's dementia.

Most of it is fine, little of it remarkable, and all of it is overshadowed by For Your Approval's address to DeGeneres's 2020 fall from grace. The problem then was that a host who had made “be nice” her trademark was allegedly leading a workplace culture of bullying, discrimination, and harassment. Four years later, this doesn't seem to be DeGeneres' version of events. “We had so much fun together on that show,” she chirps here, while playing tag and pulling pranks on set. Perhaps some have interpreted that kindness as bullying? Or is it perhaps a gender thing? Women aren't used to being bosses, she says at one point — and comedians even less so. How that squares with her later claim that her only crime was being “a strong woman” isn't clear.

As a masterpiece of self-exoneration, “For Your Approval” is a marvel. One can't help but admire the chutzpah with which the 66-year-old connects her recent excommunication with the excommunication she suffered when she came out as a lesbian 23 years earlier—as if they were comparable experiences of heroic persecution. No thought is given to anyone who had a miserable time working on her TV show. “I'm proud of who I've become,” DeGeneres intones solemnly at the end of the show, to further roars of applause. But there's not much here for her to be proud of—nor much for comedy fans (as opposed to Ellen fans) to enjoy.