Ellen

I'm not always current with what's going on in the television world. For a long time we didn't have access to any stations except PBS, so I didn't know about Friends or Homicide or Alias. But once I found out, there was no stopping Tom and me. We had many marathons of the shows we (now) love. We'd rent the dvds from Netflix and watch one episode right after the other. And now that we have a satellite dish, I am still catching up. A guy at Tom's school told him that we had to watch LOST, so there we were, night after night, catching up on all the shows before the new ones began this winter. And then, our daughter told us about The Ellen DeGeneres Show. I vaguely knew who Ellen was, but had never seen her television series or her current afternoon show. Now our dish is set to tape it everyday. What a wonderful, upbeat, cheerful, warm, earnest woman. She brings sunshine right into our living room. I love all the rituals on the show; the dance, the sitting in the chair, the various daily segments, her phone calls. On and on. It doesn't really matter who is on the show, we watch it for her, just as we watch the Late Show for David Letterman. She is the most positive person I've seen in "show business." She seems truly kind and caring about other people. She is, as people used to say, "a breath of fresh air" in a cynical, sarcastic, sometimes mean-spirited, sometimes lewd entertainment world. Watching the show enriches my life, and, I truly think, is making me a better person.