TELEVISION: ROLL OVER, WARD CLEAVER

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"Ellen Morgan is still in a very heterosexual situation," insists Dava Savel. "Almost all her friends are heterosexuals. If one of the other characters has a guy that they're interested in, she's the first to say, 'Omigod, he's hot.' It's just not going to be an option for Ellen to date him." Not that lesbians shouldn't appreciate male beauty, but this does smack a bit of the we're-doing-it-but-we're-not-doing-it attitude with which television often ends up approaching taboos, which might best be exemplified by the first interracial kiss on TV between Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Lieut. Uhura. Back then, in 1968, the couple was forced by alien telepathy to smooch against their will.

In Ellen's last two episodes of the season, she will come out to her parents and then to her new boss at the bookstore. She will suffer some rejection. Next season--assuming that ABC wants to renew the show and DeGeneres wants to return, which she says she might not--is uncharted territory. It would be hyperbole to say television will never be the same. But clearly this has been a landmark for DeGeneres. "I was thinking," she says, "what's the thing anyone could ask me now or say about me? And it's like nothing, really. I mean, not even Howard Stern can hurt me now." In 1997, that's power.

--With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland and William Tynan/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles