While Portia de Rossi DeGeneres was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986) in 2010, Oprah told Portia that when Oprah played the therapist on Seaon 4 Episode 22, "The Puppy Episode" (the "coming out" episode), Oprah got more hate mail about that minor appearance than she had gotten during her entire previous career as a talk-show host and an actress.
Season 4 Episode 22, "The Puppy Episode", made television history and became one of the most controversial television episodes ever. Ellen Morgan (Ellen DeGeneres) came out of the closet, which resulted in the show losing many of its sponsors and ABC receiving a bomb threat. The show was canceled the following year.
After the premiere of Buffy contre les vampires (1997), Seaon 4 Episode 19, "New Moon Rising", in which regular character Willow comes out as a lesbian and chooses to stay with her girlfriend Tara, a group of Internet-board posters sent "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon an engraved toaster to thank him for the storyline. This was a reference to Season 4 Episode 22,"The Puppy Episode", the "coming-out" episode of this show (on which longtime Buffy writer Jane Espenson had also worked) which had featured a running joke about the LGBT movement awarding every newly-outed person a toaster for "joining."
The show underwent major changes between the first and third seasons. Though it was always fairly highly rated, test audiences responded more strongly to supporting characters than to the main cast. Most of the main cast was dropped in the second season (except Arye Gross) and the character of Audrey Penney, who had previously only been in one episode, became a regular, as did Joe Ferrell.
The original title of the show was "These Friends of Mine". It was changed to "Ellen" after the first season to avoid any confusion with the show "Friends" (1994).