Last Days of Little Ellen: 'Little Ellen' Has Died

Dearly beloved friends and family, we are gathered here today to eulogize our beloved Little Ellen, an almost two-year-old television show taken from us much too soon by whatever the hell is going on at HBO Max right now. (I’ve read that they’re canceling things for tax reasons, but I have a BFA in playwriting so how that all works is beyond me.)

Little Ellen (the show) followed the exploits of a young girl named Ellen, a 7-year-old version of Ellen Degeneres, as she cavorted around New Orleans. The show was brave and bold in its imagining of a world in which Degeneres was once a child, and not just sent to this earth as a fully-formed adult woman with the sole purpose of dancing poorly and angrily giving money to people she found on YouTube.

We will miss Little Ellen (the character), who showed children that it was okay to be blonde with short hair. We also miss her friends Freckle and Becky, her cat Charlie, and her funky grandmother, affectionately known as Gramsy. For a corporation to take the lives of such a plucky gaggle of personalities just to protect their bottom line is grotesque.

Here is the part where I would usually show you, Little Ellen’s nearest and dearest, a few clips so that we could remember all the good times we had together. Weirdly, almost none exist on YouTube; not even a trailer. The best I can do is show you a clip from The Ellen Degeneres Show in which Big Ellen announces Little Ellen with the same enthusiasm of someone trying to scrape gum off of their shoe:

Safe travels to heaven, Little Ellen. I know you’re going to be up there enjoying beignets with Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, and whichever other content HBO Max decides to can in the coming hours before their second quarter earnings call tomorrow.