Twenty Years After Ellen‘s ‘Puppy Episode,’ It Still Feels Ahead of Its Time

"The Puppy Episode," the two-part Ellen episode in which Ellen DeGeneres's character comes out of the closet, aired April 30, 1997—twenty years ago. And it feels startlingly ahead of its time, if only because DeGeneres, for whom the fictional coming-out was accompanied by a real one, has remained relentlessly on-message in the decades since. The episode insists that Ellen, star and character, remain normal after coming out.