Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic “For Your Approval,” the new comedy special starring Ellen DeGeneres, begins with a kind of run-through of DeGeneres’ long career. We open with a shot of DeGeneres in her dressing room, smiling wistfully as she looks into the mirror and sees, overlaying herself, a projected memory of her first appearance on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”; she smiles slightly at the recollection, then gets up to walk down the hallway toward the stage, seeing in monitors, as she walks past, clips from her 1990s sitcom, including her character’s (and her own) coming out as a lesbian.
