The Lucy Show: The Official Fourth Season ... Arrives on April 26th, 2011! (2 Viewers)

[JohnMor]

Another thing to bear in mind about the success of the show at the time is that people tuned in because they loved Lucille Ball and had fond memories of ILL and, most importantly, there were only 3 networks and no home video market, so they were limited in how they could watch their beloved Lucy. There were not the choices that came later. The show would NOT be as successful if it had fiercer competition. That's one of the primary reasons neither TLS nor Here's Lucy were very successful in syndication. Even by the end of HL's network run the rating were falling and people knew the magic was waning. And of course, by the time of Life With Lucy there was no hope for that Lucy character to find success. The fact is people would much rather watch the clever, scheming Lucy of ILL or early TLS than the Jerry Lewis-like clumsy idiot of later TLS, HL or LWL. We don't have the restrictions on how we are able to get our Lucy fixes today that we had in the 1960s and early 1970s.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

^^^ Not everyone who watched The Lucy Show in its original run were exposed to I Love Lucy beforehand. In fact, Lucy's own husband, Gary Morton, was unaware of I Love Lucy until Lucy mentioned it. And those young enough to remember the run of TLS most likely weren't alive or don't even remember the original run of ILL. So the success of The Lucy Show was not entirely influenced by I Love Lucy.


The biggest competition that The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy had in syndication was I Love Lucy ... and of course, they lost. People in general would much rather watch the original than the follow-up(s) as that happened in the past, happens now, and will continue to happen. I often wonder how TLS and HL would have done in syndication if ILL never came to be. I think they would have been much more successful as they would have been seen as a unique show and not some follow-up.


And let's not forget that whenever viewers thought of Lucille Ball they thought of I Love Lucy. That is the first thing that came to mind. And, of course, that had a negative effect on her subsequent programs. They wanted to see Lucy with Ricky and the Mertzes and not her as a single, widowed woman sharing a house and raising three kids with her best friend Viv and working for Mr. Mooney/Harrison Carter as her boss. They couldn't accept the Lucy character as anything else but Mrs. Ricky Ricardo.


I would say that Here's Lucy did quite well in its original run considering it was competing against not only one but two long-running Lucy programs, the mega-hit Laugh-In, and Monday Night Football. Even if you compare the show's original run to say the original run of the 29 emmy-awarded The Mary Tyler Moore Show, it still comes out on top as the most successful series. And lets not brush the fact under the rug that Here's Lucy placed in the top 30 in its last season ... you can't say that about too many highly-acclaimed, highly-awarded shows.


Life with Lucy was obviously an attempt to bring Lucy back to television. Unfortunately, when this series premiered the television landscape changed drastically since the end of Here's Lucy to the point that viewers had already moved on to something else. To them, Lucy was old hat who did just about everything in her type of television comedy. So it was nothing new or exciting to them as they had already seen it all many moons ago. Of course, that broke Lucy's heart and made her believe that no one wanted her anymore.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Quality is subjective ... everyone has different opinions on what makes a show good or bad.


Joe Lugoff, I find it quite ironic how you criticize her new writers of how they wrote the Lucy Carmichael character ... they were the ones who wrote the majority of scripts in season 3 and all of the scripts in subsequent seasons. So I guess by your standards, Lucy Carmichael wasn't herself even in season 3. But you just implied that she was the same Lucy in season 3 as in seasons 1 and 2. Sorry, but something is just not adding up here.


Lucy Carmichael was a quick-schemer in the later seasons as well ... she just wasn't portrayed like that all the time. I can name several episodes in those later seasons that had her scheming.


I agree, Ms. Carmichael had her weak moments too but I am glad her new writers exposed that more often to us viewers. It made her a relateable character in that aspect.


But as a hardcore I Love Lucy fan you are, I can understand why you are so critical of her subsequent shows. But that comes with the mentality that nothing can top or compare with the original. This happens all the time with movies and stars having subsequent shows and Lucy, unfortunately, is no exception.

 

[DeWilson]

Originally Posted by Theodore J. Mooney

^^^ Not everyone who watched The Lucy Show in its original run were exposed to I Love Lucy beforehand. In fact, Lucy's own husband, Gary Morton, was unaware of I Love Lucy until Lucy mentioned it. And those young enough to remember the run of TLS most likely weren't alive or don't even remember the original run of ILL. So the success of The Lucy Show was not entirely influenced by I Love Lucy.

But keep in mind CBS played I LOVE LUCY in Daytime and as prime-time summer filler from the mid-1950's to the the mid-1960's (Both the half-hour shows and the Lucy-Desi hour shows) So the show was still featured on CBS before it finally went into syndication in the 1960's.

 

[JohnMor]

Originally Posted by Theodore J. Mooney

^^^ Not everyone who watched The Lucy Show in its original run were exposed to I Love Lucy beforehand. In fact, Lucy's own husband, Gary Morton, was unaware of I Love Lucy until Lucy mentioned it. And those young enough to remember the run of TLS most likely weren't alive or don't even remember the original run of ILL. So the success of The Lucy Show was not entirely influenced by I Love Lucy.

That's not correct. He said he had never SEEN an episode of ILL due to his work schedule (club dates at night). He had heard of the show. It was the most watched program of the 1950s. It's Shares have really never been equalled, thanks to the limited number of programs on at the time. Most people had heard of it, and certainly everyone in the industry knew of it and knew of Lucy. Except for children unborn at the time, most people who watched TLS had watched ILL. In fact, the WHOLE reason for the show's existence was to bring Lucy back to CBS for a season as a bargaining chip b/w Desilu and the network. It was only after Lucy discovered how much she missed the work that the show ran for additional seasons.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I just wanted to point out that I religiously watched The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy every week until the final two seasons of Here's Lucy, thus adding to her ratings, theoretically, but I didn't like what I saw. I usually felt depressed by the end of the show. I don't remember having a good laugh, even once, when I'd get several major laughs out of even an average episode of I Love Lucy.


And I wasn't the only one who continued to watch Lucy out of a sense of desperate hope things would improve, or something! Mr. Mooney, I was around in those days, and trust me, people didn't hang around the halls at school or the water fountain at work on Tuesday mornings and talk about how funny Lucy was the night before, as they had back in the '50s.


In fact, I do remember people talking about Laugh-In (same time slot) back then, and All in the Family later.


I also suspect a large chunk of Lucy's high ratings came from children.


Speaking of the ratings: Although she peaked at #2 in The Lucy Show's 6th season, the rating was 27.0, which was lower than The Lucy Show's first season rating of 29.8 (when it ranked #5).


Season 2 was 28.1, 3 was 26.6, 4 was 27.7, 5 was 26.2, so actually, the first two seasons were the most highly-rated, and generally regarded as the best-quality seasons, too.


(My source for the ratings is the book "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows.")

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Originally Posted by Theodore J. Mooney

Quality is subjective ... everyone has different opinions on what makes a show good or bad.


Joe Lugoff, I find it quite ironic how you criticize her new writers of how they wrote the Lucy Carmichael character ... they were the ones who wrote the majority of scripts in season 3 and all of the scripts in subsequent seasons. So I guess by your standards, Lucy Carmichael wasn't herself even in season 3. But you just implied that she was the same Lucy in season 3 as in seasons 1 and 2. Sorry, but something is just not adding up here.

I don't believe Jess Oppenheimer made his threat of suing until most of Season 3 had already been filmed.


When Lucy decided to change the format of the series for Season 4, part of the reason was the Oppenheimer threat of a lawsuit, and the writers were told to no longer write Lucy Carmichael as a recreation of Lucy Ricardo. As I always say, this is all discussed in the many books on Lucille Ball and Desilu.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Originally Posted by JohnMor /forum/thread/306855/alert-the-lucy...n-arrives-on-april-26th-2011/120#post_3786013

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Some quotes from the CLASSIC The Lucy Show:


Joe: I am a plumber

Lucy: Well if you are, you could fool the panel on "What's My Line?"




Lucy: Lucy Carmichael. C-A-R-M-I-C-H-A-E-L. I always spell it out because some people spell it E-A-L. But we have the scotch way of spelling it. Maiden's name is McGillicuddy that's how scotch I am!




Mr. Mooney: Why are you fellas dressed like that?

Vivian: Us fellas are girls.




Lucy: In shakespear, they die alphabetically.

Vivian: You just made that up!




Lucy: Mr. Williams, wouldn't you like to see me die?

Mr. Williams: Don't tempt me!




Judge: Ms. Carmichael, sometimes injuries like this can be just in the mind.

Mr. Mooney: WHAT MIND?

 

[Garysb]

I remember even as a kid that in the later Lucy Shows things just happened without explanation. One time Lucy quits the bank to be an airline stewardess with Carol Burnett. After 2 episodes she is back at the bank with no explanation. At the time airline stewardess were in their 20's, Not very believable that Lucy and Carol would be accepted for this job. In the Joan Crawford episode all of the sudden Vivian was with her in a car that broke down. Where did Vivian come from.? Then there was 'Ironman Carmichael, Lucy as a male stuntman. Nobody noticed she was a 50 + year old woman? Also Lou C Carmichael. Lucy gets drafted by mistake and has to go to basic training. Again she a 50+ year old woman. Too silly to suspend belief. The one later Lucy Show I remember liking was with guest star Mel Torme where Lucy tries to save a small town and sings, "Main Street USA" One thing I remember Desi Arnaz saying about the hour Lucy-Desi shows was that they since they were on no more than once a month, they didn't have to explain why they were somewhere other than the house in Connecticut. With a weekly show you need continuity and as time went on the Lucy Show had less and less of it.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Originally Posted by Garysb

With a weekly show you need continuity and as time went on the Lucy Show had less and less of it.

Unfortunately, that was the result of not having a team of writers working on a single script together. What happened instead was that a bunch of writers were hired and they all wrote their own seperate scripts. But it did keep things interesting as different ideas were used thus helping the show remain fresh.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Over the years, I've talked to many, many Lucy fans.


It always went something like this:


"Oh, I love Lucy."

"What are your favorite episodes?"


"Oh, Vitameatavegamin ... the candy factory ... stomping the grapes."


"When she gets locked in the freezer ... sells salad dressing ... steals John Wayne's footprints ... "


"Yeah! Yeah! And when her nose caught on fire ... and when all the eggs broke in her shirt .. and .. and ... and ..."


After a while, I'd then ask, "Do you have any favorite episodes of The Lucy Show or Here's Lucy?"


"Oh, I hated those shows! They were so stupid."


I'm not going to debate this subject any longer with the only person I've ever run across who defends Late Lucy. As someone just pointed out up above: A 50-something stewardess ... a 50-something woman being drafted ... a 50-something woman being mistaken for a male stunt man ... dumb, dumb, dumb, and just not funny.


The great difference was that I Love Lucy was dumb and funny.

 

[LeoA]

I couldn't agree more.


I've even seen him state he was happy that Dennis the Menace was being released on DVD because late in the series, Gale Gordon from the late Lucy shows was in the program. He's the only person out of hundreds I've seen that really enjoy the later Lucy shows (Or the tail end of season 3 and season 4 of Dennis the Menace where Gale Gordon takes over from the late Joseph Kearns).


No offense to Mike since there's nothing wrong with it (Everyone's taste is different), but you certainly have unusual taste in television. Most everyone I've seen online that are even buying Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show on DVD is because it's 1960s programming and they have such an attachment with Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy that they feel obligated to purchase something they're not too crazy about.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Originally Posted by Joe Lugoff

Over the years, I've talked to many, many Lucy fans.


It always went something like this:


"Oh, I love Lucy."

"What are your favorite episodes?"


"Oh, Vitameatavegamin ... the candy factory ... stomping the grapes."


"When she gets locked in the freezer ... sells salad dressing ... steals John Wayne's footprints ... "


"Yeah! Yeah! And when her nose caught on fire ... and when all the eggs broke in her shirt .. and .. and ... and ..."


After a while, I'd then ask, "Do you have any favorite episodes of The Lucy Show or Here's Lucy?"


"Oh, I hated those shows! They were so stupid."


I'm not going to debate this subject any longer with the only person I've ever run across who defends Late Lucy. As someone just pointed out up above: A 50-something stewardess ... a 50-something woman being drafted ... a 50-something woman being mistaken for a male stunt man ... dumb, dumb, dumb, and just not funny.


The great difference was that I Love Lucy was dumb and funny.

Of course, the fans will mention the well-beloved, famous episodes of I Love Lucy as their favorite episode(s). That's a given. Those episodes get promoted and aired the most. Heck, they are even used as an advertising gimmick ... just look at the main picture of the DVD box covers of all six seasons of the show.

Like I said earlier ... The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy get no chances. Sure there are episodes in each Lucy series that are duds but there also some real winners too. Heck, even I think there are some stupid episodes but I don't write off the entire series as stupid and not funny.


No, the great difference is that I Love Lucy is the original and has Ricky and the Mertzes in it. The majority of viewers have been exposed to that first.


Thank goodness the DVDs of her other shows are coming out. Hopefully, this will help even the playing field.

 

[Ethan Riley]

At least with the first couple years of TLS, you could squint and pretend you're seeing Lucy and Ethel continuing their weird adventures. But once the show gets weaned off Vivian Vance--forget it. They're doomed. And TLS and moreso, Here's Lucy seem more memorable now for their constant guest star pimping than for Lucy herself. It was just always like, omg--she got Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to do television--wow oh, wow!! That said, the stories always sucked.


Everyone feels sentimental about Lucy, due to I Love Lucy. And that feeling toward her is what kept her on the air an additional 12 years. The show's success was not due to some mistaken belief that these were some brilliant, witty, Shakespearean-level scripts. Fans just had a soft spot for watching ILL all those years and were trying to recapture just a little bit of that feeling. Her demographics probably got older and older as time went on, too. But the decade-long disconnect between Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy was enough to distance those same fans from those feelings, and that's a major reason why that same kind of material, with that same level of suckage, was more heavily scrutinized and couldn't continue.


Another reason I don't like Lucy's later tv work is because of the way she aged. By the end of Here's Lucy her voice sounded like Lionel Stander. And look at her from interviews at the time. Unlike the sympathetic person she might have been in the 50s, by the 60s and certainly the 70s she came across as a crusty, tough ol' showbiz vet. Again--hardly a sympathetic figure. Lucy, I think, went from a character we all understood and loved (Lucy Ricardo) to someone quite unsympathetic in her later days. She seemed increasingly desperate to keep on top by repeating herself, but she should have left the repeats to I Love Lucy. She should have skipped doing all those other sitcoms and just stuck to doing movie work. Most of her post-1960 movies are quite good (I'll politely forget about Mame for now). She could have been seen as a highly respected movie star if she'd found the right scripts, and constantly adjusted for her age, as most stars who survive seem to do. Lucy, instead, kept trying to recapture that spark that was I Love Lucy, but ILL was very, very special and had its own place and time. She should have just moved on.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Originally Posted by LeoAmes

I couldn't agree more.


I've even seen him state he was happy that Dennis the Menace was being released on DVD because late in the series, Gale Gordon from the late Lucy shows was in the program. He's the only person out of hundreds I've seen that really enjoy the later Lucy shows (Or the tail end of season 3 and season 4 of Dennis the Menace where Gale Gordon takes over from the late Joseph Kearns).


No offense to Mike since there's nothing wrong with it (Everyone's taste is different), but you certainly have unusual taste in television. Most everyone I've seen online that are even buying Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show on DVD is because it's 1960s programming and they have such an attachment with Lucille Ball and I Love Lucy that they feel obligated to purchase something they're not too crazy about.

This is true. I'm going to get all 12 seasons of "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" and I can't even explain why. Past Seasons 1 and 2 of "The Lucy Show," I often find it depressing to watch everything deteriorate. It might just be that after 37 years since "Here's Lucy" went off the air, the shows seem better only because they're from a different era ... and I definitely like seeing them in the great prints they're using.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Originally Posted by Joe Lugoff
This is true. I'm going to get all 12 seasons of "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" and I can't even explain why. Past Seasons 1 and 2 of "The Lucy Show," I often find it depressing to watch everything deteriorate. It might just be that after 37 years since "Here's Lucy" went off the air, the shows seem better only because they're from a different era ... and I definitely like seeing them in the great prints they're using.

I will get them as they come out. I am crossing my fingers for The Lucy Show as CBS/Paramount has made no public statement saying that they are committed to releasing all six seasons of the show. I think, at this point, they are more concerned about the sales. Hopefully, season four won't disappoint. I plan to purchase more than one copy.


The prints have been AMAZING on the DVD sets. They look so sharp, clean, and crisp ... nothing like the syndicated airings on television. And it's UNCUT to boot! I just LOVE it! Both CBS/Paramount and MPI have done an extremely good job on these DVD sets. Lets hope they keep it up all the way to the very end.

Originally Posted by LeoAmes

I couldn't agree more.


I've even seen him state he was happy that Dennis the Menace was being released on DVD because late in the series, Gale Gordon from the late Lucy shows was in the program. He's the only person out of hundreds I've seen that really enjoy the later Lucy shows (Or the tail end of season 3 and season 4 of Dennis the Menace where Gale Gordon takes over from the late Joseph Kearns).

I actually enjoy the earlier seasons of Dennis the Menace a little bit more than the last season. Dennis, I believe, was almost a teenager by the time the show ended so him being cute just wasn't as funny. But to me, the addition of Gale Gordon to the show made up for it. Seeing him in a different role was such a delight. He definitely looked the part of Mr. Wilson (much more than Joseph Kearns) especially when you compare him to those comic strips.

 

[Gary OS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Lugoff /forum/thread/306855/alert-the-lucy...n-arrives-on-april-26th-2011/120#post_3786121

I will get them as they come out. I am crossing my fingers for The Lucy Show as CBS/Paramount has made no public statement saying that they are committed to releasing all six seasons of the show. I think, at this point, they are more concerned about the sales. Hopefully, season four won't disappoint. I plan to purchase more than one copy.


The prints have been AMAZING on the DVD sets. They look so sharp, clean, and crisp ... nothing like the syndicated airings on television. And it's UNCUT to boot! I just LOVE it! Both CBS/Paramount and MPI have done an extremely good job on these DVD sets. Lets hope they keep it up all the way to the very end.

[/quote]
Mike, I'm glad for you. I'd never begrudge anyone being able to own their favorite shows on dvd. I wish everyone could see all their favorites released. I hope CBS finishes TLS as well, even if I won't personally be buying them. But I want to see them finish it for fans like you.



Gary "take care, everyone" O.

 

[Rob_Ray]

Gary, very, very well said.


I haven't chimed in because Joe's opinion and the others pretty much reflects my own. The earliest first-run Lucy I can remember is the tail end of the The Desilu Playhouse run of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. I learned to read as the newspapers broke the story about Lucy and Desi's divorce. But I worshipped Lucy in her daytime reruns in the days before there was such a thing as pre-school and at six years of age I eagerly awaited her return to primetime in The Lucy Show. At first the show did not disappoint, and at that age I did not detect the drop in quality through seasons two and three. But once Viv left the show, nothing was the same. Also, around this time, I had Boy Scout meetings on Monday evenings, so I missed virtually all of the California years when they were first run and caught them later in summer daytime reruns. Just as Joe says, I watched hoping for a glimmer of the old Lucy magic and out of a sense of loyalty, because Lucy was the first entertainer I had worshipped literally from watching I Love Lucy reruns in my playpen. It was Lucy. I had to watch. By the time of Here's Lucy, my Monday nights were free again and I dutifully tuned in. But, again, out of loyalty only, as most episodes were pretty bad. But occasional good ones cropped up that gave me hope that the show would become, not another I Love Lucy, but somehow just worthy of the talents on the screen. By 1974, everyone knew it was past time to retire from weekly television.


Today, I'm still in for the long haul with the DVD releases, out of loyalty to my favorite redhead and just because it represents the 60s and early 70s to me. My youth. And, as time goes by, seeing all those guest stars, a concept I hated back in the day as being a lame attempt to make up for all the bad scripts, brings a tinge of nostalgia for the vast array of entertainers that are no more. And, as Leonard Maltin once noted in a foreward to one of his annual movie guides, seeing what passes for comedy today makes me want to run and throw four stars on everything Laurel and Hardy and The Marx Bros. ever did. I sort of feel that way about Lucy. It's people like us, who watched out of loyalty, that kept Lucy on the air so long. We couldn't imagine Monday nights without her.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Originally Posted by Gary OS /forum/thread/306855/alert-the-lucy...n-arrives-on-april-26th-2011/120#post_3786207

Yeah, and as I said, I don't even understand it myself. Maybe it goes back to the old saying "hope springs eternal in the human breast." Maybe I'll see little things here and there that I can appreciate more this time around. Of course, I keep hoping only because I Love Lucy is my favorite TV show of all time and Lucille Ball my favorite TV star.


Late-Lucy Show and Here's Lucy prove there's just a tiny difference between the words DVDs and DUDs. Your use of the word "duds" was right on ... it's amazing how 26 minutes of so-called comedy can just lay there and fizzle. (By the way, Season 3 of The Lucy Show is a laugh riot compared to Here's Lucy. You bailed out at just the right time.)