The Lucy Show Season 1 Spring 2009

 I'm having so much fun looking at those classic episodes of The Lucy Show, especially because I never had the chance to see them since their broadcast in the late sixties and early seventies.  

I am very impressed and pleased with the film transfers, even though I would have preferred getting less compression as some digital artifacts often reduces picture quality.  By the way, have you noticed that the syndicated openings are totally out of synch?  That bugged me a bit. This is obvious when the cartoon Lucy is fixing her letters with a hammer, and when some letters are dropping on the ground.  How could have they let that happen? 

Curiously, the vintage openings don't suffer from out-of-synch audio.  

About The Mothers In Law...

TVshowsonDVD were reporting just season 1 was coming, but that flyer in The Lucy Show box set is talking about The Complete Series in one box.

I guess we'll have to see which one turns out to be true when a release date is finally announced.

Speaking of that flyer, I didn't have one in my Lucy Show box set. How strange...

 makes sense to offer all 56 episodes at once. this way the older fans won't have to wait for season 2. and the curious can go all in.

So, any music changes? :)

The promo that aired on the hallmark channel can be viewed at http://thelucyshowdvd.com/

I think it's great that they are promoting the newly released DVD set of The Lucy Show. But why oh why must they link I Love Lucy to The Lucy Show in the promotion? Granted, both programs may have the same star; however, they are entirely different shows. They should give The Lucy Show a chance of standing alone.

People know I Love Lucy. People... well... love I Love Lucy.

The Lucy Show hasn't had half the syndication exposure of ILL in the past 15 years. It's not as fondly remembered or beloved as I Love Lucy. So, sales of The Lucy Show, left as a standalone, without the connection to I Love Lucy, might not be as good as if that Heart on satin is showed in the same picture as The Lucy Show.

So, what I'm saying is pairing The Lucy Show with I Love Lucy might just get more people to give this set a look, and might get us more than one season of The Lucy Show on DVD.

Exactly Shane.  I don't see any problem with promotion, no matter how it's done as long as the original product isn't messed with (music subs and the like).  Heck, if it would help to get THE BIG VALLEY back into the rotation or THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN released in R1 then I'd be more than happy to have it linked to any silly thing the studios can think of.  I would never have gone to see that Jim Carrey abomination that was being talked about a few years ago, but I would have gladly welcomed the farce if it would have helped get the SMDM out on dvd.

Gary "just my two cents" O.

It's not misleading to link the first season of THE LUCY SHOW to I LOVE LUCY.  It was the same creative team, almost 100%.  And Lucy Carmichael and Viv are Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in everything but name, minus the husbands.  (Well, Viv dressed a little better than Ethel, I'll admit that.)

So would you say that The Lucy Show is basically a continuation of I Love Lucy then?

There are lots of programs that are not fondly remembered or beloved either such as That Girl, The Doris Day Show, Gomer Pyle, ect. All seasons of those shows still managed to get on DVD without the help of being promoted alongside a more beloved show (from what I have seen). If these shows can stand alone, then why can't The Lucy Show?

Same 2 stars, same producer, same writing staff.  Why not cross-promote it?  Does it really make a difference? It doesn't detract from the new show at all.


So far, mine aren't out of synch.

Well, let's see: a wacky redhead named Lucy (with CAR in her last name) getting into misadventures because she can't tell the truth or balance a checknook or tries to do projects with her blonde side-kick like building a bbq or putting in a shower and hijinx ensue.  It's hardly a completely different series despite the tweaks to the set-up.  And that's okay.  


Edited by JohnMor - 7/25/2009 at 05:07 am GMT

Well, of course, The Lucy Show wasn't literally a continuation of I Love Lucy.  The basic concept of the show was two women trying to get along without men in their lives, so they had to do things like put up a TV antenna on the roof and fix the plumbing and do their own finances and try to get dates, and raise their kids alone, etc.

But it's well documented in the books on Lucille Ball and Desilu that the original writers of The Lucy Show (Pugh-Martin-Davis, Carroll, Schiller & Weiskopf, who were the last team of writers for I Love Lucy) had it in their contracts that Lucy Carmichael was to have the exact same characteristics as Lucy Ricardo.

And for the first three seasons (especially the first two seasons), she did.  She was clever, scheming, manipulative, bossy, childish, etc -- she even cried the way Lucy Ricardo did, and she couldn't sing well.  The episodes, as in I Love Lucy, revolved around her wanting to get or accomplish something.  Some episodes involved her getting involved in some wacky scheme, maybe involving disguises or lying.  Others highlighted her incompetence, with everything ending up in a mess.  Whatever the situation, it was just like I Love Lucy.

The books say what happened was this:  The Lucy character was created by I Love Lucy's original producer and head writer, Jess Oppenheimer.  He looked the other way during The Lucy Show's first two seasons, and I'm guessing this was because his old co-workers were writing the show.

But they quit at the end of the second season -- and Oppenheimer threatened to sue if he wasn't given credit and payment for the use of his character.

So Lucille Ball, who by all accounts was tight fisted and not really running things -- she did what the "men in the suits" told her to do -- rather than paying Oppenheimer, decided to revamp the show and Lucy's character the fourth season.  And things were never the same again.

The Lucy character fundamentally stopped being a clever schemer and became -- well, a bumbling dumbbell.  And instead of the stories revolving around her trying to accomplish something, they more often than not revolved around something happening to her -- like being drafted into the army, of all things, or becoming a super woman, or needing to go back to high school.  Really stupid things, I must say.

I vastly prefer the original Lucy character.  She was basically clever and quick witted, and the stories had interest and even suspense to them as we watched Lucy try to get out of the messes she created for herself.  The later seasons of The Lucy Show (and the entire run of Here's Lucy) can only be enjoyed if they're not compared to I Love Lucy.  Taken on their own terms, they're typical late 1960s-early 1970s sitcoms, surrealistic and kind of stupid, but with a laugh or two along the way, if you're in a stupid enough mood.

That's really odd... 

Hello John, 

I was surprised to read your comment.

I just went to verify again using a different player - a blu-ray player, this time.  Well, It does exactly the same!

Just use the first disc, 1st episode and look closely.  In fact, all syndication openings from that disc are slightly out of synch with the hammer sound effect hitting the wall. I don't know about the other disc because I'm not through watching the rest, yet.

Maybe I got another batch of DVD with this particular problem. After all, even the Here's Lucy flyer was missing from the box.
Thank God, the rest of the episodes are o.k.  That's what really matters.  Thanks John for reporting me your results.

Can't wait to get the color episodes from season 2, now! 

 The Lucy Show: The Official First Season DVD set has been nominated for the 2009 TV on DVD Awards. I hope everyone will please take a moment to vote for The Lucy Show. This wonderful set clearly shows that the DVD producers and CBS Home Entertainment put a lot of hard work into making it something really special for the fans. As of yet, there has not been any word as to whether Season 2 of The Lucy Show will be released on DVD. However, if the set wins this award, perhaps it will give CBS even more incentive to release the rest of the series.

Please vote at: http://www.homemediamagazine.com/tvdvdvote2009

As of now, watch for Season 2 to be released on March 30, 2010, followed by Season 3 on June 15, 2010, and possibly Season 4 in September.

I sure hope that's true.  You know we're interested in your source.

His source is as solid as it can get.  Believe me, I know where he's getting his info and it's rock solid.  You can trust him when he tells you such and such a title will be released by CBS/P at such and such a time.  If he says it, mark it down!

Gary "thanks for that info on the next installments of THE LUCY SHOW" O.

Wow! Very exciting. Possibly 3 seasons in 1 year!?!? They are smart to capitalize on this series now that Season 1 is in stores. The next 2 seasons are excellent, in my opinion, and I can't wait to add them to my collection. I'm very happy to hear this.

Then I'll allow myself to get excited. 

I've never seen Seasons 2 and 3 in color uncut (they were shown in b/w originally, as I'm sure all Lucy fans know.)  In fact, now that I think of it, no one has!

I wonder if they'll still do the "vintage" option, as any network prints that survive will obviously be B&W, while the rest of the episodes will be color. Then for seasons 4-6 any extant network prints they find to reconstruct the network credits and commercials…well, let's just say they'll match Lucy's hair.

When did the Kaleidoscope opening begin?

The kaleidoscope opening began the fourth season.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the "network" prints will be B&W.  The show was filmed in color (including the openings), but simply broadcast originally in B&W.  I never thought the network showed B&W prints -- I assumed they showed the color prints, without the "color switch," so to speak, turned on.

I always assumed the network received B&W prints until they began broadcasting in color. But thanks to not being alive then and never having worked for a network affiliate alongside someone who knows, I could be wrong.

But if you're right and the prints they find are in color, it will be interesting to see if they continue the vintage option and try to restore as much of the color as they can or not.

I'm assuming the original color negatives of Seasons 2 and 3 were kept in as good condition as the original black and white negatives they used for Season 1.  I sure hope so!  I'll be shocked if Seasons 2 and 3 are released in black and white, simply because that was the way they were originally shown!

By the way, the main (maybe the only) reason CBS didn't broadcast Seasons 2 and 3 (or anything else at the time) in color was because by 1959 the only surviving color television system was RCA's -- the only color television sets manufactured were RCA's -- RCA owned NBC, CBS's main competitor -- and CBS didn't want to do anything to promote their competitor's product.  Showing a top ten show like "The Lucy Show" in color would have been a high level of promotion.  (I have read interviews Lucille Ball gave at the time where she said she certainly wanted CBS to broadcast the show in color, but they wouldn't.)

By 1965, they relented, and "The Lucy Show" and several other CBS shows started broadcasting in color for the 1965-66 season.  By the next season, everything was in color, forever more.

There's no doubt the episodes proper will be in color, and with what MPI has done with the transfers on the independently-owned "Here's Lucy", CBS/Paramount should be able to make the color Lucy Shows look at least as good as that or the other shows they inherited from Desilu have looked.

It's the "vintage" parts I'm talking about. The last season of "I Love Lucy", the first time they added the seamless branching option to watch the original network credits with the episode, had to take its vintage elements from VHS transfers of the 16mm prints (I heard they were taken from bootlegs which originated from the guy who transferred Lucy's personal prints to tape back in the late 1970s), as Jess Oppenheimer's son had no prints of the stuff his father didn't write.

The networks used B&W 16mm prints when the show originally aired.  I have seen them. 

The East Coast feed and the West Coast feed had two prints each: one 35mm for the main feed, one 16mm for the back-up feed in case of "technical difficulties".

Yes and both the 35 mm and 16 mm prints were in color for color telecasts. The black and white 16mm prints were for stations that aired shows on a delay and were not able to delay the shows themselves via video tape. There was also a third 16mm color print of many shows that went to Denver which for many years was the origination point for the Mountain Time Zone. When everything moved to tape including shows that were originally on film, the 35 and 16 prints were no longer used by the networks on air.