Re: "I Love Lucy" Complete Series
All of the I Love Lucy shows released on DVD were new transfers from the best materials CBS/Paramount has, but beginning with season two, the series got better transfers than season one got, as well as a frame-by-frame digital cleaning that the first season didn't get, either. The first season episodes--include the unaired kinescoped pilot--have subsequently been retransferred and cleaned up to match the later seasons. The new season one transfers are what will be in the box set.
The first ten or twelve I Love Lucy episodes do have a shorter running time than later episodes. At first, the series was formatted like this:
opening credits/commercial/act one/commercial/act two/commercial/tag scene/commercial/closing credits
After a few episodes, the tag scene and fourth commercial were eliminated, and the length of the show's other commerical breaks shortened, which lengthened the running time of the shows themselves.
If you watch those early shows, the tag scenes are generally easy to spot. They're those short scenes at the end of the episodes, preceded by a fade out/fade in. The tag scene in "The Seance" is interesting. After Ricky takes Mr. Meriweather downstairs and Fred comes back into the apartment, watch closely when Lucy and the Mertzes all sit down, looking puzzled. Just before Ricky bursts in, there is a just barely perceptible splice or jump in the image. As originally aired, act two of "The Seance" faded out on Lucy and the Mertzes and the tag scene faded in on the very same shot, with them in the same positions, just before Ricky's entrance. When the episode was rebroadcast, CBS simply cut out of the act two fade out/tag fade in, and joined the two scenes together.
A few Lucy episodes were edited to shorten their running time a little when those repeat broadcast wraparounds were added during the original prime time run. These subsequently eliminated bits were recovered from 16mm prints and, where possible, inserted back into the shows as they appear on DVD. In other instances, they're included as bonus features. The only other edits made to the show during its original prime time run were to remove occasional direct references to the show's original sponsor, Philip Morris Cigarettes, after other companies began paying the tab for the series. "The Audition" has one such bit, and "Lucy Does a TV Commerical" has another.
"Lucy Does a TV Commerical" is also interesting in that the DVD bonus features include both the "as originally aired" version of the scene where Lucy is inside the TV set and the subsequently reedited version that eliminated the aforementioned reference to Philip Morris. I Love Lucy was filmed simultaneously with three cameras, and the reedited "TV Commercial" uses footage from a different camera for one shot in that scene than was used in the original broadcast version. "Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio" also uses footage from a different camera for one shot in its reedited version than was used in the original broadcast version. (The alternate camera angle hid a very blatant plug for Philip Morris that was visible in the original.)
