JohnMor
Senior HTF Member
Originally Posted by Joe Lugoff
Isn't it odd -- and kind of sad -- that we all seem to understand so well what was wrong with Lucy's later TV shows, but the so-called professionals working around her didn't?
It had to boil down to the fact that she made her cousin the producer and her husband the executive producer and they just flat-out didn't know what they were doing. And as long as the ratings stayed high, they figured they were doing ok.
We're all to blame for that to a degree. We tuned in each week, so we made the ratings high. And the TV Academy gave her Emmys the last two years of The Lucy Show, so they didn't help. At the time, even with the carping from critics, etc. we still "loved" Lucy every Monday night and helped convince her she was on the right track. But I know for me, it's because in those days prior to vcr's and owning episodes, you basically saw an ep of I Love Lucy once a year when it aired in it's repeat cycle. So to see a new Lucy was still an event to a degree, even if it was a pale imitation of what had come before. I not only laughed at the new Lucy ep, but it brought back memories of great ILL eps for me as well. NOW, being able to see them ad nauseum and compare them side by side, it seems inconceivable that I would tune in each week. But I did. As did millions of others. Sad. Because she deserved better and so did we.