Where is "The Lucy Show"? (1 Viewer)

[Randy Korstick]

I'm glad and will be getting these. I've always liked Here's Lucy better than the Lucy Show. Not sure why maybe the addition of her real kids but I will gladly buy all seasons of both shows. I don't understand all the negative vibes on the Lucy Show and Here's Lucy either. I mean are they as good as I Love Lucy? Of course not. Are they classic like I Love Lucy? Of course not but they are still Lucy and still funny. They are on par with most other sitcoms from the 60's and 70's and certainly better than most of what passes as sitcoms these days.

 

[Jude86]

I'm hoping sales for Here's Lucy will be great and will show CBS what a mistake it has made holding off so long on The Lucy Show!

 

[Gary OS]

Randy, I think as long as people are civil and generally nice about how they word their opinions, it's fine for folks to talk about which incarnation of Lucy's shows they like best. For instance, I bought the "Here's Lucy" best of set a year or so ago when Oldies.com had a fire sale on it and I picked it up for a song. I sat down thinking I'd love it just like I did when I was a kid watching it on reruns in the 70's. I sat my wife and two daughters down to watch with me (they love classic TV and watch everything I do). They adore "I Love Lucy" and I thought we'd all love "Here's Lucy." Didn't turn out that way at all. For some reason the show just fell flat to us.

On the other hand, I have a couple of episodes from "The Lucy Show" that have been taped off TV from years ago and we've watched them and love them. So I'm of the opposite opinion of you (and that's all good - no one will have all the same likes and dislikes). I'd much prefer to have heard that "The Lucy Show" was being released than "Here's Lucy". But I'm still happy for fans of that show. I mainly want the first 2 seasons of "The Lucy Show". If those were released I'd have all I need of Lucille Ball's TV career: Everything from "I Love Lucy" and those first couple of great seasons from "The Lucy Show".

Gary "I still think 'The Lucy Show' is probably the most glaring omission of vintage 60's sitcoms on DVD at this point" O.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I don't think the reasons are so mysterious. The show was poorly written and directed.

Lucy had many great faults and one of them was an extreme case of nepotism. She made her cousin producer and her clueless husband executive producer, and that was that.

I've read many books on Lucille Ball. The average person would rightfully jump to the conclusion that no one knew comedy better than she did. Actually, she knew very little about comedy. Many times on "I Love Lucy," Desi would have to almost force her to do a scene, because she didn't think it was funny.

What she was was a great actress who played her part extremely well. But if anyone thinks she knew comedy, they'll have to explain "Here's Lucy" to me, because although it's ok by the standards of its era, it really isn't funny.

If you grew up on it, I understand the nostalgia connected to it. But if you grew up on "I Love Lucy," you most likely found "Here's Lucy" rather appalling in comparison.

 

[Jude86]

In any case, I love Lucy no matter what incarnation she was doing. I've even been listening to her "My Favorite Husband" radio series.....she was indeed a great comic actress (and NOT comedienne). When her writers kept her stuck in that BIG NAME GUEST STAR OF THE WEEK format, it really sunk the shows creatively, despite the huge ratings they garnered. I like her best when she is doing family/domestic situations, esp with her own kids. Gale Gordon's bombastic Mr Mooney was sort of toned down for Here's Lucy's Uncle Harry IMO. In any case, I'd rather watch Lucy in any form compared to what passes for "great" comedy today.

 

[Rob_Ray]

I love Lucy as much as anyone, but when Desi walked away from The Lucy Show, that was strike one. When the writers were fired toward the end of season three, that was stirke two and when Vivian decided she didn't need the grind after the end of season three, that was strike three. It was amazing that Lucy managed to hang on for another nine years after that!

Happily, Bob Carroll and Madelyn Davis came back during the later Here's Lucy years and there are a handful of good episodes from the later years of that show, such as "Lucy is N.G. as R.N." but most of the writers of the later Lucy Show/Here's Lucy years simply didn't know the Lucy character and made her a brainless idiot. And it didn't help matters that Lucy was so busy with behind the camera producing chores that she began relying on cue cards. Her timing was never the same after that.

Still the first three seasons of The Lucy Show are pretty good and I'd go so far as to say that season one of The Lucy Show far outshines most of season one of I Love Lucy, where too often they were recycling radio gags from My Favorite Husband that didn't work visually.

Once Lucy gets to California, story continuity is out the window and it's just Lucy Meets Big Name Guest Star without an ounce of reality to root the character. At least Here's Lucy gave her a family to play off of. But the lack of a female cohort close to her own age who could put her in her place and a romantic interest to humanize her was sorely missed. And they should have written Gale Gordon's Mr. Mooney/Uncle Harry in such a way that deep down, he had genuine affection for her. Without Desi or any other love interest, Gale should have provided the emotional moment at the fade out that said, "She's exasperating, but she's just Lucy and I love her." Why else would he keep her around? Their relationship never made any sense.

 

[Michael Rogers]

I read that when Paul Brownstein spoke about the "Best Of" Here's Lucy set, he said the sales for it were strong...

So strong that when Brownstein wanted to make another volume Warner Brothers wanted more money for the episodes then they did for the first and that made the second set fall through for Shout. Glad that MPI is taking it up.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

Me too! I, for one, would certainly love to have all six seasons of each The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy on DVD! That would certainly fill the gap of the huge hole of Lucille Ball's television series career.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

So much has been written about her, we could kick Lucy around a lot here.

I'm not sure her writers forced those big stars on her -- they were probably her own idea!

After all, she's on record as saying her favorite Lucy episode of all time is the episode from Season Four of "The Lucy Show" with Dean Martin. That episode is OK, but far from being any kind of a great comedy classic.

Now, with so many classic episodes of "I Love Lucy," why would she single that one out? In "The Lucy Book," her widower Gary Morton himself said he couldn't explain that.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

I can only assume that one of Lucy's top dreams was to go on a date with a man that she really admired and liked. She probably didn't get to that in her teenage years as she was so busy at that time. So this Dean Martin episode allowed her, in a way, to "fulfill" that dream. If this assumption is true, then it is no surprise why this episode would be so special to her to the point of overshadowing the classic episodes she made. Again, this is just a theory.

 

[Tim Tucker]

I think this is the crux of the problem. In ILL, despite whatever insanity is going on, at the end, we always knew that Ricky loved Lucy, Fred loved Ethel, and the Ricardos and the Mertzes were the best of friends. But for the other shows, Lucy Carmichael/Carter and Mr. Mooney/Uncle Harry tolerated each other at best and despised each other at worst. The shows lacked "heart".

 

[Joe Lugoff]

"The Lucy Show" seemed modeled more on another Gale Gordon sitcom, "Our Miss Brooks." That too featured a single working woman whose love life went nowhere and whose boss (Gordon) basically couldn't stand her. She also didn't seem to have any close friends; her landlady was her confidante.

What made "Our Miss Brooks" better than "The Lucy Show," though, was Miss Brooks was a smart woman who was great with a wisecrack. The later Lucy Carmichael was a total dumbbell who never said a clever thing (unlike the earlier Lucy Carmichael.)

 

[JohnMor]

To me that is one of the biggest failures of the latter 2 series, and my biggest disappointment in them: Lucy Ricardo wasn't stupid. She may have been rash and sometimes childish, but she was not an idiot. And there were logical reasons Lucy Ricardo did what she did. But they really wrote Lucy Carmichael and especially Lucy Carter as complete dumbbells. And they had them doing ridiculous things just to try to put LB in a "funny" situation with no rhyme or reason. "Let's have Lucy trade her house with an African person, so Lucy goes to Africa and we can have a whole sequence with a Tse Tse fly!! The audience will HOWL!!"

My first instinct was to say LB deserved better. But, then again, she allowed it, so in that way, she got what she deserved.

Sigh.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

I actually liked that episode. It gave me a couple of laughs. It was a change of pace episode since the majority of them were set in the office or at home. I personally would rather take this episode over any of those episodes where the musical numbers took center stage such as the ones that featured Frankie Avalon, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Albert, Carol Burnett, Donny Osmond, Phil Harris, Ann Margret, Wayne Newton, ect. Those were just plain boring. Then there was one that had some male celebrity impersonating Phyllis Diller. Horrible.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

I agree with JohnMor about that infamous African episode.

I remember watching it the night it was first shown, and I thought, "This is about the end of the line." I stuck with Lucille Ball for years, but that was too much of an insult to anyone's intelligence.

Did SHE think that kind of thing was funny? Possibly not -- but did she think her audience was a bunch of morons? I don't think I'll ever get definitive answers to the questions of why her shows deteriorated so badly over time.

I do know that writers who wrote lousy scripts for her wrote good scripts for other shows, before and after working for her. It's a real mystery.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

LOL ... yes, some of the worst half-hours in TV history.

Frankie Avalon -- he came up to Lucy's shoulder, and he was obviously singing to pre-recorded music. I can take maybe 10 seconds of Donny Osmond. Watching Phil Harris walk around in a dress was not my idea of entertainment. Don't get me started on Wayne Newton.

 

[Gary OS]

My apologies if this has been mentioned in this or another thread and I'm repeating old news, but...

The CBS Distribution Bible is reporting that they have finished transferring Season One of THE LUCY SHOW to HD. That probably bodes well for a dvd release in the near future!

Gary "can't believe I missed that bit of news - it's been on the CBS site for over a month now" O.

 

[Theodore J. Mooney]

I haven't heard that piece of news since now, Gary. Thank you for mentioning it.

Well, I am happy to see that CBS/Paramount are working on The Lucy Show. Even though they have yet to release it on DVD, at least, they are preparing the show for a release. This is, of course, far better than hearing that they aren't interested in the series.

 

[Robert13]

What does that mean? Where can we find this at the CBS/Paramount website? I just looked over there and couldn't find anything. Can't wait for season 1 of "The Lucy Show".