The show is so dear to me and such a part of my childhood that I have absolutely no objectivity when it comes to judging its quality or longevity. I can more easily see some of its flaws now - it’s corny, Ricky is a chauvinist, Lucy can be a real twat- but some of it is sincerely funny to me. I’ll generally skip over the earliest episodes but if one of the California or Europe eps is on, I’m watching it *and *saying all the lines along with it.
Several years ago in the year of the show’s 50th anniversary a friend and I planned to go to work on Halloween as Lucy and Ethel from the candy factory episode. These days - actually the very next year- you could find prepackaged costumes but I created ours out of old nurses uniforms and such. We sat next to each other and our cube had a ledge that we turned into the candy conveyor belt with actual pieces of candy on it! It was awesome, or would have been had I not been promoted to sales and therefore couldn’t dress up. She got someone else to be Ethel and she took over my Lucy I’d still like to dress up as Lucy in the grape stomping episode but nobody where I work now is any damn fun.:mad:
It was a trusted member of the mindless set of mostly B&W junk shows I used to watch as a kid on Channel 11 out of Ft. Worth, right there with Bewitched, The Rifleman, That Girl, The Dick van Dyke Show, The Munsters and others. Recently I caught one of the ‘classic reruns’, this little gem.
I’ve also heard Desi generally credited with inventing re-runs, although that’s the kind of thing anybody in early days of television would’ve come up with sooner or later.
What’s interesting , though, that I’ve picked up from the DVD is that when the early ILL episodes were repeated for the first time, they were slightly repackaged. New intro scenes are added, usually with Ricky, Fred, and Ethel in the Ricardo living room and recalling that time Lucy did that really wacky thing… and they go to the old episode as a flashback.
^^^ This. Just awful. I had relatives that would cue that thing up and then keep watching when the Beverly freaking Hillbillies came on. I never want to see another TV show with a laugh track as long as I live.
For those who don’t love Lucy, and I’ve met many, I think you either had to have been there when they were first run or have them be a *pleasant *childhood memory.
I can totally see someone not liking these old shows for the reasons I listed above, but for me and I assume others, it’s such an ingrained part of my past and serves as such a deep connection with my relatives and lifelong friends that the nostalgia aspect is just as strong as the actual comedy.
I think we need a thread for Lucy lovers about what lines from the show they use in present day conversation. There’s the obvious “'splain”, but there’s a bunch more I say that other Lucy lovers pick up on.
I think Lucy was my first encounter with “comedy” in which we, the audience, are simultaneously encouraged to care about the character and encouraged to see the character as a clueless buffoon making bad decisions and creating situational trainwrecks for themselves. I don’t find it at all funny, I don’t find it remotely pleasant, and the overwhelming body of “situation comedy” seems to depend on it.
Lucy would toss in an occasional ameliorative behavior on Lucy’s part that actually didn’t prompt the reaction “oh god no, don’t do that, that’s stupid, selfish, bad idea”, but not enough. I got tired of cringing and wincing in embarrassed sympathy while watching her create disasters for herself while everyone in the [del]studio audience[/del] canned laughter machine laughed their heads off at how funny she was.
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Lucy’s stuff in general has aged pretty well. I’ve got a DVD collection of The Lucy Show, and, especially the episodes after the format change, they hold up quite well.
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Sadly, for syndication, they’ve chopped so many scenes over the years that it’s a minor miracle that they make any sense at all.
Best part of the show was Ethel and Fred bickering.
Another great gag was when Lucy was smuggling eggs in her shirt and Ricky made her practice the tango. Nice build up.
Or when Lucy was trying to disguise herself with a fake rubber nose and it caught on fire from her cigarette and she put it out in her coffee.
Or when Lucy got her foot stuck in a block of cement.
What’s the general Lucy fandom’s view of the quality of the show over time? First couple seasons the best? Were the Hollywood episodes a nice change or a desperation move/shark jumping moment? I haven’t watched more than a couple episodes in a row in years but I fondly remember a lot of Hollywood eps.
Hypothesis confirmed. I watched all sorts of Nick at Nite shows when I was a kid. Along with the rest of those old tymey shows, I Love Lucy was basically babby’s first sitcom. Don’t forget the first show too, where she worked at a bank I think? Unlike modern shows they have no explicit references to sex, drugs, death, ultra violence, or overly political subject matter. Making anything funny under those conditions is tough.
Lucy as an actor was so good though. A lot of modern women seem robotic when it comes to physical humor, like they’re trying to hit their marks. Lucy seemed so spontaneous and she was hilarious just making goofy faces and giving double takes. Like a cartoon in real life. Now that I think about it, I’ve always kinda had a thing for goofy/eccentric girls IRL and female cloud cuckoolanders are usually one of my favorite character archetypes in fiction. Oh my god, Freud was right!
Good humor is good humor, and Lucy was one of the best comediennes around. Absolutely top notch. That’s why the show holds up over time. Ethel was a good foil, too.
I agree with both of these. To some extent, I suspect, people’s reaction to ILL are of the “Seinfeld isn’t Funny” variety (that’s a category on Another Site). It’s been imitated so often that it seems stale.
I came to the show as an adult, just a few years back, so this is not nostalgia for me. For a few years I lived in a part of the US in which the show was shown something like eleven times a day, and I got hooked. It’s got the silly slapstick, and it’s also got the issues of character (vanity, ambition, competitiveness, etc.). It was very skillfully made. I love I Love Lucy.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think that the shark jumping–and it’s only a very small shark–came until the European tour shows. Most of the Hollywood stuff is good, but there’s an anticlimatic feeling after they return and move to Connecticut. Still some funny moments, but the overall tone has changed.
Where it really jumps is when they switch to the Lucy & Desi Comedy hour, which is only nominally a continuation of ILL. Same characters, but always with a celebrity guest star and a whole hour to fill out so things tend to drag. I watched it because I’d just finished the last eps of ILL and wasn’t quite ready to let go yet.
BTW, ILL was filmed in front of an audience. I believe the laughs were reused for other shows later on, but you can see the people in the bleachers in a number of still shots from when they were filming the shows (again, on the DVDs). You can also often hear Desi’s seal-bark laughter from offstage when Lucy is doing one of her routines.
For those who don’t love Lucy, and I’ve met many, I think you either had to have been there when they were first run or have them be a pleasant childhood memory.
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I was there when they were first run. But they weren’t a pleasant childhood memory because I didn’t like the show when I was a kid either.
I can see how talented a comic actress Lucille Ball was, and how well she and Desi played off each other, and Fred and Ethel and so on. But I still don’t like the show.
I’d still like to dress up as Lucy in the grape stomping episode but nobody where I work now is any damn fun.:mad: