Life with Lucy

I went to the Lucy Museum in Jamestown NY yesterday and they aired an episode of Life With Lucy. The episode had John Ritter as a guest star. I thought it was very funny and I laughed a lot. I'm surprised this show didn't make it on TV.

A few years ago, Nick at Nite aired the first episode of this miserable piece of garbage as part of some kind of "Lucython." I was in Bad-TV heaven; I watched this catastrophe when it first aired in 1986, and I was delighted to see it again in all of it's badly-written, poorly executed glory.

What was the problem? Do you have a few hours? First of all, casting a 75 year-old comedienne LONG past her prime in a series that involves extensive physical comedy is downright pathetic. This sort of thing is difficult for someone in her twenties; watching Lucy and Gale Gordon (who was in his EIGHTIES at the time) was just downright painful. It was impossible to laugh because there was so much concern about these two senior citizens seriously injuring themselves.

Secondly, the scripts were awful. Nothing but a bad rehash of older Lucy shows....only this time the stuff wasn't funny. This show wouldn't have been funny in 1956, let alone 1986.

Third, the annoying hooting and hollering of the studio audience every time the star showed up on the set was unbearable.....think "Married...with Children" but without the subtlety.

Easily one of the most ill-conceived, badly executed, poorly written shows in the history of television, "Life with Lucy" belongs on the list of the top-five worst TV "Mistakes" in history. The series was pulled off the air in less than two months and RARELY surfaces in reruns. If you ever get a chance to see it, make sure you do. In fact, I urge you to write, call, or e-mail Nick at Nite and TV Land and BEG them to show an episode or two of this miserable piece of crap. You won't believe your eyes.

I've heard it said that Lucy and Gale were too old for the roles in this show, but that isn't the reason that this show failed. There is one reason this show failed and that one reason is a man known as Aaron Spelling! Abc pitched an idea to Aaron about producing a show starring Lucille Ball. He was sold from the start and every actor was signed except for Lucy. It took a lot of talking into from Gale and Gary (Morton) and she finally said "YES." Under one condition- she have Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis write the show. As they did for I Love Lucy, The Lucy Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy! Both were basically Lucy's writers.

To make a long story short, Aaron Spelling got the idea of "Power" in his head. He would often take a script written by Bob and Madelyn and make drastic changes to parts he didn't like or parts that he didn't think were funny. Had Aaron just left the scripts alone and let Lucy run the show, the show would have been a bigger success than it was. The John Ritter episode was the funniest because Aaron wasn't able to get his hands on the scripts right away.

HAPPY TRAILS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR RED RIVER48

The show was Lucille Ball's only failure, and many people have debated why it happened. What I recall most vividly, though, was the savagery of the critics. They were absolutely gleeful to see a mighty person fall, even if it was Lucy. I recall most of them proclaiming LIFE WITH LUCY to be the worst series in the history of television. With a response like that, why would any viewer give it a chance?

But I digress.....it really wasn't all that bad. The main problem was, at her age, Lucy was too old to be playing her patented zany character anymore. Furthermore, the type of humor she had perfected had become outdated by the 1980s, and she didn't seem to realize this. These two things alone were a recipe for failure. If one wasn't comparing it to Lucy's older material, it wouldn't have seemed half so bad to everyone.

It is sad to see IMDB reviewers jumping on the bandwagon here after all these years, using words like "horrendous" and "garbage" to describe the short-lived show. It was neither. At worst, it was an ill-advised idea, but Lucy fans today still might find it mildly amusing, if they could stop the horrible words of critics from ringing in their ears.

Now that it has had a DVD release, give it a chance.

I feel sorry for Lucille Ball. Once we declared that we Love Lucy, we expected her to be that Lucy character (although reworked a little) in her subsequent Lucy Show and Here's Lucy. She was young enough to carry off the physical comedy in those series, but we seemed unable to allow Ms. Ball to portray any other type of character. She therefore had to have a physical comedy role in order to get back on television.

This time, though, she seemed too old for that physical character and the geriatric version of Lucy trying to do the physical comedy of a Lucy forty years younger just didn't work. The show's concept and scripts were not of good quality and the whole feel of the show was that it was rushed into production without much thought or time being put into its development. It just didn't work as her past three series had. I can't help but wonder if ABC had allowed Miss Ball to play a different type of role and to have the show more script driven than relying on slapstick if maybe she might have had a chance at a hit.

Sadly, we will never know.