Life with Lucy

In the era of "The Golden Girls," Lucy attempted a comeback utilizing a comedic style three decades old. It was a BAD idea. Nobody wanted to see a rehash of "I Love Lucy," melded with a vacuous 80s sitcom family.

IMAGINE Lucy, at that age, in something MUCH better. Her comedic timing is legend, and she deserved a more sophisticated finale. I saw her in person, a few years prior to her death, and her caustic wit was astounding. Most likely, she feared moving away from the tried-and-true image she had established.

Eve Arden suffered a similar fate, and I would have killed to see the two of them in a series together.

I admire Ball's loyalty to her original creative team, but the enterprise is clearly a mistake, that her family and advisers should have stopped her from making.

Yes, I watched the series during its original run. The supporting "family" cast is appalling. Good grief, even if they'd just presented her and Gale Gordon as an older married couple, it might have survived.

She appeared on, I believe, The Tonight Show, after the failure of this sitcom. She was in tears, and it broke my heart. It is said that her despair over the failure of this show quickened her death. Whatever the case, she deserved much better.

Although the series was pretty bad ( because of the awful slapstick) it actually was getting better. The writers were told to tone down the slapstick. One of the last episodes aired was a wedding flashback episode that also starred Audrey Meadows as Lucy's sister. This episode was a turning point in the writing. It was amusing without any slapstick. This is what the series could have been from the beginning. It is too bad that it was yanked off so soon. It was just beginning to correct its mistakes.

When one thinks of this show the word "illconceived" comes to mind. This wasn't a bad show, nor was it good. It was just average fodder that was being pumped out in the 1980's. It's unfortunate that Lucille Ball didn't go with her first intuition and leave well enough alone. A golden opportunity was missed. If the show had been about Lucy Ricardo as a retiree living with Little Ricky and his family, that might have had some possibilities. But this show suffered from scripts and stories that we have seen over and over again, along with characters that were bland, also to be a bit blunt, watching an old lady perform some of the stunts she did just didn't work. Broad slapstick was gone and was replaced by clever writing that was shown on The Golden Girls. Times and tastes had changed and it's too bad that Lucy didn't realize this. A sour note to end a stellar career that didn't tarnish her overall body of work.

Very, very, sad. At 75, Lucille Ball was coaxed from retirement to reprise the shenanigans of her former glory (and what glory it had been). With the help of her longtime writers Madelyn Pugh Davis and Bob Carroll Jr. and her old pal, actor Gale Gordon, Lucy joined the 1980's as though the world stopped spinning in 1974 when Here's Lucy has signed off. "I didn't know that moving me in could be such a turn-on!" said Ball's character (named Lucy, of course) after catching daughter Margo (Ann Dusenberry) kissing son-in-law Ted (Larry Anderson). The ancient slang was all too indicative of Life with Lucy, and as critics savaged the series, audiences ignored it. Lucy's fans expected more, and Lucy desevered better.

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.