Vida con 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.

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

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.

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.

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.