Lucy Show

The black and white episodes were the funniest of the entire series. Maybe this has to do with Vivian Vance, who was better here than in the "I Love Lucy" show. I always thought that Viv was the glue that held those earlier episodes together. Who could ever forget the episode about "Crazy Crunch" or of the Christmas episode about "Chris Crinkle".

Although this show was weaker than "I Love Lucy" it was still pretty funny in its original form. The chemistry of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance, as single mothers raising their children, made "The Lucy Show" work, especially its first season on the air. Despite some of the bizarre plotlines the two women were believable as two friends struggling in a largely manless environment. But with Vance's departure in 1965 it fell apart at the seams...Lucy became more of a cartoon character as the show became more shallow and relied too heavily on "guest stars," and Gale Gordon and Mary Jane Croft were weak substitutes.

Lucy probably should have pulled the plug on this one in '65.

This was Lucy's first series after the Lucy-Desi break-up. In many ways though it followed the same formula as I Love Lucy in that the comedy was set up just as well and Lucy is just as funny. Her character was developed as one that actually hit the times well.

Lucy was portrayed here as a single woman and still energetic enough to pull it off. Folks like Garry Marshall were among the talented writers enlisted to do scripts and many of the scripts were very funny. Lucy with her talent added to all of them.

Famous guest stars littered the shows, from her second encounter with legend John Wayne to Jack Benny and the first physical sighting of his famous vault where he squeezed his first dime. Gale Gordon was a great support actor as Lucy's boss at the bank she worked at during the series. That was the difference between this series & I Love Lucy is that most of the time Lucy was trying to keep her bank job with Mr. Mooney instead of trying to be a star.

It is a subtle change but important to note that Lucy could still be funny in different situations. Viven Vance is always a delight when she is on this show. She could not be on all the time due to some health problems she had but she did appear a lot. Ratings for this show were number 1 until it's last season when NBC stripped a gear & Laugh-In came on board.

I tend to disagree with the vast majority of the comments here. While The Lucy Show is not I Love Lucy by any means, it still cracks me up every time I watch it.

And yes, the show lost a little something when Vivian left. She and Lucy had an unbeatable on-screen chemistry. However, that doesn't mean the show should be written off entirely just because Viv's not there. I mean, it's Lucy! You really can't lose.

So, bottom line: Watch it! You won't be sorry. I bought a 2 disc DVD set and watched it yesterday and laughed my head off! Try to find the episode where Lucy babysits the monkeys, it's hilarious.

Anyway, that's just my two cents, and it ain't worth much.

Add my opinion to the others...Vivian Vance added a great deal of class to all the "Lucy" shows. None was more evident than in "The Lucy Show" when she departed (much too soon). After Vivian left the show it was apparent that Lucy needed a sidekick and various guest stars tried to fill Vivian's shoes but none came close. Once the show was broadcast in color, Lucy doing too much (such as running Desilu) started acting with too many broad strokes thinking that whatever she did would be funny. It wasn't. Some of the later shows were actually embarrassing to watch and you realized that not only were the writer's out of ideas but Lucy should have ended this show years before.