Life with Lucy

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.

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.

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.

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'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