O Show da Lucy

I loved the first year of "The Lucy Show" because it was a great showcase for Vivian Vance. Honestly, Vivian was ten times a better actress than Lucy. Viv was real, while Lucy was loud and over-the-top. When Vivian left, the show died really. I hated Gale Gordon! It was so sad - a 60-year-old man yelling at a 50-year old woman! Why was that funny? Viv and Lucy had so much warmth together. It was great fun. Lucy would have done well to have retired from television in 1965 along with Vivian, because "Lucy" shows post-Vivian were just not funny.

Although it was called "The Lucy Show," the core of this program was always the interaction between Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon. Having key film crew personnel from "I Love Lucy" certainly didn't hurt. The show did lose some punch when Vance left for she,along with Ball and Gordon, were "The Lucy Show Triumvirate". However, I feel the post-Vance episodes were almost as enjoyable for they featured interesting and entertaining guest stars. The "Main Street" episode featuring Mel Torme, Paul Winchell AND John Bubbles is a delight for musical fans. Check out the sequence showing Bubbles dancing with Lucy. Also, these later episodes still featured Gale Gordon who bounced off Lucy just as effectively as Vance did. Plus, the addition of Roy Roberts as Gordon's boss helped for he and Gordon bounced off each other well.

I am in complete agreement with the majority of the previous reviewers in that the first two seasons in black-and-white with Vivian Vance playing Vivian Bagley (television comedy's first divorcee) where undoubtedly the finest of the series. I am second to none in my admiration for Lucy, but after Vivian's character vanished, I thought the shows got more grating, annoying, repetitious and less funny as a rule. Vance was indeed a great co-star for Ball, they played off each-other beautifully and had genuine "star chemistry" between them. Mr. Mooney yelling at Lucy Carmichael got to be distractingly boring, uninspired and plain stupid. I have always been a great fan of Vivian Vance: in my thinking she was a vastly underrated comedy performer who had a unique voice, delivery style and physical mannerisms. Lucy was indeed fortunate to have had Desi finding Vivian playing in a play in La Jolla back in 195O. Lucy wouldn't have been nearly as successful without the special magic this actress brought to Ethel & Viv!

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.

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".