Lucy's dependency on cue cards
Why did Lucy need to rely on cue cards so much for this show? Honestly, it seems like she just stopped caring about quality.
shareThe show is terrible, so her bothering to learn her lines wouldn't have helped. The writing was just so terrible. But
frankly, "The Lucy Show" isn't much better.
Ball should've moved onto other projects after "I Love Lucy." There is no art or heart in her later series. Embarrassing.
While I agree that much, if not most, of "Here's Lucy" is poor, the first two or three seasons of "The Lucy Show" were excellent. Classic episodes such as "Lucy and Viv Install a Shower" are spectacularly funny and are as good as any episode of "I Love Lucy."
shareDisagree. While "Lucy and Viv Install a Shower", and the episode about Lucy putting up a TV Antenna are quite
good, most of the "The Lucy Show" is pretty bad.
What was charming in a character in her 30's, is obnoxious in a woman near 50 in "The Lucy Show." Ball had
wonderful child actors to portray Lucy and Viv's children, but the episodes got sillier and sillier as the show
progressed. And this happened BEFORE Vance left.
In the third season, there is an episode so juvenile, poorly written and overplayed, it's embarrassing. Lucy and
Viv - you know, two adult characters - return from seeing two horror movies that even TEENS would laugh at -
and Lucy has a dream where she and Viv are in a haunted castle. Absolutely wretched, rotten, childish writing.
All Ball did in these last two series was bellow her lines, written off of cue cards. The nuance and art of Ball's
great work in "I Love Lucy" was gone. Even Desi Arnaz was appalled by the scripts given to Ball in those last
two shows.
Some of the black and white "Lucy Show" episodes were funny and they had a certain charm. But somehow Lucy was locked into a formula which the character and society outgrew.
I know Lucille Ball was against doing comedy like "The Golden Girls". That was a funny show but when I watch it now it I see it as a group of post menopausal women acting like horny teen-agers. Not exactly realistic either.
I can appreciate that Lucy didn't want to do that sort of comedy, but it is sad that none of her writers could update her comedy. There must've been some happy medium between silly childish Lucy antics and a sex crazed old broad!
My problem with "The Golden Girls" is that the jokes were often waaaaay too topical. "I Love Lucy" never
did that. But on the other hand, "The Golden Girls" was an incomparably better show than "The Lucy
Show" and (especially) "Here's Lucy."
Yes, there are a few good shows from the first season of "The Lucy Show", and I'll give you this:
The Christmas show from '62 is hilarious- far better than the seldom seen Christmas show from ILL
in '56.
There are, no doubt, many poorly written episodes in even the earlier seasons of "The Lucy Show," but I'd argue that the good ones (especially in seasons 1 and 2) outnumber the bad. And I'd argue, too, that Ball didn't bellow her lines in those episodes (in the manner that she indeed did in later years--I wholly agree that those phoned-in, one-dimensional performances were depressing).
In the best early "Lucy Show" episodes, she was still playing what seemed to be a real person (despite the implausible situations the Lucy character became embroiled in), interacting believably with her co-stars, and doing wonderful physical comedy.
But even in the beginning, Ball is YELLING all of her dialogue. Part of the problem was her deepening, grading
speaking voice. But Ball seemed to lack the ability to converse in a subtle tone. I also really detested the
all-female volunteer fire department stuff. Just too silly. And the two idiots who played the love interests...
Ugh.
I believe that Vance, and even the actors playing the three kids (all terrific) were doing fresher, much more
nuanced and subtle work than Ball. They were CHARACTERS, while Ball was a clown.
I did enjoy the first few season of The Lucy Show when Lucille Ball was still working with her best second banana, Vivian Vance. Vance's performances, subtle and still very funny, took the edge off of Lucy's harshness.
And Lucy was somehow becoming harsh. I don't know what happened between ILL and The Lucy Show, but somehow, Lucille Ball performance lost something.
I don't know what it was. But Lucy Carmichael did not have the charm and innocence of Lucy Ricardo. Even though Lucy Ricardo could be very self centered and immature, there was still a kindness about her. And Lucille Ball's comedy timing was at its peak.
In contrast, Lucy Carmichael often seemed so harsh, even bitter.
I agree that the chemistry between Ball and Vance remained.
One of my problems with "The Lucy Show" is that there will be episodes where certain SCENES are
brilliant, but others - in the very same offering - are lame.
One that comes to mind is the show where Lucy buys Viv a new bed. All the scenes leading up to
the finale are ho-hum (including the scene Lucy has with the electric bed). Yet that final scene with
the two in the bunk beds with the potato chips ("What're you EATING?") and the stilts is a definite
highlight. Both Ball and Vance shine here. But these moments became more and more infrequent
as the series progressed.
I've viewed those early "Lucy Show"'s many, many times, and the performances I've seen by Ball are, apparently, not the same ones you saw. I maintain that she did not "yell" her lines at that time. She was in her early fifties--about a decade older than she was as Lucy Ricardo--but her "I Love Lucy" litheness and well-calibrated vigor are still much in evidence. She delivers her lines clearly and often raucously, but then, she'd delivered her Lucy Ricardo lines in much the same way: working in front of a live audience in a three-camera television show, similar to performing in the theatre, calls for pitching one's performance to the contours of a presentational, declamatory acting register. Performing in that heightened, stylized register, Ball--in those early seasons of "The Lucy Show," just as she had in "ILL"--nevertheless managed to deploy a grounded, credible persona.
Witness, for example, "Lucy Puts Up a TV Antenna," from season one of "The Lucy Show." Near the end, when Viv lights a fire that billows smoke up to Lucy, whose ass is stuck in the chimney, Lucy says to Viv (who's berating Lucy) in a low-key, rueful way, "That's right: Pick on me when I'm stuck in here getting hickory-smoked hips." It's a cute, funny line, delivered in a typical "Lucy" moment of slapstick implausibility, but Ball's matter-of-factness makes the moment a recognizably human one. Ditto her weary invitation, in "Lucy and the Electric Mattress," to Viv to join her on the second tier of the bunk bed: "Come on," she mumbles with a mouth full of potato chips. She could, I suppose, have barked a frustrated "Come on!"--but that would've been the easy and (I think) less funny choice. (And, by the way, I happen to love the earlier scene with the wayward electric mattress: it's a clever, well-choreographed bit of slapstick involving an enormous, high-tech--for the time--prop.) I could cite many more such examples. I simply don't share your nearly sweeping condemnation of Ball's acting in the early seasons of "The Lucy Show."
We'll just have to agree to disagree. Even in the TV Attenna ep (one of the very few highlights), I find
Ball overly loud, and her performance too harsh. The script is TERRIFIC (if ONLY this were written
for Lucy and Ethel when they moved to the country), as are the kids (very funny in the beginning,
especially little Jerry - "I don't recall when I've spent a duller evening!"). And Vance is hilarious on the
roof ("SIT ON IT?!"). But Ball is overbearing, and her voice is just too grating. The timing is there; the
nuance - and subsequent art - is not.
Example: She doesn't ask, she SHOUTS the question, "YOU DON'T KNOW THE LONG, LONG TRAIL???"
I have the same problem with her in the shower ep (also a highlight). She is too pushy, loud and
abrasive even with the plumber ("WELL, YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET HUFFY!", or words to that effect).
The plumber is conversing; Ball is simply overplaying and bellowing her dialogue.
"The Lucy Show" (in its first two - NOT three and beyond - seasons) is a pleasant show for casual
viewers. For those of us who recognize that "I Love Lucy" is the most durable and artful show in
TV history, it doesn't play so well.
When I watch even the first eps, I think, "What is the POINT?" Lucy, you've already DONE this. Better.
On balance, I find it curious that "I Love Lucy" is TEN YEARS OLDER than "The Lucy Show", and in
structure, more old-fashioned (Lucy wanting to buy hats; Ricky ordering her around; the clothes, and
'50's attitudes about sexual roles). Yet "The Lucy Show", EVEN with two single mothers, one a divorced
parent (ground-breaking) is much more dated.
I enjoyed "The Lucy Show" when I was eight. But I also enjoyed Bozo the Clown when I was eight.
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