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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ClassyCo" data-source="post: 241453" data-attributes="member: 7">I'm finally taking the time to sit down and write my LIFE WITH LUCY review, which I just know all of you have been anxiously awaiting. I cannot believe there was such a long time that I hadn't the slightest inclination that this show even existed. Once I found it, I went in and out on believing whether or not it would finally see the light of day on some form of official release. Online fan sites were cluttered with home made sets, but I kept this inner hope that one day it would come out on DVD. When I saw that CBS was finally going to release the show last year, I was totally psyched. My fiancee bought it for my birthday last year, but with so many things on my shelf, it was a while before I finally got to it. So here it goes. I'm just going to dive right into the show itself. In the first episode of LIFE WITH LUCY called "One Good Grandparent Deserves Another", Lucy Barker (Ball) is just moving in with her daughter Margo (Ann Dusenberry), her husband Ted (Larry Anderson), and their two children Becky (Jenny Lewis) and Kevin (Philip J. Amelio II). Margo is trying her best to look at the bright side of the issue, while Ted seems weary as to whether or not it's going to work. They both agree that Ted's father isn't going to like the idea. Lucy, on the other hand, couldn't be more thrilled that she's moving in with her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren, and she makes herself feel at home right away. It isn't long before Ted's father Curtis (Gale Gordon) comes back from vacation and soon decides to move in with the family to make sure Lucy doesn't stir up any trouble with her antics. Curtis and Lucy's deceased husband also owned and operated a local hardware store together and naturally Lucy decides that after all these years she's going to help Curtis run the business. [ATTACH=full]23234[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]23235[/ATTACH]That's the basic LIFE WITH LUCY premise. It's a rather simple, common little setup for a family-orientated sitcom. The second episode guest stars John Ritter (of THREE'S COMPANY, a show Lucy heavily endorsed) as himself visiting the smaller community where he's intending on taking a vacation and acting in a play. Lucy gets up to her old starstruck tricks, and finds a way into Ritter's play. She messes it all up, of course, but were we really expecting her not to? John Ritter was a real professional and he and Lucy seem to be having a ball with this episode. They each get into some pretty heavy physical stuff (which apparently worried the audience because of Lucy's age), and the audience uproars in laughter and enthusiastic applause. The episode people find most redeeming within LIFE WITH LUCY is "Love Among the Two-by-Fours", which guest starred Peter Graves as Lucy's old school flame. I must admit it was a genuinely sweet episode and I loved how Lucy and Graves seemed totally committed to the work. Their final exchange atop a building in the midst of repairs ends hilariously as the roof caves in beneath them as they kiss. It's a perfectly sweet and charming episode, and I can perfectly understand why fans (even those harshest toward the show) like this episode.[ATTACH=full]23236[/ATTACH] Let's get on to the rest of them. "Lucy Is A Sax Symbol" brings back the Lucy character being a former saxophonist, which goes back to those I LOVE LUCY days when Lucy Ricardo would insist on playing her saxophone when her group of friends wanted to put a band together. In the LIFE WITH LUCY version, Lucy gets excited when her granddaughter shows interest in the saxophone, but gets a little sidelined toward the end when her interest fizzles. Another good episode is "Mother of the Bride" (which was the eighth and final episode of the series aired) guest starring Audrey Meadows (of THE HONEYMOONERS fame). Audrey is Lucy's sister in the story and she comes to visit while her work has been detoured. She wiggles her way into helping plan Margo and Ted's tenth anniversary party where the couple has decided to renew their vows, making Lucy feel left out and unappreciated. Audrey Meadows is another professional of television's golden age, and I like how she and Lucy play off one another. Their bit in front of the wedding arch about refusing to stand next to one another is funny. Nothing like two golden gals making us laugh. The final five episodes don't bring anything too special to the table, but I'll skim over them quickly. The best one is probably "Lucy's Green Thumb", where she accidentally makes a liquid that helps plants grow large and quick, but ends up killing them, or "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do", where Curtis decides to retire and sell all his shares of the hardware store to Lucy. The latter is probably the better of the two, if only for one of the final scenes where you get to see a long-held friendship between Lucy and Gale Gordon on camera. They had known each other for probably thirty-five years, and their interaction in this episode shows how deep their friendship went in real life. True respect for the other and it shows. Here's thing thing. I'm not going to try and convince any of you that LIFE WITH LUCY is a good show. Almost all of you have preconceived ideas and you're not going to budge. Fair enough. But I will stress that this show isn't nearly as bad as they make it out to be. I seriously doubt I'd put it on a "worst shows in history" lists. That's a little extreme and not at all accurate. Now, does LIFE WITH LUCY have issues? It certainly does. The only good choice among the cast, outside Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon, was probably Donovan Scott as Leonard, the maintenance guy at the hardware store. He wasn't great, but he played off the two old pros well and made me chuckle a few times. The rest of the cast is gawd awful. Ann Dusenberry, who plays Lucy's daughter, is probably the worst. I swear she cannot say anything without yelling. Everything she says seems like she's YELLING to people on the back row. And that could be overlooked if she had chemistry, but she doesn't. Larry Anderson, as Gale Gordon's son, does a little better, but he's not getting any "attaboy" awards, either. He's hammy and dull. And as for the kids, well, I guess they're cute in that generic "cute kid" sitcom-kinda-way, but, yeah, moving on. There's a number of things I could list that need to be fixed with LIFE WITH LUCY. On the surface, the setup isn't too different from a lot of other family comedies of the same period. One glowing aspect to me is how little the show revolved around "Life with Lucy". You'd think there would be more interaction with the family at home, but every episode seems to point toward the hardware store where Lucy and Gale Gordon can shine. It's just a reworking of scenery, but offers basically the same thing that the two did on both THE LUCY SHOW and HERE'S LUCY, and they're even in-laws like they were on the latter. The one thing I did like about LIFE WITH LUCY was where it was set. It supposedly takes place in South Pasadena, and the way the show "looks" makes it feel like the characters are living in a small town. That was different for Lucy. All her shows had taken place in either New York or California, and her being in what appeared to be a smaller town made it seem like they were going to keep the show a little more grounded and not overload it with guest stars. We all know LIFE WITH LUCY tanked and quick. The ratings were low, reviews were harsh, and ABC axed it after two months. The network and Lucy brought in Audrey Meadows to test her with the audience as a possible new full-time cast member, moving the show in another direction. Now, what that direction was actually going to be, I haven't the slightest idea. Maybe it was going to be another "Lucy and Viv"-type show, but with Viv being replaced with Audrey. I don't know, but either way the show was cancelled before anything different could be worked out. I must admit that I actually enjoyed watching LIFE WITH LUCY this past week. It was not the best I've seen, but it was mildly refreshing and I found myself laughing out loud a few times per episode. Maybe I'm looking at the show too Lucy-blind, but it's not as gawd awful as I had been led to believe. The supporting was weak, but had it been better, the show itself would've played better. I don't think it was the quality of the scripts that caused the show to tank, because goodness knows shows like FULL HOUSE, THE HOGAN FAMILY, and GROWING PAINS turned out some cheesy, weak scripts over the years, and they were big hits for many seasons. I think the issue was really the supporting cast. They were bad, really bad. Lucy and Gale Gordon are great, and it's too bad that this bad reputation show was their swan song.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?