Popular Culture, Social Commentary

I Don’t Love Lucy

11 Comments

I’ve discussed this before, but I’m glad to see that Lileks agrees with me:

I’m not a big fan of the TV shows – the wailing, the stupidity, the ‘splaining to do. Whenever she’s in a movie she’s much more enjoyable.

That could be, but I’ve never watched a movie with her in it and am not motivated to do so, given my antipathy to the TV shows.

[Googling]

Ah, we agreed on the subject a year and a half ago, too. Sometimes I feel like I’m running out of new things to say.

11 thoughts on “I Don’t Love Lucy”

  1. Repetition for emphasis is a good thing (in moderation.) Just keep doing what you’re doing (which has been a great job over the years.)

    Of course, I never repeat myself (which emoticon do I use here?)

  2. Actually, my view of Lucille Ball changed after seeing her in movies that she did before the series. She played a strong, confident, smart, tough and witty type. Actually very very attractive. Then, seeing her in the Lucy shows, its obvious how broad and farcical she played that. Almost semi-retarded. Makes me wonder if she held the Lucy character in contempt.

    1. Makes me wonder if she held the Lucy character in contempt.

      Very possibly. Lucy Ricardo wanted to be Lucille Ball — heck, she would have settled for being “Ricky” Ricardo — but lacked the brains and, umm, ovaries to do so.

  3. AoS had this up last night. It’s close to topic. I’m sure many production houses wish they still had a stable like it.

  4. I hated the wailing and screaming and whining ….

    But the Fred Mertz (William Frawley) character was great!

  5. I was listening to some show on the tv a while back, they were talking about a train trip Lucy and a bunch of comics or actors were taking from NY to CA; the person talking said they were pretty sure that one of the group would end up with Lucy by the end of the trip. Desi Arnaz ended up getting lucky.

    This doesn’t mesh too well with her bio on Wikipedia. Maybe his memory was faulty. Maybe mine is.

    I think I prefer her before she became a redhead.

  6. Lot of good tv shows out there since the Lucille Ball show was on. If that show turned someone off from tv, it might be time to take another look.

    1. Yeah, there’s the one where a bunch of tourists get stranded on an island. I think they made a reality show out of it.

  7. One thing that strikes me is the change in attitudes. The best known episode that doesn’t involve a well-known co-star (e.g., recreating the “mirror scene” with Harpo Marx), the Vitameatavegemin episode, gets its joke from Lucy getting drunk in public. How well would that go over today?

  8. When I was a kid I had kind of a crush on Lucy from seeing her in a movie called THE BIG STREET, which was one of the movies “Million Dollar Movie” in NYC showed over and over and over again. (Baby Boomers from the Greater NY area may remember “Million Dollar Movie” on Channel 9, WOR-TV. MDM would show the same movie for a week, with multiple daily showings on Saturday and Sundays.) THE BIG STREET was based on a Damon Runyon story and co-starred Henry Fonda. Lucy played a real bee-yatch (as we hepcats like to say these days) but she was gorgeous, and gave a very good performance that was like a worlds-collide experience for me having grown up with Lucy Ricardo on TV.

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