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Life With Lucy - DVD Quality


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Has anyone bought Life With Lucy on ioffer? How's the quality of the prints currently circulating? I have an ancient VHS with a few of the unaired episodes, but it's a copy of a copy so the generation loss is heavy.

 

 

I got a copy from somebody on another Lucy board a few years ago. The quality is actually pretty good! But it doesn't have the unaired episodes.

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I got a copy from somebody on another Lucy board a few years ago. The quality is actually pretty good! But it doesn't have the unaired episodes.

 

I see. The one I got was labeled "complete series" and the reviews were positive. It's on 5 discs so I can't imagine it just has the 8 episodes. I know there are different versions so I'll just have to see. The price was great so I'm not complaining.

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LWL really needs a proper DVD release. I need more people to back me up on the hilarity of Guard Goose*. :lucythrill:

 

*Well, the hilarity of Gale in Guard Goose. lol

 

I rewatched that one tonight. Hardly a masterpiece, but Gale is hysterical in it. He could've made a second career playing ornery old guys sitting in the corner, never looking up from a book, and just uttering one line zingers throughout the episode :)

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LWL really needs a proper DVD release. I need more people to back me up on the hilarity of Guard Goose*. :lucythrill:

 

*Well, the hilarity of Gale in Guard Goose. lol

 

According to those involved, everyone who looked at the script thought "Guard Goose" was going to be a winner. But one of the problems is that Lucy seems very tired in this one. It was the 2nd episode filmed. Of the unaired episodes, the two filmed later in the run are pretty good:

Lucy Buys Curtis Out (can't remember the actual title but it was the one episode I saw live) and "World's Greatest Grandmother". "Up a Tree" and "Green Thumb": not so hot.

But Gale is solid in every episode. I just wish he had done his cartwheel once. He claimed he could still do it.

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According to those involved, everyone who looked at the script thought "Guard Goose" was going to be a winner. But one of the problems is that Lucy seems very tired in this one. It was the 2nd episode filmed. Of the unaired episodes, the two filmed later in the run are pretty good:

Lucy Buys Curtis Out (can't remember the actual title but it was the one episode I saw live) and "World's Greatest Grandmother". "Up a Tree" and "Green Thumb": not so hot.

But Gale is solid in every episode. I just wish he had done his cartwheel once. He claimed he could still do it.

 

I didn't think the Green Thumb show was too bad. A bit cartoonish, but it had some funny moments. Never seen Greatest Grandmother so I can't say.

It's a shame "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" never aired; one of the most touching scenes Lucy & Gale ever did came at the end.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Mine's got the wrap party, Merv Griffin, Lucy on Joan Rivers, news broadcast after Lucy's death, 3 different broadcasts of the first episode (original, nick & nite and no commercial network edit) and a few alt. edits of a few other episodes...

Mine were taped off of the tv and just transferred from VHS to DVD so they're pretty clear. Unfortunately the unaired ones are not so clear. The only thing i liked about that show was the theme song and Lucy being back on tv in this vehicle, however weak. But by the Audrey Meadows episode, they finally got it right. Ritter's show and Meadows' one were the only two decent ones for me. The other ones just needed a few rewrites.

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Mine were taped off of the tv and just transferred from VHS to DVD so they're pretty clear. Unfortunately the unaired ones are not so clear. The only thing i liked about that show was the theme song and Lucy being back on tv in this vehicle, however weak. But by the Audrey Meadows episode, they finally got it right. Ritter's show and Meadows' one were the only two decent ones for me. The other ones just needed a few rewrites.

 

 

Only thing I didn't like was the audience's HUGE applause after almost every joke, whether it was Lucy or not. I understand they were excited to be seeing her perform live, and it was a new show after 12 years, but some of those jokes weren't THAT funny. And who knows how much of that was canned or real?

 

One little thing I noticed in "One Good Grandparent" was when Leonard spots the fire, it seems like he almost forgot his cue.

 

My favorites are "Mother of the Bride," "Lucy Makes Curtis Byte the dust" "Legal Beagle" and "Sax Symbol." The others are OK.

 

Had it been a success, LWL wouldn't have been on the air too long anyway since she had a stroke in 1988 and then passed away in 1989. I think it would've only lasted about 3 seasons based on those events, and the fact that the stroke and her heart attack were in April and May, after production wraps up. Didn't Lucy not go out of her house for several months after the stroke?

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Only thing I didn't like was the audience's HUGE applause after almost every joke, whether it was Lucy or not. I understand they were excited to be seeing her perform live, and it was a new show after 12 years, but some of those jokes weren't THAT funny. And who knows how much of that was canned or real?

 

One little thing I noticed in "One Good Grandparent" was when Leonard spots the fire, it seems like he almost forgot his cue.

 

My favorites are "Mother of the Bride," "Lucy Makes Curtis Byte the dust" "Legal Beagle" and "Sax Symbol." The others are OK.

 

Had it been a success, LWL wouldn't have been on the air too long anyway since she had a stroke in 1988 and then passed away in 1989. I think it would've only lasted about 3 seasons based on those events, and the fact that the stroke and her heart attack were in April and May, after production wraps up. Didn't Lucy not go out of her house for several months after the stroke?

AND Lucy would have died the same way Ritter did, doing a show and being rushed to the hospital with the exact same ailment as John.

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AND Lucy would have died the same way Ritter did, doing a show and being rushed to the hospital with the exact same ailment as John.

 

It's all very sad but at the same time, Lucy would have died doing what she loved doing - performing..........instead of sitting at home playing backgammon :(

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It's all very sad but at the same time, Lucy would have died doing what she loved doing - performing..........instead of sitting at home playing backgammon :(

Exactly. Had the show excelled, I don't believe her health would have been as much of an issue, since she was keeping busy, using both mind AND body AND doing what she loved to do. Could have had a healthy 5, 6 year run despite her and Gale's respective ages; they were playing grandparents after all! lucyblah.JPG

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Exactly. Had the show excelled, I don't believe her health would have been as much of an issue, since she was keeping busy, using both mind AND body AND doing what she loved to do. Could have had a healthy 5, 6 year run despite her and Gale's respective ages; they were playing grandparents after all! lucyblah.JPG

 

 

I've recently been watching the whole series all the way through after Lotus' inspiration and it is really a shame it didn't continue. It is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It started off a little shaky with the first episode and the John Ritter show (probably my least favourite in the series), but midway through it's brief run it is starting to become a pretty well-oiled machine, on par with most 80s sitcoms with little flashes of brilliance of what it could be if given a fair shake. Love Among the 2X4s and Breaking Up Is Hard To Do are good examples of its potential, as well as, of course, Mother of the Bride. The show also becomes more self-aware of the legacy of the shows in its wake too as time goes on -- this can be seen in Sax Symbol, but particularly when Lucy is examining Curtis in Legal Eagle.

 

So many parts of the show work, but there are many things that don't. I'm in the minority, I think, in actually thinking the grandchildren worked and fit in well with Lucy and Gale. Ted and Margo can be problematic. Larry Anderson is very talented, but his style hadn't gelled with the cast yet. Ann Dusenberry, when she was directed to tone it down, worked very well with her on-screen Mom (particularly in the Margo Fargo discussion in 2X4s). Donovan Scott's Leonard, however, doesn't work at all. His character is so over the top compared to the rest of the cast.

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I've recently been watching the whole series all the way through after Lotus' inspiration and it is really a shame it didn't continue. It is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It started off a little shaky with the first episode and the John Ritter show (probably my least favourite in the series), but midway through it's brief run it is starting to become a pretty well-oiled machine, on par with most 80s sitcoms with little flashes of brilliance of what it could be if given a fair shake. Love Among the 2X4s and Breaking Up Is Hard To Do are good examples of its potential, as well as, of course, Mother of the Bride. The show also becomes more self-aware of the legacy of the shows in its wake too as time goes on -- this can be seen in Sax Symbol, but particularly when Lucy is examining Curtis in Legal Eagle.

 

So many parts of the show work, but there are many things that don't. I'm in the minority, I think, in actually thinking the grandchildren worked and fit in well with Lucy and Gale. Ted and Margo can be problematic. Larry Anderson is very talented, but his style hadn't gelled with the cast yet. Ann Dusenberry, when she was directed to tone it down, worked very well with her on-screen Mom (particularly in the Margo Fargo discussion in 2X4s). Donovan Scott's Leonard, however, doesn't work at all. His character is so over the top compared to the rest of the cast.

Amen to that! Look at reruns of Who's the Boss from the same time period, same over the top nonsense and the shows don't hold up very well, and not that funny, except for the two lead ladies of course.

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