"Lucy" vs. 60s-70s Counter Culture Movement

[Neil]

Continuing with my posting under "Senior Pens...." and people can add to this list.

 

The "Lucy" production team did not think much of the youth counter culture spawned by the Vietnam War and later the deplorable incident at Kent State. In fact they mocked it on several occasions. The first all-out assault that I recall was "Viv Visits Lucy" where the disenfranchised youths were an add combination of beatniks, hippies and motorcycle gangs. In one of the few references to current events, one cop asks another if it's OK to ask the hippie to take his foot off the cop's motorcycle. The other cops response after checking the book is "It says it's OK as long as you remove your hat" which gets knowing applause from the audience so it's obviously referencing something that was going on at the time....probably some police brutality incident.

I don't think there was any self-respecting hippie who would have used the phrase "Don't blow your stack, pussycat!". It doesn't even rhyme!

 

The worst one was a Here's Lucy episode where Kim and Craig were trying to shock Lucy. Kim tells Lucy she's going to "a protest". Where's Craig? "He's organizing the protest". The fact that young people were outraged they were being drafted and sent against their will to Vietnam (and dying) did not seem like a valid reason to squawk to the old geezers writing for Lucy at the time. I'm not sure what episode this is or if it happened after Kent State, but the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was an ugly showdown between police and young people, fed up with being political fodder for an un-winnable war (sound familiar??) Kim and Craig, the latter having just missed being the draft by a year or so, did not seem concerned...unless the protest was against bad scripts.

[Mister Hepburn]

Very interesting topic, and something I had picked up on but never really thought about. I think its time for me to start watching Here's Lucy from the beginning and picking out things like this!