75 years of ‘I Love Lucy’? Believe it

So CBS Video and Paramount sent us (forwarded to our rehab facility) a very sweet I Love Lucy: The Complete Series 75th Anniversary collection, a 33-disc boxed set featuring all six seasons (1951-57) of I Love Lucy, as well as the three seasons (1957-60) of the subsequent The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour series, along with a ton of extras. It’s definitely recommended for anyone interested in the history of American television comedy…or for anyone just looking for some laughter in this god-forsaken world.

By Paul Mavis

Looking at the cover, I was momentarily stunned at that number―75 years old???―and I immediately wondered for whom, exactly, was this collection pressed. Original viewers of the sitcom? The absolute youngest original viewers of I Love Lucy are now in their mid-to-late seventies and eighties, and I doubt they’re buying much physical media (they’re too busy streaming porn).

Viewers like me grew up on endless syndicated I Love Lucy reruns in the 70s. We were the prime buyers of vintage TV when that genre exploded onto VHS and DVD in the 80s, 90s and aughts, so chances are… if we can’t stand the series with the poor visual quality and copious commercials of a niche network like MeTV, we already have some sort of physical collection featuring that wacky redhead and her exasperated musician husband (the extras here definitely warrant an upgrade if your sets are basic).

And “new” viewers? I honestly can’t say. All I can go by are my own kids, who now span a few decades…but they’re a tainted control group. They grew up watching these old shows with me. They know Lucille Ball. They like her. They might even sit and watch one of her shows if prompted by me. But they certainly wouldn’t choose to, instead of their endless choices of new, cheapjack daily media on their phones.

As for all those millions of other younger media consumers―you can’t even really call the majority of them “television viewers” any more―they might recognize a clip of Lucy from some Tik Tok rip-off clip, but they have zero idea of who she really was or her context, how ground-breaking she and Desi’s sitcom was…nor, sadly, any real desire to watch, let alone own, the entire series (I’m going to assume CBS DVD and Paramount will be scratching us off their mailing list…). Pop culture is forever ravenous for “new,” and needs constant feeding.

No one likes to write something like that, to express just how rapidly their culture―one made to seem timeless and invincible due to a golden age of marketing and monetization―is becoming irrelevant and forgotten. But that reticence to acknowledge doesn’t make it any less true.

Still…there is no discounting that imposing number: 75 years. People are still watching I Love Lucy, not just here but all over the world. The studios are still producing DVD sets for sale (I can’t believe they’d do that if someone hadn’t run the numbers and come up with a potential profit). There’s even a Blu-ray version, too.

Pop culture inexorably moves on…but so far, Lucille Ball is hanging tough with it. She may not dominate as she did 8 decades ago, but it’s a testament to hers’ and Desi’s efforts that she’s still in the game. Can the same be said for her contemporaries, who loomed just as large in early television?

I haven’t seen a Honeymooners anniversary set in awhile. Where are official series sets for Jack Benny or George Burns? Or Red Skelton? Where’s a boxed set of Your Show of Shows? Or going way back: Uncle Miltie? Show people a picture of those true TV giants and you’re lucky if 1 in a 1000 people on the street will recognize them. 1 in 100,000, more like it. With Lucy, though, you have a shot.

Later this week, I’ll have a write-up of I Love Lucy‘s first season, in time for Ball’s anniversary weekend. Poking around the internet and tv listings, it might be one of the few acknowledgements of this rather startling milestone.

According to Ball’s daughter, Lucy Arnaz, she recently had lunch with a top-level CBS exec who didn’t even know the company owned I Love Lucy. According to Arnaz, he shined her on about the network doing something…before he ghosted her. Ten, fifteen years ago, those network Lucy retro specials pulled in decent rating numbers for CBS. Today? Apparently CBS isn’t doing anything to commemorate Ball on October 15th. She’s not listed in that night’s posted line-up.

Despite that entirely predictable corporate indifference, someone, somewhere in the world, will be watching I Love Lucy on October 15, just as countless millions have been doing for the last 75 years. I guarantee it.

Click to order I Love Lucy: The Complete Series 75th Anniversary on DVD: