Customer Reviews

I Love Lucy - Season One (Vol. 2)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have watched "I Love Lucy" in syndication for many, many years; but I have never seen the episodes with as much clarity, and restoration as provided on this DVD, and I have seen every single episode multiple times!

Since broadcast TV and cable TV (especially broadcast) are prone to noise, watching "I Love Lucy" on DVD is probably the clearest it has ever been seen, except for audience members who watched the show taped live in the 1950's. Also, broadcast & cable TV stations never show the episodes in their entirety anymore, since they cut scenes in order to make more time for commercials. With this 2nd Volume DVD, you can watch 4 episodes from the first season ("Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying To Murder Her," "The Quiz Show," "The Audition," and "The Seance") commercial-free, completely clear and completely restored!

One of the many bonuses on this DVD is being able to have the bloopers from each episode highlighted, and I hadn't noticed many of them before since I was usually too busy laughing! Another added bonus is being able to hear Lucille Ball on the radio-show "My Favorite Husband" with the actor Richard Denning, that she did prior "I Love Lucy", which I had never heard prior to purchasing this DVD and Volume 2 contains 2 radio-show episodes. Other bonus material includes guest actor information, still photos taken during filming, lost scenes, and the original show introduction!

Before purchasing this DVD, I had some misgivings because I didn't know if it would be worth owning since I have seen all of the "I Love Lucy" episodes so many times; but after watching it (and Volume 1), I was more than pleased and I now plan to purchase the rest of the DVD's for the entire series!

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz may have had their problems in real life, but their comic performances in "I Love Lucy" (as well as the performances of Vivian Vance and William Frawley) have brought billions of people to laughter the world over!

I am so glad that purchased this DVD, as well as Volume 1, and I plan to purchase the other volumes as they become available. My one and only complaint is that entire seasons are not being offered in boxed sets, but that won't prevent me from getting the other volumes.

I LOVE LUCY makes its long-awaited DVD debut with fully-restored picture and sound along with fantastic extra features.

LUCY THINKS RICKY IS TRYING TO MURDER HER - A misunderstanding (and a hyperactive imagination) leads Lucy to the conclusion that Ricky wants her dead!

THE QUIZ SHOW - To win $1,000 Lucy pretends to have been previously married to someone else.

THE AUDITION - Lucy gatecrashes Ricky's new act with her impersonation of Buffo the Clown.

THE SEANCE - Ethel decides to delve into the black arts and hold a seance, spooking Fred and Lucy!

Starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley.

The DVD includes flubs, original opening sequence, bonus episodes of "My Favorite Husband" radio show starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning, guest cast info and photo gallery.

I was a bit skeptical buying this DVD as I read how poor the quality for "The Lucy Show" is, however, that does not apply here. Volume 2 contains the following episodes: 1.Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her, 2. The Quiz Show, 3. The Audition, & 4.The Seance. The quality and the audio are PERFECT. The images are Clear and Sharp. Once in awhile you will notice a black line filtering down the screen, but keep in mind these shows are over 50 years old.
As far as Bonuses, get ready: You see outakes and goofs from all 4 of the episodes,(one shows a scene of Vivian Vance yawning out of character). There is a black and white photo gallery of still shoots that you can watch (full screen), of the filmimg of the episodes. Also included are scanned pages of the script, along with the original opening of the show not seen since 1951.Phillip Morris was the sponsor, so an animated Lucy & Ricky bungee dive off a giant pack of ciagrettes! It's then explained that the giant heart against the satin background was used as the show's opening when it was sold in syndication.
If you are a Lucy fan or a fan of classic television, I think you will be pleasantly surpirsed. :)

I love Lucy. You love Lucy. We all love Lucy. We always have. And always will. If the
tale is true that someone is watching "I Love Lucy" somewhere in the world every minute
of the day, here's evidence why. Like you really need to be reminded! Each DVD in the
series contains four classic episodes ... indelible black-and-white images of Lucy and Ricky
and Fred and Ethel that are still as funny today as they were 50 years ago! Each volume
also contains flubs, radio shows, behind-the-scenes photo galleries and special footage,
such as lost and/or deleted scenes and original openings. Simply said: These volumes (and
subsequent ones) are must-haves for every DVD library.

I can't believe the magnificent quality of this DVD. The picture is really clear. It is crisp and sharp. It's like I'm watching this show in the fifties. The episodes are restored and unedited. And the special features contained on this DVD are great. I couldn't ask for more. Also, the price is incredibly low. The company is very generous with these "I Love Lucy" DVDs. I hope they make more soon. So please, if I were you, I'd buy this DVD. I guarantee you that you won't be sorry.

Well I'm also an I Love Lucy fan and believe me if I could I would buy season box sets but since I know my mom would never let me buy box sets it isn't a reality for me right now but I must say that I don't understand why people are whining and complaining and boo hoo hooing because some I Love Lucy fans wrote that they would like box sets with every episode, I mean what's so wrong with that? At least they didn't say anything bad about the show or the actors! And just because that mail order club where you have to buy one video or dvd a month featured I Love Lucy doesn't mean that I Love Lucy box sets will never be a reality, They featured Star Trek and now Paramount has put out Star Trek dvd box sets and though I admit they are kind of expensive not all box sets are that expensive and so I'm sure that I Love Lucy will eventually get the whole nine yards in box sets because it's the most loved classic TV sitcom and you can bet your boots that if my mom would let me I would purchase it! Sorry but I'm just not a box set hater! Lucille Ball was a comedic genius and Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley were great too!

Volume Two continues the release of one of the best sit-coms of all time on DVD. Included here are four episodes from season 1.

"Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her." Filmed first, it actually aired fourth. Caught up in a murder mystery, Lucy lets her imagination run away with her when she sees and hears a few "clues" that Ricky may have tired of her.

"The Quiz Show." Desperate to make her budget balance, Lucy agrees to some crazy stunts for the radio show "Females are Fabulous."

"The Audition." Seven episodes in, and Lucy is already trying to break into show biz again. In a reworking of the unaired pilot (found on volume 1), Lucy films in for an injured clown when Ricky is auditioning for a TV show. Includes their cello vaudeville act.

"The Seance." Lucy's sudden interest in numerology and the occult interferes with Ricky's career and leads to a wild plan to save it.

While there are some wonderful episodes here, the series gets much better. Part of this is because the writers already knew Lucy and were still deciding how to develop Ricky, Ethel, and Fred. Heck, Fred is missing completely from "The Quiz Show" and Ethel meets a similar fate in "The Audition."

This DVD is a collector's dream. The episodes are presented in their entirety, and they look and sound sharp. There are occasional flaws in the picture, but considering the source material is 50 years old, it really isn't bad at all. The extras feature the original opening plugging the show's sponsor (the episodes themselves use the heart we're used to from reruns), info on the guest cast, photos of rehearsal, mistakes in one episode (I caught two of them myself), and two episodes of Lucy's radio show "My Favorite Husband" that got reworked for the show. (These episodes help prove my point earlier about the writers, also from the show, not knowing what to do with the other characters yet.)

True, the way season 1 was released isn't nearly as nice in terms of sets as other shows have gotten. But this is still a classic comedy with decent bonus material to make any fan happy.

"Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying To Murder Her" is the first "I Love Lucy" episode filmed on September 8, 1951. It is also the first with the Mertzes played by Vivian Vance and William Frawley. However it did not air first. It was broadcast as the forth episode on November 5, 1951. (The pilot episode shown in "I Love Lucy" Volume One, Season One, is actually the very first Mr & Mrs. Richardo episode but was never aired. It was lost until found. It was shown for the first time on CBS on April 30, 1990. It was never shown in re-runs or syndication) "The Quiz Show", episode 5, was filmed October 5, 1951. It aired November 12, 1951. The man who plays "Arnold", Phil Ober, was Vivian Vance's first husband. Hazel Pierce appeared in 13 "I Love Lucy" episodes. "The Audition", episode 6, was filmed October 12, 1951 and broadcasted November 19, 1951. This episode is simular to the pilot episode of March 1951. Vivian Vance is not in this episode. "The Seance", episode 7, was filmed October 19, 1951 and broadcast November 26, 1951. Jay Novello was also in episode "The Sublease", episode 97, in 1954 and "Visitor From italy", episode 158, in 1956. In the Bonus Materials, the flubs are fun to see. If you've seen any episode many times, bringing out an unnoticed flub makes the show fun to watch again. In the Special Footage, you will see footage that has not been seen since 1952. Much more surprise bonuses.

Since I purchased these clear, pristine prints now available on DVD! For any Lucy fanatic, this is a real treat. Ever since I was about five (37 years ago) I have been a faithful fan of I LOVE LUCY: the plots, the characters and their adventures simply make me laugh. A lot! Although Lucy herself thought that some of the early episodes i.e. "when we were just starting out" were "too silly" - DRAFTED would be a good example of what she meant - ALL 179 episodes are cherished by dyed-in-the-wool fans - of which there are literally thousands if not millions, I would presume. Here we have THE SEANCE Fred: "Well done, Medium Raya!" When Lucy, Ethel and Mr. Merriweather discuss their numerology statistics he remarks "My, we're all odd, aren't we"? Lucy gets a "Mickey from Ricky" in LUCY THINKS RICKY IS TRYING TO MURDER HER, the first episode filmed, but it wasn't shown immediately. I love the close-up where Ms Ricardo looks straight at the camera and exclaims "THEODORE"!. THE QUIZ SHOW is a classic and there are many chuckles in THE AUDITION. Although Lucy may have been correct in stating that some of the earlier episodes were a bit cornier, one can see how hard the foursome worked in order to make this show a great hit: it essentially became America's perennial favourite comedy show of all time. Personally, with a few exceptions, I thought the first four years of the series contained the best episodes: Lucy and Ethel were younger and sprightier and there was an almost magical quality about the first half of the series. During the later years the show was still great, but after the show's creative genius originator - Jess Oppenheimer - left (over creative control issues with Desi) the cast played with more assurance and predictibility in their portrayals: that certain elusive quality vanished, somehow.

During the first season of "I Love Lucy" (1951-52), the most recurring theme was the screwball attempts of Lucy Ricardo to break into show business and that is the focus of three of the four episodes collected on Volume 2 of the "I Love Lucy" DVD collection. Howeve, the first of these episodes (all of which were written by Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, and Bob Carroll, Jr.) has the distinction of being the first episode of the show to be filmed, even though it was the fourth one aired:

Episode 4, "Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her" (November 5, 1951) after reading a mystery novel and letting her fertile imagination get the better of her. It is easy to tell that there is something different about this episode and it has to do not only with the fact it was the first time the Ricardos were ever filmed, but because this was the one and only episode that was filmed straight through in the manner of live television at that time. After this one the show adopted the three-camera, stop-and-start method that became the standard for how to film a sit com.

Episode 5, "The Quiz Show" (November 12, 1951) is a parody of the popular game show "Truth or Consequences," where Lucy has an opportunity to win $1,000 prize if she can just convince Ricky she was once married to another man. How hard can that be?

Episode 6, "The Audition" (November 19, 1951) is a rehash of the show's "lost" pilot (which is on Volume 1), as Lucy replaces the ailing clown in Ricky's big nightclub number in order to impress visiting television talent scouts.

Episode 7, "The Séance" (November 26, 1951) finds Lucy and Ethel arranging a fake séance to impress an eccentric producer (Jay Novello).

The last of this quartet is clearly the weakest in the bunch, and once again there is nothing here you would call a classic "I Love Lucy" episode. "The Quiz Show" is the best of the bunch and once of the better early examples of Lucy trying her best to lie to Ricky's face, albeit with no success whatsoever. Still, Volume 2 is of interest because you can compare "The Audition" to the original pilot (I still prefer the latter) and see the technical problems the show faced the first time out in the first filmed episode.