User Reviews

It had been twelve years since Lucille Ball and Gale Gordon had been together series wise (minus the occasional special or reunion), and while they are still sparking together, you can't say the same about their featured cast, talented but out of their element as far as comic timing is concerned. Lucy needed comic actors who could deliver (John Ritter and Shelley Long, then on "Cheers" would have been perfect in these parts), and the kids are presented as overly cute and thus a bit cloying. The premiere episode surrounds Lucy moving in with daughter Ann Dusenberry abd Gordon's son, Larry Anderson, and as funny as Lucy is, it's obvious that she's trying too hard and that makes it heartbreaking that the show flopped.

You don't see Lucy Ricardo here, just the last years of Lucy Carmichael and all six years of Lucy Carter and sadly a modern version of her Mame Dennis. She dominates much of the dialogue, try to be very grandmotherly with the kids, makes funny faces and does pratfalls, and it's as if a decade-and-a-half of sitcoms have not gone by with her basically doing the same type of stick she had done for 15 years on her I Love Lucy follow-ups. There's a reason why those two shows aren't as popular, with selected classics among them but very few that are truly excellent. A nice little cameo by Broadway veteran Ruth Kobart as a imperious customer is a plus, but it's Lucy and Mr. Mooney/Uncle Harry all over again, a nice little special one-off, but it's obvious that the writing is on the wall with the type of visual gags that end up occurring in this episode.