HOW TO MAKE A TV LUCY

There are rules for the TV Lucy--be she Ricardo, Carmichael, Carter, or Barker. The rules were invented by Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis, the writers/producers Lucy calls her “kids.” The kids go all the way back with Lucy to radio’s “My Favorite Husband” and all the way forward to now.

1-- Nobody is mean to Lucy. As Lucy herself puts it, “The five or six actors who ever got really mad at Lucy lost out; they got no laughs from the audience, and they would never get back on the show.”

As Carroll puts it, “Funny-mean is OK but not mean-mean. On the first show, for example, we made a mistake. When Gale gets back from Hawaii and doesn’t bring her a gift, he says, ‘I never think of you as family.’ The audience hated it.”

2-- Don’t be topical. “There is nothing more dated than ‘Road to Morocco,’ with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby doing in-jokes of the period,” said Davis. “The Lucy shows avoid jokes of the moment, when possible.”

3-- The audience must never think she’s in true jeopardy, or real physical danger. In other words, Lucy never gets in a car wash she can’t get out of.

4-- Lucy never does anything dishonest intentionally. She’s not crooked. A mistake is OK, but dishonesty is taboo.

5-- Lucy never knowingly gets drunk. Reports Carroll: “The drunkenness on the classic Vitameatavegamin show was an exception, and so was the episode about wine-tasting. Once she and Ann Sothern got sloshed at a water cooler, but we wouldn’t do that now.”

6-- Nothing blue and nothing in bad taste.

7-- No smoking . Until September Lucy has been chain smoking for much of her life, but almost never on the air. “When Philip Morris was a sponsor early on, she smoked in an episode,” remembered Davis, “but never again.”

8-- Remember how fast audiences are . Today if Lucy simply looks at a saxophone and says, “Oh you little darling,” the studio audience laughs. The laughs need to be written into the scripts, for Lucy’s sake and for timing’s sake.