I've never seen Here's Lucy, but I have seen most of The Lucy Show-the last three seasons-and I Love Lucy, and a few of Life With Lucy episodes, how does this series compare, please note that I really really love Vivian, so how did she do in this series as well....

Viv only did guest shots on this show, she wasn't a regular at all, it was Lucy and her kids and Gale of course. Whenever Viv did a guest shot like in the ep with Lawrence Welk, it was usually an old plot rehashed like Lucy getting rid of Viv's glasses so she could think the dummy of Lawrence was really him, hey, they used two old plots on this one!

As far as how HL compared with the other two shows, I think HL holds up pretty well. I think ILL is the best of the shows, in fact I think its the greatest of all time. I think HL was better than TLS last 3 seasons but not as good as TLS first 3. Viv guest starred in 6 episodes during HL and did a good to great job as she did in ILL and TLS.

As i've said many many times, when the show came on, critics compared them and always belittled The Lucy show in comparison to ILL and then they did the same thing with Here's Lucy, after a while we started to believe them (except for Old shows and a few others) haha, then, 50 years later, as we all know ILL eps by heart, we find The Lucy show, so great as it is so different and we haven't memorized those yet, so they look fresher, the format is different and i actually enjoy them more BECAUSE and only BECAUSE i memorized the ILL shows. When i finally get to see Here's Lucy again, i have the feeling it will be the same thing, as her kids are on the show, and she's trying to bridge the generation gap, which was a great idea for a series!

I have 19 episodes of HL on video (2 with Vivian "Jones": "Lucy, the Matchmaker" and "Lucy and Viv Visit Tijuana"); e-mail me at e.bast@bastvideo.cjb.net or visit http://bastvideo.cjb.net. I do not yet have the list on the site, but e-mail me and I will be more than happy to send it to you!
Eric