Season 4: Fair Start, Weak Middle, Strong Finish

[LittleRickyII]

And the strong finish was mainly due to Bob Carroll, Jr. and Madelyn Davis, who wrote several of those final scripts. May they both rest in peace.

The fourth season was the weakest of the six, but what a blessing that Bob and Madelyn returned to Lucille Ball's full-time writing staff that year -- she needed them! -- penning ten of the episodes that season, and I think eight episodes each of the last two seasons. There was a string of seven consecutive episodes (episodes 13-19), starting with "Lucy in the Jungle," that are unbearably bad, none of which had anything to do with Bob and Madelyn. Then all of a sudden, four consecutive strong episodes (20-23) that are genuinely funny, two of which were written by Bob and Madelyn. And then finally the last episode (#24), the Lucie Arnaz pilot, also written by Bob and Madelyn, wasn't terribly funny, but at least it was entertaining and believable. And Bob and Madelyn's writing succeeded in finally giving Kim Carter a personality. She had been pretty much a plastic character throughout most of the series, but Bob and Madelyn gave her life. And by the end of the season, they also gave Lucy a life by surrounding her with friends -- Mary Jane, Vanda and Sam -- who would become semi-regulars for the rest of the series, and a place to hang out: the lunch cafe where Sam worked and Lucy would hang out with her friends.

The fifth season would feature the return of Bob O'Brien to the writing staff, who had been away for a few years. Other than Bob Carroll and Madelyn Davis, Bob O'Brien was really the only other writer who seemed to understand the Lucy character and could write consistently good scripts. (It must be something about writers named Bob: O'Brien, Carroll, Schiller, Weiskopf, they all did great by Lucy.) In seasons five and six, I think Carroll and Davis would write eight scripts a season, O'Brien would write eight scripts a season, and the other eight were written by other writers who usually didn't have a clue what they were doing and turned out crap. For reasons unknown to me, Lucille Ball accepted those horrible scripts and produced them. But at least she had Madelyn and the two Bobs around for most episodes. If you look at the opening credits on this show, you'll get a pretty good idea whether you're going to see a decent episode based on who the writer is.

For the record, here's the ten scripts Bob and Madelyn contributed to season four:

1) Lucy and Flip Go Legit
2) Lucy and Mannix Are Held Hostage
3) Someone's on the Ski Lift with Dinah
4) Lucy and Her All-Nun Band
5) Ginger Rogers Comes to Tea
6) Won't You Calm Down Dan Dailey
7) Lucy Helps David Frost Go Night Night (which would have been much better had Lucy been performing with an actual actor like she did when she did that airplane routine with Gale Gordon in "Lucy Goes to London" on THE LUCY SHOW)
8) Kim Moves Out
9) With Viv as a Friend, Who Needs an Enemy?
10) Kim Finally Cuts You-Know-Whose Apron Strings

[scotsguy]

Those episodes are really good part from the awful Lucie Arnaz pilot,that was bad!

There is an uneven feel to season4,they don't mention the fact Craig's at school until towards the end of season4,viewers must have womdered where he was.

I agree the stories pick up towards the end,the Helen Hayes episode,the one

with Viv working for Harry are all very good,seemed strange they were gonna give Kim a spinoff as I thought with Desi Jnr leaving they'd have kept Kim on the show but wasn't to be,anyway.

[LittleRickyII]

Originally Posted by scotsguy

Those episodes are really good part from the awful Lucie Arnaz pilot,that was bad!

There is an uneven feel to season4,they don't mention the fact Craig's at school until towards the end of season4,viewers must have womdered where he was.

I agree the stories pick up towards the end,the Helen Hayes episode,the one

with Viv working for Harry are all very good,seemed strange they were gonna give Kim a spinoff as I thought with Desi Jnr leaving they'd have kept Kim on the show but wasn't to be,anyway.

I agree about the Lucie Arnaz pilot, but oh my, I think that Helen Hayes episode is awful, too.

As for not mentioning where Craig was until late in the season, I agree: strange. I suppose there was enough publicity about Desi Arnaz, Jr. leaving the show that people knew he wouldn't be on there and wouldn't be expecting to see him, so maybe the writers didn't feel a compelling need to mention where the Craig character had gone. Not that that's a good reason! There were several writing teams working on this show and I get the sense they worked completely separately and didn't get together on anything; thus the lack of script continuity.