Being a TV snob can be tough. Maybe back in the day, when options were fewer and Hill Street Blues was the biggest piece of prestige TV that’s seen the light of homes, it was easier, but after The Sopranos, Rome, and Breaking Bad, it’s become harder to enjoy the simpler things.

And if we’re talking simple, the sitcom tends to be the ultimate example of that. An artform where one is just supposed to enjoy what’s happening on screen and not think about it too much can be tough for us snobs. While people are enjoying Two and a Half Men and Two Broke Girls and everything else starting with “Two” (a step backwards from “Three’s Company” I guess), it’s hard to fully enjoy.

And I’m not talking about the smart sitcom-ish shows, like The Simpsons, Seinfeld or Arrested Development. I’m talking the classic formula where characters get themselves into wacky situations, usually by acting way more stupid than any human would actually act, and then we see the wackiness play out into a climax before going back to the status quo. 

I’m trying hard not to use the term philistine while describing this, but it’s easy to get up on a high horse.

There are exceptions of course, but none are so notable as I Love Lucy. Not only would I put it among the best sitcoms ever, but I’d put it in the best shows of all times, up there with The Wire and Mad Men. 

Is it smarter than other sitcoms? Yeah, but not by a lot. I mean all the characters have to act dumber than actual people, Fred and Rick have some serious face-blindness whenever Lucy and Ethel put on a wig, and most of the conflicts could be resolved by people talking to each other.

Is it the historical aspect? It being the first real TV show in front of a live audience gives it some cache. However, that’s not enough to explain it. If it’s just the history I could watch it once out of curiosity. But it’s something I (and many others) could watch again and again, and is maybe even the best comfort shows of all time.

So what is it? What makes I Love Lucy such a fantastic show while so many of the other sitcoms fall into the meh category, just moving along a conveyer belt, but ones without chocolates?

That’s what I’m going to investigate. 

I’ve found several answers.

It’s Immaculate

So many other shows have aped what I Love Lucy does, but none do it nearly as well.

While other sitcoms might concern itself with being cool or being subversive or being realistic or being heart-warming, Lucy isn’t going for any of that. It’s concerned with one thing: nailing the bit that it’s doing.

Maybe it has the advantage of having only stage shows that really preceded it, but it has a clowning sort of energy. It carefully sets up a premise, making the audience anticipate and crave the payoff, and then when that payoff comes, they hit it perfectly with fun reactions, perfect timing, and a situations that gets worse and worse and worse, giving the audience a ride they can enjoy thoroughly.

Lucy needs some money and goes on a radio show to earn a cash prize. In order to receive it, they’re going to send an actor over to her house, and she has to convince Ricky that it’s her ex-husband until midnight. BUT there’s a homeless gentleman coincidentally visiting the apartment. He arrives at Lucy’s apartment. Lucy thinks he’s the actor…and well, we know what’s going to happen, but we also can’t wait for it to happen.

It’s convoluted plot filled with a lot of coincidences, but that doesn't matter because the show wants us to enjoy how perfectly it’s going to pay off the situation.

As imagined, Lucy tells Ricky the unhoused gentleman is the husband, the visitor plays along, and says outlandish things that gets them deeper and deeper into trouble (“Where are the kids?” shocked face by Lucy, “I thought you had them”.) And then finally after Ether informs Lucy what’s happening, she shows the homeless man out of the building, and before she can ‘splain to Ricky what’s happening, the real actor shows up and she has to introduce him to Ricky as her other first husband.

Realistic? No. Deep and heart-warming? Not really. But done perfectly? Yes!

And this is the type of experience every episode does. It’s doing something very different than most shows have done after. It’s not offering a mini-movie as much as it is a rollercoaster.

But that’s not all.

Great Characters

Of course, characters are an important piece of any show, but there’s something about the four main people that works so well.

Fred can be cheap and grumpy, Lucy can be impulsive, Ricky can be controlling, and Ethel can be…well, Ethel. But not only are they entertaining, funny characters, but they are all likable and seem like good people.

This doesn’t have to be the situation for all types of shows. The characters in Arrested Development are hilarious, but I don’t think I’d call Lucile or Gob likable. The characters in Seinfeld might be more likable, but also deeply flawed and sometimes terrible.

But the characters in I Love Lucy all seem genuinely cool, and I’d be happy to go on a road trip to California with any one of them.

This is important for this kind of show, whose goal is to take you on a ride. We should enjoy their company and want to be on this rollercoaster with them.

There might be times where we get annoyed with one of them, but generally they should feel like friends/families, because this is not the type of show where we’re supposed to put up a distance but instead be joining them as they put on a fake nose or get wasted on a TV commercial.

And also…

It Feels Awesome

This might be another advantage of going from the stage medium to this, where the closest thing is movies, but the series being shot on film makes it so easy to look at. The black and white also helps, somehow giving it a timeless feel.

And it has flawless taste.

Many shows which have tried to be Lucy have used a laugh track, but the live audience works so so well with it. Because of the show’s rollecoaster feel, you feel right there with the audience as you hear the occasional “oh no.”

One of the laugh breaks, when Lucy is hiding eggs in her clothes and then is hugged by Ricky, is the longest laugh break of all time, and it’s so genuine.

Everything in the show is making the audience feel as present as they would be with a live stage show, and it works all the better for it.

There was an I Love Lucy shop in Universal Studios, which is fitting because all of my explorations into what makes it so great is because it’s a ride that it takes the viewer on.

Could a show like I Love Lucy be made again?

Yes, I think it could, but we would have to approach it with a different mindset than most shows are made with. It shouldn’t try to be cool or any of those other things, but instead be a perfect version of what it’s doing.

It shouldn’t necessarily make characters that challenge us, but instead ones we’d want to be around.

It would have to take care to make sure that the ride it’s taking us on is a ride we want to be on with its taste.

It would have to be designed like this roller coaster.

A roller coaster is confident. It is going to control the entire experience and let you enjoy it.

Some might say you have to turn off your brain, because, unlike with something that offers deep thinking like True Detective, this isn’t something you have to interact with, but I disagree.

A show as immaculate as this, let’s your imagination run wild. Like reading a book, you get to feel yourself be part of the experience, which makes it so easy to experience again again.

In that, it’s just as much art as any of the aforementioned shows. And while a sitcom may not be considered the highest art, neither was Shakespeare’s comedies, which did very similar things.

All of us snobs can let ourselves love Shakespeare comedies, just like we can let ourselves love Lucy.

So anyone who can create this sort of ride in a sitcom, bring it on.

Thanks for reading!

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