The Lucy Show (TV Series) Lucy Meets the Berles (1967) User Reviews

My Favorite Episode of Season 6

[kgraovac · 9/10 · 18 November 2023]

Milton Berle is producing a movie and Lucy becomes his temporary secretary. When she overhears Berle rehearsing a scene with Ruta Lee, she assumes he's cheating on his wife, Ruth.

This is a wonderful opener for the Sixth and final season. The opening credits feature a new closing shot of Ms. Ball in the heart-shaped frame, wearing a feather boa and looking her most glamorous yet. Also, the mini-credit with the famous Lucille Ball caricature is backed by an updated arrangement that sounds positively regal - befitting the Queen of Comedy.

After the atrocity of Season 4's "Lucy Helps Milton Berle", Mister Television and the Queen redeem themselves wonderfully in this farcical episode based on a misunderstanding that plays like a 1960s version of THREE'S COMPANY.

Ruta Lee unwittingly plays "the other woman" in this episode and she is fortunate to have guest-starred in two superior LUCY SHOW episodes (see also "Lucy's Substitute Secretary") that both aired in 1967.

The first scene at Berle's is not really that funny except when Lucy mistakes Ruth for the maid. Things pick up after Lucy listens on the intercom. Her disgust with Berle and Lee are hilarious, as is her later line to Ruth about the golf bag.

Mrs. Ruth Berle was not an actress or comedienne - and it shows. It's too bad they didn't coach her on her line readings or timing. You'd think with two old pros in her corner, they could have gotten a livelier performance out of her. But everything else here is so good, it's a minor quibble.

The last half of the episode is chock full of great jokes and it looks like the cast were breaking character during the climax because they were trying not to laugh a la THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW.

This is one of the best episodes of the California era.

Very Spontanious and Funny

[inoldhollywood · 8 January 2007]

The show reminds me of some of the spontaneous episodes on Carol Burnett and the Dean Martin Show where the cast can't help but crack. Though the episode gets off to a pedestrian start with Lucy taking the lead, Berles comedic genius takes off mid-way and he shows why he was such a legendary comic in earlier years. He is just plain funny being himself in awkward situations. Much like comic Jack Benny, Berle's deadpan approach is priceless and should be studied by comedians today. The show also features beautiful Ruta Lee, who was a household name during the 1960s, when this was filmed. Ruta was in dozens of television show episodes, including "Gunsmoke", "Twilight Zone", "Wild Wild West", "Mannix" and countless more. Her role as "The Other Woman" is not meant to be convincing, but rather overly-dramatic and provides the perfect "straight role" to Berles talents. Mrs. Berle is just having a great time in this romp and it's clear she is just along for the ride. The laughs are real on this one and I was cracking up myself. A real slice of what television comedy was like in 1967 and the genius of Berle! Highly recommended.

Weak Episode, But Has a Few Pluses

[richard.fuller1 · 6/10 · 25 August 2006]

Among them must be the only performance, tho as herself, to be seen of Ruth Berle, Milton's wife of about 35 years before he outlived her in 1989.

Also worth noting is how weak the plot is, a rehashing of I Love Lucy plots and no doubt earlier Lucy Show plots.

Lucy misunderstands when she overhears Milton and Ruta Lee rehearsing a movie, with Ruta Lee as the wife-stealing vixen. Lucy had only 'met' Milton and his wife just minutes earlier, so it was hardly like she should be totally shocked and outraged to do what she does, namely dump a salad over Berle's head.

But this salad, with its spontaneous lettuce leaves and salad dressing, proves to be the most fascinating aspect of this episode.

Berle never cracks as the dressing and leaves cover his face.

Ruth Berle, not an actress, does laugh.

Ruta Lee, . . . . . well, . . . . she laughs as well. Shall we say she is young an inexperienced.

But Berle, as well as Ball, manage to keep it together.

I don't think they could have cracked up if they wanted to.

But it is Ruta Lee's line when Berle offers her the role in the movie as the villianess.

"I don't know if my fans will like seeing me in this role," Ruta Lee exclaims.

Fans? What fans? Was Ruta Lee something of an all-girl next door or something at this time? Hardly.

Her line was strangely reminiscent of Soliel Moon Frye's line during an interview at the 'height' of her PUnky Brewster 'fame', when she would declare that "alot of people idolize me!" Must have been the children of Ruta Lee's fans, I guess.

Twilight settling in, and it's sad

[ziklag1990 · 5/10 · 2 February 2015]

Lucy excitedly braying "It's Ruta Lee, the movie star!!!" is as good a marker as any for the end of Lucille Ball's reign as TV's funniest and most valuable star, and the the start of that tired recycling of threadbare, out of date shtick and punch lines that comprised the latter part of her career.

I "love Lucy", and I'm not trying to be a jerk, but using the same writers, the same themes, forcing the same old slapstick, only slightly reworded gags, madcap schemes and antics, etc, from the past onto a new decade and a leading lady now aged past the point of being crazy-funny in such situations and began to look crazy-pathetic-sad, had to yield, to put it mildly, diminishing returns.

I guess that with "The Lucy Show" it's a little understandable (if hardly admirable) that Ball would feel safest sticking with what had worked before. By the time of her last, dismal effort "Life With Lucy", with it's corny lines and creaky (literally) physical "comedy", there was no excuse--neither for her not seeing that transplanting the old onto a new era couldn't work, and for no one around her telling her so. Compare her set, stubborn clinging to the past with the aged stars of "The Golden Girls", adjusting and changing and moving to new forms and structures of humor, using their gifts honed over many years, and applying them to the present.