Lucy was nothing if not loyal, using the same actors again and again if she liked them, and placing a high value on keeping her family close to her (which came from losing her dad at age three, after which the family fractured until Lucy brought them back together in California). So it made sense she’d want her real kids to co-star with her (and gain valuable experience) on her final successful series.

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Lucy broke her leg skiing before the fifth season began. In the true "show-must-go-on" tradition, she filmed most of the episodes wearinga full leg cast.

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Reviews for Here’s Lucy were terrible, but Lucy fans could’ve cared less. As long their favorite redhead was on television, they were going to watch her. And there must have been a lot of them, for the show was number 9 in its first year; then jumped to number 6; peaked at number 3 in the 1970-71 season; dropped to number 11 the next year; went down a few more notches to number 15; and ended its run at number 25. That was the lowest rating for any Lucy series (not counting her ill-fated comback, Life with Lucy, 12 years later). But these days, even with a number 25 rating, Lucy would still be on the air.

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Lucy’s best sidekick, Vivian Vance, visited a handful of times through the show’s run, but there was no “best-friend” role to speak of on the series. Longtime Lucy co-star Mary Jane Croft had played Mary Jane Lewis (her married name) on The Lucy Show a dozen times after Vance left, but reprised the character only once on Here’s Lucy, ironically, in the final episode aired, “Lucy Fights the System,” March 18, 1974.

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Doris Singleton, who played Caroline Appleby on I Love Lucy, told me recently (spring 2006) that the show originally was going to cast her as a regular foil: the perfect secretary to Lucy’s scatterbrain, and have a lot of the conflict and humor evolve from them. But after shooting the pilot, Doris never heard from Lucy, until a chance meeting when Lucy told her they decided to go in another direction and had added her kids to the cast. For much more from Doris, see my latest book, Sitcom Queens: Divas of the Small Screen, for which she graciously provided an introduction.

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Desi Jr. won a Golden Globe for the 1971 movie Red Sky at Morning as “Most Promising Newcomer,” and left the show that year after three seasons to try a movie career that was stalled by his various addictions.

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The series relied mostly on guest stars, and how these guest stars interacted with the Lucy character. The brighter and better the guest star(s), the better the show. Richard Burton and then-wife Elizabeth Taylor were the most successful example; their appearance on the opening show of the 1970-1971 season (which had Lucy Carter getting Liz’s humongous diamond ring stuck on her finger, and then substituting her hand for Liz’s during a press conference) bought the show its highest ratings.

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It was somewhat bizarre to see Lucy & Co. doing their old-fashioned shtick, some of the routines stretching back to the early 20th century, while more modern sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family, running at the same time, dealt with social issues and broke taboos. But as Lucy herself noted many times, she could never do a show like Family; her fans just wanted to see her as “Lucy” year in and year out, and so she obliged them.

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From the perspective of 30 years later, Here's Lucy actually holds up pretty well, and more often than not appears to be a classic TV comedy. Certainly, its a beautifully shot and produced series, with appearances by almost every top celebrity of its day...plus the constant presence of a certain redhead who has become an icon in our time, providing laughter and a temporary escape from reality when we surely need it the most.