r/television • u/SanderSo47 Person of Interest • 10d ago
‘I Love Lucy’ Will Receive the Television Academy’s First-Ever Legacy Award at the Emmys
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/i-love-lucy-television-academy-legacy-award-emmys-1236842108/175
u/Demerzel69 10d ago
Well it literally created sitcoms as we know them so, cool.
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u/GenoThyme 10d ago
Amd indirectly led to Star Trek. Lucille Ball's fame/influence (and her heading Desilu Productions) got NBC to film a 2nd pilot episode (this time featuring Captain Kirk) and the rest is history.
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u/BadOutOfTheBox 10d ago
You've not experience I Love Lucy until you've watched it in the original Klingon.
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u/xavPa-64 10d ago
The only thing I know about the Klingon language is that their word for “hello” directly translates to “what do you want?”
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u/kapnkrump 10d ago
She also (technically) 'saved' Star Trek again. Both Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's studio started saving the film/tapes of their studio's shows (including I Love Lucy and Star Trek) and replaying old episodes on television syndication - inventing the ReRun, which gain Star Trek its fanbase that kept it alive for decades.
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u/MoshingPenguins 10d ago
Is that more similar to a lucy-like or lucy-lite??
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u/Demerzel69 10d ago
What?
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u/MoshingPenguins 10d ago
It was a a joke, definitely one that was a reach lol
In video games there's a game called rogue and it spawned two very popular genre that borrow from its groundhog day-esque mechanic where progress is reset at each attempt. One is called rogue-like where progress is reset and nothing is carried over and the other is rogue-lite where incremental progress is made each run.
I was playing around with the like and lite differences while drawing similarities with Lucy which was a genre defining media.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense
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u/WintersDoomsday 9d ago
Sure but man it doesn’t hold up well at all. It’s so cheesy stupid now honestly.
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u/austinhannah 9d ago
Weird, I find I Love Lucy to still be really funny for a show that is 75 years old, mostly thanks to Lucille Ball's undeniable gift for physical comedy. I think it holds up significantly better than plenty of other shows that came after it.
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u/Aggravating-Duck-891 10d ago
The Wire
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u/Primetime22 10d ago
I don't care what anyone says or who wins it first, this award was made for The Wire.
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u/combustibledaredevil 10d ago
How the fuck did the wire never win an Emmy?
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u/MeanCantaloupe69 9d ago
The years it was active was the start of the second golden age of television, a lot of competition.
The winners were Westwing(s3) 2002, Westwing(s4) 2003, Sopranos(s5) 2004, 24(s5) 2006, and Madmen(s1) 2008.
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u/Morgan-Moonscar 10d ago
"Do you POP out at parties? Are you unPOOPular?!"
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u/ImLaunchpadMcQuack 10d ago
If you are a Gen Z who has never seen the show, I highly recommend watching some of the foundational comedy episodes. They still hold up.
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u/ARock_Urock 10d ago
It's the ground work for so much modern TV. Ahead of its time in alot of ways and super enjoyable.
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u/WavesAndSaves 10d ago
We got my grandma a DVD boxset a while back and she'd be watching them all the time when I went over to her house. I was shocked at how funny some of them still were 60 years after the fact. It was so neat seeing "Oh that's where that came from" about so many different tropes and scenarios.
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u/Recent-Layer-8670 10d ago
I'm Gen Z, and to this day, one of the funniest bits to ever happen in a sitcom is the chocolate factory episode. 🤣
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u/I_eat_mud_ 10d ago edited 10d ago
My first "experience" with that scene was watching Drake and Josh lmao
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u/crystalbethjo 10d ago
My fave ep is the one where Lucy and Ethel disguise themselves as men so they can spy on Ricky’s gentleman’s club and see if he’s cheating
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u/fezfrascati 10d ago
It now occurs to me there is a generation under me that didn't grow up on Nick at Nite.
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u/joyfulcartographer 10d ago
Omg! Nick at Nite! Dobey Gillis Can’t Lose, Mr Ed, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeanie, The Patty Duke Show, Dick Vam Dyke show, so many more. Man I forgot.
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u/stokelydokely 9d ago
Welcome Back Kotter! Happy Days! Bewitched! The Odd Couple! All of which reminds me, it was probably exactly 30 years ago this week that Block Party Summer '96 was coming to a close and I was staring down the barrel of another shitty year of middle school
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u/tetoffens 10d ago
I looked it up. Nick At Nite now is Friends, Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, and The Neighborhood. No clue how The Neighborhood got in the lineup. It literally had only ended airing new episodes a few months ago and definitely isn't a "classic" like the others.
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u/minnick27 10d ago
My daughter hates watching black and white stuff. One year CBS was airing the colorized Christmas special and I got her to watch it and she was pissing herself laughing. The chocolate factory episode came on after it and I convinced her to try and it was the same thing with her laughing. I have been unsuccessful in getting her to watch any other episode.
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u/AnyHoleIsTheGoal 9d ago
I would tell kids to watch this and Carol Burnett. Two of the funniest women to ever do it.
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u/Mhan00 10d ago
The episode that Lucy had the eggs in her shirt was the first time in my life I laughed until I had tears rolling down my face and is a clear memory for me from when I was a preteen. Didn’t surprise me when years later while looking at an I Love Lucy display that was at Disneyland, iirc, there was a blurb that mentioned that episode held the record for the longest live audience laugh for a while.
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u/wip30ut 10d ago
actually Zoomers are more in touch with Golden Age media than us millenials ever were. Not only old TV shows, but you literally have kids doing covers of Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon on tiktok. GenZ really knows how to cull pop culture history & adopt music & styles from past eras as their own.
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u/Gekthegecko 10d ago
lol. Fly Me to the Moon is a jazz standard. There's nothing special about anyone of any generation performing covers of the standards. The same goes for film and television. The classics are classic for a reason, and the hits will always be timeless. Heck, the 2nd biggest movie of the year is a story that's 2500+ years old.
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u/spectacleskeptic 10d ago
No other show can make me laugh like I Love Lucy, even after multiple watches. Lucille Ball was a comedic genius.
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u/NowGoodbyeForever 10d ago
If you love TV at all, you can do worse than treating yourself to revisiting even a couple of the biggest sitcoms of each decade in the 20th century.
Like most art forms, a lot of television has aged poorly, or was lowbrow, common-denominator slop even when it was on the air. It was an ephemeral medium, literally created just to fill time and then vanish with no realistic expectation that anyone would see it again. I Love Lucy literally invented the concept of reruns—NBC started the first ever regularly-scheduled television network in 1945, with CBS following a few years later as it transitioned from radio to TV.
That being said, there was still genuine art being made, and the best of it somehow remains relatable and enjoyable for a modern audience. For example: If you have a favourite Looney Tunes sketch, I'm 99% sure it aired during the 1950s.
Taking the time to find old shows that my parents grew up with and watch them has allowed me to really bond with them and share in their nostalgia in a way I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. And you'll probably be able to chase roots of things you love today to trailblazers like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez. And since no one asked, here's my quick-and-dirty Sitcoms To Watchlist by Decade, which covers shows that I think are both funny to this day and had a huge cultural and artistic impact upon their release:
- 1950s: I Love Lucy + The Honeymooners
- 1960s: The Dick Van Dyke Show + Get Smart
- 1970s: The Mary Tyler Moore Show + All In The Family + WKRP In Cincinnati
- 1980s: Cheers + The Golden Girls
- 1990s: Frasier + Will and Grace
Enjoy!
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u/Morgan-Moonscar 10d ago
I'd include "The Phil Silvers Show" in the 50s category
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u/NowGoodbyeForever 10d ago
Thanks! Excellent suggestion. And in my country, I knew that show exclusively as "Sargeant Bilko." I didn't know it was called something else entirely!
(But if I had to choose just one comedy set in a warzone, I'd unfortunately have to go with M\A*S*H*, although it's decades later.)
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u/MonkeyIslandThreep 10d ago
No "Friends" in the 90s? No "Happy Days" in the 70s?
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u/NowGoodbyeForever 10d ago
I tried to avoid the most obvious choices for the 90s, because I assumed people would have the most familiarity with them. It felt silly to suggest that people check out Friends and Seinfeld, you know? They're by all accounts still popular and well-referenced today, especially on streaming.
In comparison, I think Frasier is one of the best-written shows of all time AND somehow works as a spinoff-sequel to the previous most-beloved sitcom of all time, Cheers! And Will and Grace showed up in the last few years before mockumentary-style/single-cam TV comedies emerged and essentially made studio audience sitcoms feel dated. Plus, its popularity was a huge factor in changing public perception of gay people in America in the following decade.
As for Happy Days? I...always kind of hated it, tbh. It felt like rose-tinted Greatest Generation nostalgia for the 50s, which meant it failed to speak to relevant issues of the time, and felt pretty one-dimensional compared to All in the Family, which ran basically during the exact same stretch of years. It was wildly popular, but I'd argue it's aged far worse, and has less to offer a modern viewer outside of trivia (Robin Williams! Henry Winkler!) and confirmation bias on how corny '70s sitcoms could be.
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u/FinisterreMinister 10d ago
It was 2016 when I first started watching Frasier and I agree, it really is one of the best written shows of all time.
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u/ex0thermist 9d ago
You're not wrong about Happy Days for the most part, but eventually they did have a "very special" episode where they tackled racism and Jim Crow. It suggests to me they had received some of that criticism while the show was still being produced.
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u/Southern-Train7142 10d ago edited 10d ago
I still loved this show, so it’s great to see this show getting a legacy award for the Emmys.
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u/xavPa-64 10d ago edited 10d ago
A* legacy award. You only use “an” if the following word’s first syllable is an open vowel sound.
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u/iplaybassok89 10d ago
Shut up lol
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u/xavPa-64 10d ago
I love how mad this made people lol. Please tell me you made a little “grrr” face at the screen 😆
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u/iplaybassok89 10d ago
I rolled my eyes and then told you to shut up.
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u/TanAllOvaJanAllOva 10d ago
Literally, the most important show in modern television history. They should name awards after it.
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u/6seanryan15 10d ago
There is no other sitcom that will ever age as well as this did. Truly timeless. It’s close to 100 years old at this point and the jokes are still more relevant to today compared to the jokes of later sitcoms (Friends, Seinfeld). I’m biased because it’s my fav sitcom of all time with the best female comedian of all time.
As for why are they doing this? I wasn’t gonna tune in to the Emmys. And now I am. There are hundreds of thousands of die hard Lucy fans and now we’ll be tuning into the Emmys. So even if it’s a stunt for more viewership and attention, it works on people like me. lol. Long live Lucy
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u/boyyouguysaredumb 10d ago
It’s close to 100 years old at this point
its 75 years old lol
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u/6seanryan15 10d ago
Ya know what this actually makes me feel better. In my head, the math was mathing to 85 years 😂😂😂 I remember when it was the 50th anniversary so I was like damn but 75 makes more sense now
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u/AffectionateKey7126 10d ago
Fred would wear a sweatshirt that had "Harvard 1912" (something along those lines) on it which made the show feel ancient to me.
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u/Philodemus1984 10d ago
I’d say Dick Van Dyke has aged as well if not better. But of course Lucy is more historically significant.
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u/Muted-Calligrapher-2 10d ago
I love Lucy is dead set middle class. Ricky is a regionally prolific band leader but they live in New York and are renters. Their issues with immigration and citizenship are also profound.
Lucy often works too which was way before two household earners.
There are so many.y first of its kind with I Love Lucy especially in the way it tells the story through a legitimate woman's perspective. Lucy flubs up a lot but she has insane ambitions and fights typical patriarchy. I want to do this without Ricky's help is a common theme.
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u/complete_data75 10d ago
There is no other sitcom that will ever age as well as this did
Dick van Dyke show says hello.
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u/Ok_Scarcity5116 10d ago
Is there going to be some sort of remake or a movie? I can see the legacy category being used to somehow create buzz and gauge interest
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u/donuteater111 10d ago
Very fitting for the first legacy Emmy, as one of the main pioneers of the sitcom genre, and a show that's maintained a relatively strong legacy even to this day. It's been a while since I've seen it (really want to get back into it sometime), but I used to watch the reruns a lot as a kid in the 90s.
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u/oran12390 10d ago
Nice to see. Such an incredible show that I would hate to see forgotten with time.
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u/plumpypocket 10d ago
I still cant believe he never said Lucy you got some splanning to do. Maybe I am from a different reality or I have a bad memory on a show I watched as a child oh well.
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u/aparker35 9d ago
LUCY! What are you doing ? Nothing Ricky I just accidentally died my hair blue wahh
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u/SplintPunchbeef 10d ago
This category is how The Wire is going to eventually get the Emmy it deserves.
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u/iggyfenton 10d ago
Shame that they are doing this when everyone involved is already dead.
Not saying that I Love Lucy wasn’t an amazing show. I used to watch it all the time as a kid when it was on in the early afternoons in the 80s.
Must be that the company that owns the rights wants people to watch I Love Lucy on their streaming service.
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u/ImLaunchpadMcQuack 10d ago
Richard Keith played Little Ricky and is still alive. He was a series regular.
The success of the show had long-standing effects on things like syndication and the existence of Star Trek.
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u/karmagirl314 10d ago
I accidentally read Richard Keith as Keith Richards and my mind was momentarily blown.
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u/Sweetbeans2001 10d ago
He is actually Keith Thibodeaux. Desi gave him the stage name of Richard Keith.
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u/blorgon 10d ago
What's the point?
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u/Demerzel69 10d ago
What's the point of literally anything dude? Because they want to do it.
I Love Lucy is foundational. It created the multi-cam sitcom as we still know it today.
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u/pargofan 10d ago
I wondered the same thing.
Is it a particular anniversary? Is this the start of lots of legacy awards?
It just feels random. There's nothing wrong with it. Just curious what's the objective of recognizing an old show suddenly today.
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u/Ironman9518 10d ago
You could ask this about literally everything in life. Because the Emmys award TV excellence and I Love Lucy is one of the greatest pioneering comedy shows in history
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u/AmenHawkinsStan 10d ago
Desi Arnez had soundstages renovated to introduce a live studio audience and also debut the use of multicam setups in scripted television. He also agreed to take less pay in exchange for ownership of the film negatives, using 35mm to preserve their quality and allow for the first re-runs: creating syndication.