The New ‘I Love Lucy’ Box Set Is Cursed
Classic sitcoms from the 1950s obviously look a lot different than modern TV comedies. For starters, they were mostly in black and white. Also, they seemingly took place in an alternate reality where toilets and queen-sized beds don’t exist.
But a lot of old-timey TV shows now look terrific thanks to high definition home video transfers. On Blu-ray, Leave It to Beaver looks so crisp and clear, it almost feels as if you could reach out and touch the characters (and then ask them why in god’s name they nicknamed a kid “Beaver”).
Comedy fans were understandably excited when Paramount Home Entertainment announced that the entirety of I Love Lucy would be released on Blu-ray, in a box set containing a whopping 33 discs. Yes, finally, we’ll be able to see every single pore and bead of sweat on Lucy’s face as she shoves assembly-line chocolates into her mouth.
But while some reviews of the set were positive, others found the HD upgrade to be surprisingly nightmare-inducing. One scene from The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (a series of post-I Love Lucy specials) has been shared a lot on social media thanks to the box set. In an extended flashback, we see how Lucy and Ricky met onboard a cruise ship bound for Havana. In the Blu-ray version, two previously blurry background actors now have disturbingly detailed faces that look like they've been created by a demon taking an Intro to Photoshop course.
It’s perhaps even more disturbing when you see the scene in full. It’s like a sitcom filmed inside of the cursed video tape from The Ring.
It would appear that this is the result of A.I. being used in the restoration process. A.I. upscaling is routinely employed in home video releases these days, supposedly making the original footage look “clearer and sharper than ever before.” But, as The New York Times has noted, this results in an unrealistic aesthetic that a not insignificant number of consumers hate.
Before the haunted I Love Lucy episode, recent 4K releases of some of James Cameron’s movies elicited similar criticisms. True Lies, for example, also included unrealistic (and unnecessary) facial details for once blurry randos.
Not to mention how Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face looks less realistic than the CGI Arnie baby from Junior.
But arguably none of this is quite as bad as the I Love Lucy transfer. In the case of True Lies, Cameron was an active participant in the uncanny valley-ization of his movie. Giving I Love Lucy, a legit keystone of television history, the A.I. treatment long after its creators have passed on seems way worse.
Thankfully, the rest of the Lucy episodes don’t seem to feature any demon-like extras lurking in the background. Although, as some physical media fans have pointed out, an episode in which Fred wears an overly-patterned shirt is more than a little too sharp in the Blu-Ray.
Paramount
Who even knew that Dan Flashes existed back in the ‘50s?
