(Or: They Said Report to Fort Dix. Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter.)
**Keep up with the action. Episode watch party!**
Hey, Ballers! Episode 11 already? Sigh. They grow up so quickly.
Let’s do this!
We open on Lucy sweeping – PHEW! A welcome break from her usual vacuuming! Ethel comes with the mail and Lucy passes over a stack of bills (we know, Lucy, you don’t pay them).
Ethel has read Lucy’s mail, which Lucy despises. She turns all Edward Snowden, talking about how people’s mail is sacred and opening it is a betrayal. Then she opens Ricky’s mail.
Letter: “You are hereby ordered to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, Monday at 3 o’clock.”
So now Lucy assumes Ricky’s been drafted. As world’s worst friend, Ethel feels nothing. She tells Lucy to go and buy a new hat. As world’s worst wife, Lucy’s like “OK.”
Opening someone’s mail is a federal offense, but every day is Federal Offense Day with Lucy.
Are they aware there’s a war going on? 54,000 Americans died in Korea. These women would probably invite Hitler for tea if he promised them a new petticoat and a trip to the salon.
At least Lucy decides to darn Ricky some socks. It’s so thoughtful, I’ll hold back from reminding her the army actually provides those.
So Lucy and Ethel go out shopping, and Fred and Ricky enter to clear up a few things. Turns out, the army just wants Ricky to come sing. Way to overdo the invite, army! Here it is again:
Letter: “You are hereby ordered to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, Monday at 3 o’clock.”
Fred thinks the letter’s awfully formal, and Ricky says in the army you can’t even scratch yourself without orders. Then count Fred out. His life consists solely of yelling at Ethel while scratching himself.
Fred decides to join Ricky and perform a vaudeville act with him, but he won’t tell Ethel where he’s going. He gleefully acknowledges it will drive her crazy. That’s the long con: Fred will eventually get this woman committed, whatever it takes.
When Lucy comes home, she sees Ricky and starts crying, but she won’t say why. She thinks he’s just sparing her feelings by not telling her. And I guess doing the noble thing and just randomly disappearing? Sending her a letter from Pyongyang? Who the fuck would do that?
Unfortunately, Ethel will be no help in the reason department. Fred told her he’s busy with Ricky on Monday, so now she assumes he’s enlisted.
She might look like she’s sad but, just like she does every night, Ethel is faking it.
The girls want to do something nice for the guys because they’re being so brave and wonderful… in joining the military without telling them. They decide to throw Ricky and Fred a surprise going away party.
But guys, as ridiculous as all this is, it’s about to get even worse. Ricky and Fred have noticed the girls being weepy and knitting things. They assume both Lucy AND Ethel are pregnant!
If all it takes to be pregnant is crying while knitting, I’d have had triplets by now. Knitting is the bane of my existence.
It’s important to point out Fred thinks Ethel might be pregnant. This proves how, at least once in a drunken stupor, the two of them did in fact have sex. It wasn’t pretty; it wasn’t comfortable; heck, Fred’s not sure it was But it happened and Ethel’s knocked up, and as far as Fred’s concerned he just lost a leg.
Let’s make one thing clear: Fred is wise not to want a child. He. would. ruin. that. kid.
Fred will be able to relate so well to this child. They’re both babies.
Lucy and Ethel are knitting, and it turns out Lucy is terrible at it. But give her some credit, it’s hard to practice what with all those college courses she’s been taking. Oh wait. Knitting and housework is all she does. No excuse, Lucy. You failed.
The girls think the boys are playing war like 5-year-olds because they’re marching around singing, when in fact they’re just rehearsing their act. Whenever these four are involved in something all together, they remind us that evolution is real and there ARE missing links out there.
The guys are so convinced their wives are pregnant they’re going to bring all their friends for a surprise shower. Kudos to them for throwing a co-ed baby shower, back in the 1950s no less!
But WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING throwing it at like 6 weeks into the pregnancy without your wife’s permission?!?! HAVE YOU EVER MET A WOMAN.
It’s the night of the parties, and for dinner all four of them are feeding off each other’s idiocy. None of them have made up a ruse to help this be a surprise. They just figure they’ll get a) the girls into the bedroom and b) the boys into the kitchen, and then stuff all the guests in the closet.
Primp all you want, girls. Your problems are on the inside.
To get the girls to leave, Fred and Ricky insult their faces so they’ll go powder their noses. To get the guys to leave, Lucy and Ethel ask for water.
They guys bring out milk, and mansplain to the girls how it’s better for them. The girls ask for water again, because some guests are there and also because these buttnavels didn’t bring them the water they asked for in the first place.
And on and on this goes until all the guests have been hidden in the closet.
Apparently none of their friends overlap. You’d think someone would respond, “Hey, I’d love to go but your crazy ass wife is also throwing a surprise party.”
My husband makes a good point, though: if we had both sides of a couple do this, we’d totally show up and just assume it’s going to be hilarious.
We’d be wrong. 7 Minutes in Heaven is fun, sure, but I think 2-3 people is really the limit. A closet is no place for an orgy or even a conversation, so there’s really nothing for them to do in there.
They set the world record for people coming out of the closet at a party.
Finally Fred and Ricky reveal they know about the women’s “condition.” They reveal this by suggesting pregnant women lose their sense of humor. No, pregnant women might lose their patience with assholes, but they can still be funny.
Ricky can’t say the word “pregnant” because of network censors, so he just mimes holding a baby and says “coochie coochie coochie.”
Yes, Ricky, babies come out of coochies. We get it. Well played on beating the censors, but you don’t have to be so tasteless.
The women are pretty surprised to find out they’re expecting. They’re like, “This isn’t possible – our cycles have been perfectly synced for 3 years now.”
The guys ask what they’ve been knitting, if it wasn’t for their bundles of joy. The women explain it was for their soldier boys.
They put the “dicks” in Ft. Dix.
OOOOOHHHHH! They all realize! This was our weekly miscommunication! Hahahaha and they all have a big laugh until they realize their guests are all stuck in the closet in a circle jerk from hell, their bodies torturously misshapen and their minds wracked from claustrophobia.
They must have been in there for hours. Which means these four have incredibly patient, sacrificial, long-suffering friends.
And THAT, Ballers, is the craziest thing of all.
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Bonus: This episode aired on December 24, and came with a weird ass Christmas ending in which everyone yells at the top of their lungs and Santa comes to visit:
The person who put this recording on YouTube had to lower the volume or she’d be tried for war crimes.
WTF Lucy 
That was hillarious!
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