(Or: 26 minutes of terrible psychiatric advice)
Hi, Ballers! I’m so excited for this week. For the first time in a while, this week’s episode doesn’t involve any serious abuse or torture. Well Fred tortures a few jokes, but that’s about it.
It DOES however, involve unapologetic, unrelenting false information about the human brain. Let’s break down this breakdown.
We open on Ethel and Fred coming to the apartment in search of Ricky. Ethel explains to Lucy how they want to see him about his ad in Variety. That’s when Fred grabs her to leave and Lucy grabs her to stay, and she says:
Ethel: One of you let go or I’m going to have a split personality.
And that, my friends, is the closest thing to science you’re going to hear this episode.
This is the first time in six years anyone’s taken Ethel for a whirl.
So it turns out Ricky’s looking for a dance team and a showgirl, but he cut the ad out of Lucy’s paper, claiming he needed a recipe. If Lucy believes Ricky would even pick up a pan, let alone cook from a recipe, she deserves whatever’s coming to her this week.
Fred thinks Lucy should try out for the dog act.
I think Fred should try out for the STFU Revue.
Ricky comes home and they all audition for him. So he kicks them out of the house. They find a way back in through the rear door, and I actually feel for Ricky. Celebrities today pay a lot of money to stay away from the normals. He has these walking yeast infections living with him in the same building!? Poor guy.
Ricky decides he’ll let the Mertz’ audition but not Lucy. Ethel, who is back to being a decent friend this week, defends Lucy and warns Ricky how his wife might get depressed or go crazy if she’s repressed any longer.
Wait, so if Ricky won’t let Lucy do what she wants, she’ll get sad and might lose her mind?
THAT’S EVERY EPISODE OF THIS FUCKING SHOW.
Lucy being depressed. It’s like she really understands the hell people go through.
The next morning, Ethel finds Lucy reading Abnormal Psychology – a book with no author because only a complete moron would put their name on this horseshit. In the competitive worlds of both academia and medicine, this book is an instant tenure-killer.
Lucy: I’m learning to become abnormal.
Ethel: For that you need a book?
Basically the book says anyone prevented from having their innermost desires may do one of three things:
1) He may assume the characteristics of the person he wishes to be
2) He may develop amnesia
3) He may become childlike
Never one to be outdone, Lucy decides to do all three.
My husband: These are her innermost desires? And she’s really not allowed to do them? It’s so sad. Any person deserves opportunity.
Me: You keep trying to score, Sensitivity Man. I’m watching the show right now.
Lucy comes out as Tallulah Bankhead, and it’s great.
After that, Lucy pretends she has no idea who she is.
Ricky’s worried, so he calls Dr. Stevenson. Dr. Stevenson? You don’t need some pediatrician, you need a psychotherapist. A Dr. Finkelstein, or at the very least a Horowitz. Come on, Ricky.
Then Lucy enters on a tricycle. She has learned to be a child from the sons of Satan she babysat two weeks prior. She kicks Ricky and tells him to lick her sucker.
Lucy: Go on! Take a BIG lick!
I’m pretty sure Ricky has licked a lot of suckers in his day, Lucy. He knows what he’s doing.
Poll: Which is creepier? The woman on the tricycle, or the photograph on the mantle?
Fred comes in looking like he just murdered a woman in an alley. He tells Ricky he overheard Lucy through the furnace pipe, and she’s faking. And Fred should know what a faking woman sounds like.
So Ricky calls his actor friend Hal and asks him to play a doctor who discovers Lucy has some rare tropical disease.
This just goes to show how hard pressed actors are for work. This guy’s like “no prob.” He doesn’t say, “This seems pretty mean.” He doesn’t say, “Maybe you should just talk with your wife.”
He’s more than willing to track down a lab coat and provide his own props if there’s a hot lunch provided.
So Hal (appearing courtesy SAG-AFTRA) comes for a doctor’s visit:
Hal (as doctor): Just as I feared, you’ve contracted…the gobloots. It came into the country on the hind legs of the boo-shoo bird. We may have to operate. We’ll have to go in and take out your zorch.
Lucy has never taken anatomy, or done anything else useful with her brain, so she’s all OMG this is the worst. I’m going to die. And Ricky’s all HAHAHA. Yeah. You are.
#marriage
The doctor warns she might turn green, and if she does, she’ll die within the half hour. And then he leaves. He has an improv class to get to before his barista shift.
Ricky would rather convince his wife that she’s dying than let her audition. But she’s the crazy one.
Later that day, Ricky has turned the living room into a man cave. The boys are playing poker; he’s enjoying a smoke with his buddy Fred; and they’re all just generally chatty about stuff guys talk about. Baseball. Boxing. When that guy’s bitch wife will wake up and burst into tears thinking it’s the last few seconds of her life. You know, boy stuff.
See, Ricky has a final trick up his sleeve: he’s changed out the lightbulbs in the bedroom, so Lucy thinks she’s green and will die at any moment now.
But according to this show, marriage is a kind of death anyway. So I don’t get all the fuss.
Ricky has invited the band to perform a farewell dirge for her. The group surrounds her to say their goodbyes, and the band plays “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You.”
Umm, guys. That’s really inappropriate. She’s a repressed rich white lady, not BB King. Don’t play her jazz – she won’t appreciate it. Play her something repressed rich white ladies like. Enema, or Enigma, or whatever it is.*
*Enya
Ricky reveals the truth and she’s like oh haha that’s hilarious. I thought I was about to die. You crack me up! Mortality is LOLZ.
And then everyone leaves so the two of them can have sex on her deathbed.
This scene reminds me of a girl I went to school with who studied Death and the Orgasm for her colloquium. I think she went on to become a clown.
Parents, think about that next time you’re at a children’s fair and the clown shows up: There’s a good chance that weirdo has a research paper back at his disgusting home all about death and the orgasm.
The end.
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Join me next week for S01 E17: Lucy Writes a Play. New posts every Friday!
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The bow is big enough to have its own bedroom scene.
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