Original Air Date: January 26, 1953
I’m back!!! Thank you to everyone who wrote encouraging notes during another unexpected hiatus. I had to step away for some time to open Fox News the Musical. As always, if you’d like to keep up with any of my other projects besides WTF Lucy, check out my website and Facebook page.
And with that, we return to East 68th Street. Last episode, Lucy brought forth life. Or as this show would put it, Ricky sacrificially allowed Lucy to give birth on his behalf.
Blessed be the fruit. May the Lord open.
Considering Little Ricky’s birth was the highest rated TV episode of all time when it premiered in 1953, with 71% of America watching, I’m certain for this episode families everywhere gathered eagerly to see the new baby do something cute.
No such luck. As the Trump presidency has taught us, watching babies whine all day can get really old.
Instead, we open on Ricky playing piano. He has SO MUCH ENERGY after having a baby!!! It’s almost like he hasn’t had to do anything.
Fred and Ethel look exhausted, either by him or by the fact that they’re the only ones who’ve been helping Lucy raise that little sucker.
The face of friends who just cleaned up your kid’s diaper blowout for you and now have to watch you sing.
They make fun of Lucy (who’s still in the hospital––these guys are a class act) because she bought a tape recorder to record the baby’s first words. What a waste of money, hmm? Well if these jokers could only see what people document on Instagram today, they’d #losetheirshit #wtf #kidsthesedays.
We flash back to Lucy doing her dishes. She tells Ethel that Ricky ordered her to stop spending money.
LUCY: I couldn’t understand most of it. All I could get was that pesos don’t grow on trees.
But she actually just bought something, so… Ricky, you may have a point. She hides the new kitchen gadget in the fridge, because he’d “Never think to look in here in a million years.” And you know, she’s probably right. He’s never opened the fridge. The chill makes his man-parts shrink.
But Ricky catches her, and she reveals her new gadget: It rices, dices, and splices. It cuts down 2 hours a day of her work in the kitchen. But it’s $7.98, so Ricky freaks out.
Let’s do a little math with our itty bitty lady brains. That one-time purchase saves Lucy 730 hours per year.
She offers to give them a demonstration.
FRED: Of what?
RICKY: A woman’s stupidity.
He’s gonna raise their son to be that guy who says “nice tits” to you while you wait in line at the DMV.
RICKY: Honestly, Fred, why is it that women have no sales resistance?
Yeah, what could possibly make Lucy feel powerless to speak up for herself? Besides every single thing that’s happened in Seasons One and Two?
Lucy points out Ricky bought himself a 20-foot rubber life raft once. (Lucy, that was a sex doll, you dum dum.)
But really, what would Lucy do with 730 more hours/year? She could tutor children. She could bake pies for needy families. But the kids would end up flunking and the pies would poison poor people who won’t have access to healthcare for at least another century. So it’s better this way.
“If only I could use this food processor to… process… my feelings of crippling self-hatred.”
Ricky tells her she has to demand a refund or he will slice her into 16 identical slices. He is an actual psychopath. Quick! Elect him!
So Lucy demands the refund and Mr. Martin, the guy from the sales company, comes by the apartment. He flatters her, which works because she hasn’t heard a nice thing about herself in over a decade.
The salesman tells her how stupid most women are (we love that) then dumps dirt on her carpet (Prince Charming!). He offers her $10 if his vacuum can’t clean it up in 2 minutes flat.
Leave it to a man to assume “come into my home” means “dump a wad of poo on my carpet.”
Then he tells her about one idiot woman who didn’t make the purchase:
MR. MARTIN: Why that short-sighted, narrow-visioned female did not even have the intelligence to buy one.
LUCY: What a dope!
This is what we call internalized misogyny, ladies. We turn on each other instead of turning on the real threat: remakes of old classics. Also the patriarchy.
Lucy basically begs him to sell her the vacuum. She buys the works, then about 50 other things, including the electric cord and “the switch to turn it on and off.” Actually, a turn-on switch would probably do Lucy a lot of good.
When Ethel arrives later, Lucy’s blacked out and forgotten how she accidentally spent $102.46.
This is the dead-eyed stare of a person who’s watched the news this week.
Ricky comes in singing operatic tenor through the whole building. He has the same respect for his neighbors as… well, as you’d expect him to have.
She hides the vacuum. But Ricky flips the light switch and the vacuum turns on in the closet.
LUCY: Kiss me?
RICKY: Right after I see….
LUCY: Better kiss me now if you’re ever going to!
When he finds the vacuum, Lucy jokes that it’s his Christmas present. Don’t be silly, Lucy! For Christmas he gets another baby.
Ricky demands she call the salesman back and get another refund. Ever the entrepreneur, Lucy decides to sell it to someone else instead of returning it.
She visits a lady’s apartment and performs the same pitch the salesman performed for her. She dumps dirt on the floor and offers the $10. But the electricity’s out, so she’s down another $10 and has to hand-clean the floor.
This is what women do to each other. We take the poo a man threw on our floors and we throw it onto each other’s floors. Also, we let our friends wear hats like that and never warn them they look like Minnie Mouse barely survived a natural disaster. We’re monsters.
She eventually wanders in late, totally exhausted, still with the vacuum.
LUCY: You’ll be glad to know, Ricky, that there are plenty of women in town with sales resistance.
I always have my friends massage my feet after I vacuum. That’s why I don’t have friends. Or a vacuum (ex-friends destroyed it).
LUCY: I was kicked down stairs, bitten by a dog, and chased 3 blocks by a policeman who wanted to see my peddler’s license.
Is that what they called it back then?
RICKY: I don’t know what these women would do without us men getting them out of all these messes.
Oh! Oh I got this one!
- Read The Handmaid’s Tale
- Get raises
- Not be assaulted
- Watch The Handmaid’s Tale
- Tweet freely
- Play video games unharassed
- Run for office
- Only smile when we feel like it
- Never get sent another dick pic
- Run impeachment proceedings
We’d somehow get by.
Ricky calls and schedules the refund, even though Lucy warns him this guy will sell him something. But her lady voice escapes to the void. So the boys buy a refrigerator and washing machine.
Lucy turned in that slicer and dicer she loved so much. She lost 720 hours out of her year. And in the meantime, the guys made far worse purchases for far more money, and no one ever held them accountable.
But her eeeeemmmmmmaaaaiiiilllllllssssssss!
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Join me next time for S02 E18: The Inferiority Complex. And follow WTF Lucy on Facebook and Twitter!
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