Original Air Date: December 15, 1952
Quick! Get Nancy Grace to hair and makeup!
Because we open on Lucy “taking care” of a practice baby doll. It’s the creepy sort of doll that makes you fear death in a new way. Lucy holds it under her armpit, throws it around, drowns it.
Considering how much that doll looks like Satan, hold it however you want.
Original Air Date: December 8, 1952
We open on Lucy preparing her purse to go to the doctor because she’s been feeling “dauncy.” I dunno what dauncy means, but I’m assuming it means blatantly lacking a period because our girl is pregnant.
She doesn’t know it, though. She sleeps in a twin bed… I doubt she knows her body all that well.
Maybe the censors cut the line where she says, “I mean I’m three weeks late but then I haven’t had a heavy period since I started the pill and besides I wouldn’t be able to tell anyway because I put an extra large diva cup in a few days early this time.”
Original Air Date: December 1, 1952
It was 6am when we watched this week’s episode, and that theme song made me want to die. I love this show, but I don’t recommend enjoying it before 10am. It’s like setting “Trump rally” as your wake-up alarm tone.
Original Air Date: November 24, 1952
We open on Ricky sleeping under a Look Magazine, which sort of cancels out the whole point of that publication.
The women are at a home show to tour model homes with beautiful new furniture. Fred says it always makes the ladies unhappy to see better homes than theirs – as opposed to bored, which is what it should make any normal human being.
But the guys know what will cheer up anyone: Tickets to opening night of the latest Rodgers and Hammerstein show.
Original Air Date: November 10, 1952
Ballers! This week we’re visiting “The Courtroom!” This should be an easy one, since my husband does law stuff and things. I asked him to write all the jokes for me this week but he was like, um I have to go bill hours to pay your WordPress charges (they really add up).
So I guess you’re stuck with me.
We open on Ricky primping, because he and Lucy want to look great for Fred and Ethel’s 25th anniversary. (Vivian Vance would have been 43 when this aired. Which means she would have married Fred at 18.)
I guess that makes sense. I did a lot of stupid things at 18. Once I put butterscotch pudding on my friend’s doorknob to make him think it was poop, and it sat like that in the sun all day and ants ended up making the door their own private ant farm and his mom had to basically overhaul the entire front entrance. TRUE STORY. And if I was Trump, you’d like me even more now.
Original Air Date: October 27, 1952
We open on Lucy sitting at the table dreaming of a better life, or at least a better apron.
“Take off the housedress underneath and we’d have a make it work moment.” — Tim Gunn
She’s going through a deep existential crisis: she’s bored with her predictable routine. In fact, she tells Ethel, she can predict everything Ricky will do every morning. It’s “tragic,” she calls it.
Gay people and interracial couples in the 1950s are like LOL yeah must be the worst.
Original Air Date: October 13, 1952
We open on a henhouse of women going “clickety clackety.” I think the script literally said, “Jabber on about lady stuff, etc.”
But Lucy didn’t have quite as good a time as her guests.
Original Air Date: October 6, 1952
OK, I know what you’re thinking. An episode titled “The Handcuffs?” Let me guess, we’re gonna get like 20 jokes about kinky sex.
Nope.
It’ll be more like 30!
Original Air Date: September 29, 1952
We open on Ricky sleeping in while Lucy brings coffee to the painters outside the window. For a minute there it looks like she might jump. But Ricky wants his breakfast, as in now. He saves her life.
I wish we could watch Lucy make him that breakfast, but instead we have to watch Ricky dial one of those old rotary phones. Those phones take forever. By the time he’s done, the Academy has nominated a black woman for Best Director. It literally takes centuries.
Original Air Date: September 22, 1952
Happy New Year, Ballers!
We open this week on Lucy in her hoarder’s closet. We all have one. Mine looks like Christmas and Hanukkah had a baby and no one cleaned up the afterbirth.
So yeah. Apparently Ethel and Fred have an attic. They’re clearly rolling in money, because these days that Upper East Side crawl space would make a “cozy 2-bedroom steal at $3200/mo.”
WTF Lucy 