anniversary

I Love Lucy S02 E07 – The Courtroom

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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.

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I Love Lucy S02 E03 – The Anniversary Present

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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.

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I Love Lucy S01 E09 – The Fur Coat

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(Or: Lucy Has a $31,000 Temper Tantrum)

**Wanna keep up? Episode watch party!**

We open on Ricky with a big box, like he’s been shopping. Gender role reversal! Lucy must be out watching the fights and scratching herself.

Fred is bent down under the sink fixing the plumbing and making hilarious jokes founded on how funny it would be if he had a vagina.

Ricky stands over Fred and sorta checks out his butt. He tries not to look too gay by making some small talk about how he and Lucy moved in on August 6, 1948, and how he’s glad Fred’s fixing the drain pipe (snicker).

Ethel comes by to say dinner’s ready. You know, something like, “Hey I just made a meal from scratch that I purchased and prepared over the course of the whole day, with a table perfectly set for you. It’s upstairs, and I’d love for you to come enjoy it with me.”

As always Fred knows the perfect thing to say:

Fred: “Stop ordering me around, will ya!?”

Ricky shows them what’s in the box and no, it’s not Gwyneth’s head. Please, that’s the end of a horror movie. This is just the skinned bodies of roughly 70 minks, sewn together.

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I Love Lucy S01 E01 – The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

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(Or: The Ricardos Try an Open Marriage)

<<Wanna keep up? Episode watch party!>>

Sup, Ballers. This is it. The first episode, and the pilot post. Shall we?

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We open for the very. first. time. on Lucy and Ethel washing the dishes, where they belong. No really, though: they’re in dishwashing costumes, which look a lot like the We Can Do It work clothes, and they check each other’s dishes like it’s nuclear science. This is their boardroom. Lean In…closer to the sink.

Turns out, Monday night is Ethel and Fred Mertz’s 18-year anniversary. Ethel wants to celebrate by going to a nightclub, but Ricky (who works in a nightclub) hates nightclubs. And since Ricky is unrelated to the Mertzs and it’s not his anniversary, he obviously decides what everyone else gets to do.

Lucy, elbow deep in dish grease, bemoans how boring Ricky is:

“Ever since we said ‘I do,’ there are so many things we don’t.”

You can see where this is headed from a mile away: Lucy is a feisty redhead in her dirty thirties, and if Ricky won’t put his Copa in her cabana, she’ll find some other guy to do the deed.

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