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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 E06 – Vacation from Marriage

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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.

I Love Lucy S02 E6 Lucy in 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.

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I Love Lucy S01 E29 – The Freezer

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(Or: The One with the Meat Jokes)

Original air date: April 28, 1952

As I said on the WTF Lucy Facebook page, we have now entered the high holy days of I Love Lucy. This week, we celebrate “The Freezer” — one of the best written sitcom episodes ever. I actually studied this episode in my first TV writing class.

Next week we’ll observe the most sacred Lucy day of the year: the day “Lucy Does a TV Commercial.” You may know it best as the Viteameatavegamin episode. However you traditionally celebrate, here’s wishing you and your families a very happy holiday. Save me some leftovers.

We open on Ricky and Lucy in the kitchen, where Ricky is once again unhappy with his breakfast.

Ricky: Just two eggs? Where’s the bacon?! They look absolutely naked!
Lucy: Well look the other way when you eat them.

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I Love Lucy S01 E26 – The Marriage License

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(Or: Lucy Kisses Dating Goodbye)

**More WTFacts are at this week’s Episode Watch Party.**

We open on Lucy cleaning out the desk, and underneath the receipts for freestanding bathtubs, bellydancing costumes, and other super useless items she’s bought this month, she finds her and Ricky’s marriage license.

Lucy (reading): On this day, Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy was married to Ricky… Bicardi?

And in zero to sixty, Lucy enters full freakout.

You know, she’s really doing this wrong. She might be the heiress to the Bacardi fortune. That’s a LOT of money. My rum and cokes alone would cover the freestanding bathtub and then some.

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I Love Lucy S01 E22 – Fred and Ethel Fight

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(Or: FINALLY! Go get yours, Ethel!)

**More WTFacts are at this week’s Episode Watch Party.**

We open on Lucy setting the table for dinner and Ricky playing peekaboo because the guy legit thinks he’s married a 6 month old. 

“WHOM is coming to dinner?” Ricky asks, all proud of himself like he checked fucking Grammar Girl or something. Except he clearly didn’t, because WHOM is incorrect.
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I Love Lucy S01 E16 – Lucy Fakes Illness

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(Or: 26 minutes of terrible psychiatric advice)

**Get Your WTFacts Here!**

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.

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I Love Lucy S01 E13 – The Benefit

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(OR: The one with the actual horse’s ass)

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

Ballers, you remember that time you and three other people spent every waking second together, and you never seemed to interact with anyone else, and it sorta felt like you couldn’t escape?

Unless you’re schizophrenic, in jail, or homeschooled, no. No, you don’t remember that.

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I Love Lucy S01 E12 – The Adagio

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(Or: The Racism / Or: The Misogyny )

**Keep up with the action. Episode watch party!**

Hi Ballers. You ever heard of Apache dancing? I hadn’t. It’s horrible. Let’s get started.

We open on Ethel eating some turds while everyone watches her.

Then the ladies get up to “put on a new face.” Fred crosses his fingers:

Fred: “She goes out to put on a new face and she always comes back with the old one.”

He and Ricky talk about Lucy being naked.

And guys, so far I haven’t made any of this shit up.

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I Love Lucy S01 E11 – Drafted

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(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.”

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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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