dishwashing

I Love Lucy S02 E10 – Lucy Is Enceinte

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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.”

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I Love Lucy S01 E31 – The Publicity Agent

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Original air date: May 12, 1952

We open on Ricky playing cards in the living room. Lucy just finished doing all the dishes, but somehow it’s Ricky who’s in a shitty mood. He doesn’t want to hang out with the Mertzes and doesn’t want to play cards.

He’s your average six-year-old at the end of summer.

Lucy: I’ll get you a gun, you can shoot yourself.

Well, that escalated quickly.

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I Love Lucy S01 E25 – Pioneer Women

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(Or Lucy Becomes a Barista)

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

We open on Lucy doing the dishes and singing. Life is great! After all, Lucy and Ethel may have a chance to join the Society Matron’s League!

This is a “cream of society” group that gets together to discuss, I presume, how the younger generation makes their tea sandwiches incorrectly and how “urban” the Upper West Side has been getting lately.

Lucy’s concerned about shaking their hands, not because these women sound like constipated troll-beasts, but because of all the dishwashing Lucy’s endured over the years. She does the math:

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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 E02 – Be a Pal

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(Or: Ricky Is Too Brain Damaged to Remind Lucy to Take Her Crazy Pills)

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

We’re back, Ballers. Let’s jump right in.

This episode opens in the kitchen, with Ricky ignoring Lucy. And I mean, ignoring. I’m talking liberal House reps to Netanyahu, Tea Party to climate change, Hollywood to the elderly IGNORING.

Lucy, in response, starts talking to herself. And that’s where the real problems in this episode first become clear: since the last time we saw them, Ricky and Lucy were both brain damaged from blunt force trauma to the head. There is no other explanation for the shit that’s about to go down.

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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)

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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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