I Love Lucy S01 E29 – The Freezer

(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.

Continue reading

I Love Lucy S01 E28 – Cuban Pals

(Or: Lucy Tries to Help Trump Build a Wall)

Original air date: April 21, 1952

Ballers, did you see the debate? No, not the Republican debate. I mean the debate over who should play Ricky in the new Lucy biopic. I suppose if it can’t be me (and it can’t), one of those guys would do.

We open on Lucy fixing the flowers because her life is interesting. She’s also setting up hors d’oeuvres. (I HATE the phrase “hors d’oeuvres.” It’s impossible. I almost took up French just so I didn’t feel stupid trying to spell it. My dad calls them “horse divers.” I prefer the spelling “Whore Dervs,” which is also the name of my favorite slutty diesel engine road vehicle.)

Continue reading

I Love Lucy S01 E16 – Lucy Fakes Illness

(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.

Continue reading

I Love Lucy S01 E14 – The Amateur Hour

(OR: Lucy Takes a Horse-Size Birth Control Pill)

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

Ballers, bad news: Lucy is fuuuuuuuuucked. She bought a dress on sale, and now she has to “smooch Ricky into it” so she can keep it. Funny, normally you smooch people out of dresses, not into them.

Ethel leaves to “smooch Fred” into letting her keep the plunger she bought. Let’s say it together: Ethel has a shitty life.

Oh, that great deal Lucy got for the dress? It was $59.95 + tax. Today that’s $535.25 + grounds for divorce. Then she complains she has nothing to wear. WOMEN!

What Ethel doesn’t tell Fred is this plunger has a vibrating feature.

What Ethel doesn’t tell Fred is this plunger has a vibrating feature.

Continue reading

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

(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?

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.

Continue reading