I Love Lucy

Oh, Lucy! Lucy you don't need him! You can do so much better!

I Love Lucy. Yes, that's right, I love her! With all my heart! With all my soul, I love that wacky redhead and her zany antics! She may be dead. She may have been married to some Cuban crooner. But what are these obstacles compared to the power of love? With God as my witness, I will win her yet!

I remember the first time I saw her... October 15, 1951. I admit that she caught me on the rebound. I had just come, at long last, to realise that Gracie Allen was not the girl for me. I tried to fill the void she left in my life with Mary Livingstone, but it wasn't the same. I considered giving up on women altogether, until both Amos and Andy put out restraining orders against me. Whoever said that once you go black, you never go back never met those CBS lawyers.

And so I was left alone and dejected. But then I switched on the TV and saw her - Lucy Riccardo! My Henna-ed angel! My Bug-Eyed Venus! Oh, vision of wacky loveliness, how I longed to hear your grating voice whisper in my ear as I licked the cream pie from your face! Oh, Lucy, if only you would be mine!

But there was Ricky! Always, there was Ricky! Ricky, heartless husband who forbade his wife from the stage of the Tropicana! Ricky, Batista's ^[1] cabana boy! Damn him! Damn him, because he has her.

Fool that I was, I thought that their relationship might be winding down. They didn't even sleep in the same bed, for God's sake! But somehow... somehow she got "in the family way" and produced Ricky jr. Oh, Lucy, if you wanted children, I could have taken care of that. I'd get you a proper house too, not that silly little apartment!

No, I've got to stop torturing myself like this. I've been stalking her for over half a century now, so she's bound to realise that she loves me back sooner or later ^[2]. And then, we can be together, at last!

And if you should want a three-way with Ethel, well, who am I to say no?

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1. ^  As an interesting side note, a supporter of Fulgencio Batista was known as a Batistaista.

1. ^  Actually, stalking her has been much easier since she was buried.

Episodes

Lucy expresses her anger towards Ricky in "Lucy the Politician".

• "Lucy Does a TV Commercial": OK so Lucy gets hired as the "Vitameatavegamin girl" in a TV commercial to promote a health supplement. And she like becomes progressively belligerent throughout rehearsal, throwing around a lot of feminist BS about how she's a Vitameatavegamin "woman" and not a "girl." But it's like 1951 so everybody's just freaking out, cos it was only in 1949 that the Supreme Court even made it legal for women to appear on TV in speaking roles. So everybody's like, she's just lucky to be here at all. So Lucy must be on something the whole time, cos she's totally stoned, but gamely keeps on pitching the product, eventually leading to a completely flubbed live performance for "this stuff." In October 2005, fans voted this episode as their favorite, during a 60th anniversary special. Cos you know people always laugh at people who are most like themselves.

• "Job Switching": So Lucy and Ethel are still on this feminist thing. They get so pissed off at their husbands that they pussywhip the guys into staying home and doing housework, while they go out to get jobs packing candy that is delivered on a conveyor belt. Just like at the grocery store only it totally goes faster. The work's easy enough, but the dumb girls way overestimate themselves and fail at practically the easiest job in the world. They drag home begging for mercy from their husbands, who force-feed them five pounds of chocolate each to teach them a lesson, until they finally throw up. In the final scene, Lucy, lips covered with a toxic mixture of sticky caramel and vomit, lights up a Philip Morris, and smiles meekly at Ricky, who embraces her forgivingly with an open-mouth kiss, the cigarette nearly burning his cheek. (original air date Sept 15, 1952)

• "Lucy and Superman": While Ricky's at work, Lucy tries to seduce George Reeves, star of the 1950s Adventures of Superman television series, on the ruse that Reeves will appear at Little Ricky's birthday party. But Little Ricky won't even be born for 5 more episodes! So like Superman can totally do so much better than Lucy(!), and he blows her off. So now Lucy's pissed and climbs out on the ledge and threatens to jump. Superman totally freaks cos of what that would do to his show's ratings, so he goes like "whatever" and just pulls her back in. Ricky gets pissed cos he wanted to let Lucy jump so that he could finally have a solo show, but then Superman reminds Ricky what happened to Chico and the Man, so Ricky's just like whatever, Lucy can just keep on living and stuff. As Superman brings Lucy back to the window of her apartment, Ricky is furious, and at one point yells, "...In all of the 15 years we've been married..." Then Superman says, "you've been married to that old trout for 15 years?" Ricky answers, "Yeah, it's your turn now!" Superman replies, "They call me superman but even I'm not gonna go there!" (original air date Jan 14, 1957)

• "L.A. At Last!": Ricky's been indicted for running a prostitution ring out of the Tropicana, and runs to California to flee from justice, dragging Lucy and the Mertzes along as a human shield. Lucy, Fred, and Ethel have lunch at The Brown Derby, a restaurant frequented by sucker tourists who'll pay $15.00 for a hamburger just to see a bunch of old headshots of has-been movie stars on the wall. Anyway Lucy sees Eve Arden in there and she's like "you TOTAL B***" cos she's SO jealous, cos Eve Arden is so much funnier and prettier than she is, and the worst is that Arden got Gale Gordon for her own show, Our Miss Brooks, when Lucy wanted him for I Love Lucy. Anyway they get into a huge fight, and Eve grabs a steak knife, and she's just about to gouge Lucy's eyes out, but right then a waiter breaks it up by heaving a pie in William Holden's face, which Lucy and Eve both think is hilarious! So Lucy and Eve are totally cracking up together, and then they're cool and even say they're gonna be BFFs now, and then they start picking on Ethel, who isn't as pretty as either one of them. Later at the hotel, Ricky has a surprise for Lucy: an icepick to the forehead, for nearly getting them all arrested. But just then, Jerry, Ricky's publicity agent, barges in and starts gushing about all the buzz that the whole thing is creating for Ricky's career. So Ricky spares Lucy's life once more. Lucy is so giddy that she sets her nose on fire just to entertain William Holden when he comes over. (original air date Feb 7, 1955)

• "Karl Marx": While hiding out in Hollywood, Lucy is visited by Carolyn Appleby, a friend who thinks Lucy knows like all these famous people. After Lucy and Ethel get Carolyn's glasses away from her, Lucy pretends to be various stars. Meanwhile, Ricky and Fred invite Karl Marx to the Ricardos' apartment. When he shows up, Lucy is disguised as him; seeing the real Karl, she hides in a kitchen doorway. Karl is perplexed when he sees what he thinks is his reflection, forcing Lucy to mimic his every move to avoid detection. This was a tribute to Karl's and Friedrich Engels' famous mirror scene in the comedy classic, Das Kapital Kapers. (original air date May 9, 1867)

• "Lucy's Italian Movie": So Ricky keeps trying to keep Lucy from getting drunk, but then Lucy sneaks off to an Italian winery. Well they were already in Europe anyway, with Ricky trying to avoid extradition or whatever on the prostitution charge. She is completely taken aback when she arrives at the winery, is mistaken for one of the workers—a grape stomper—and the "vintners" actually turn out to be crooks! Batman and Robin are there too, to catch the crooked winemakers, but the crooks catch them first, and tie them up to drown in a vat of grapes. They bring Lucy in to stomp Batman and Robin into unconsciousness, which she does with enthusiasm, jealous that Batman and Robin's show is in color. But then this fat Italian lady jumps into the vat to rescue Batman and Robin, and punches Lucy out. (original air date April 16, 1956)

• "Lucy Does the Tango": So now it's season 6, Ricky has turned himself in to the police, and squealed on his erstwhile partners in crime. In return for his testimony, he and Lucy are now in the Witness Protection Program, and have been relocated to rural Connecticut, where they pose as chicken farmers. Owing to a gaping "hole" in the script, the Mertzes have come with them, even though that could never happen in the real Witness Protection Program. But anyway. The chicken business sucks. Lucy and Ethel come up with a scheme to fool the boys into thinking the hens are laying lots of eggs by laying some themselves, and then smuggling them, hidden underneath their clothes, into the henhouse. On one such trip, Ricky notices that they're actually human eggs instead of chicken eggs, and insists on celebrating this biological miracle, sure to result in a windfall of publicity and profit, by dancing the tango with Lucy. Unbeknownst to Ricky, Lucy's blouse is filled with her ultra-rare human eggs, and the clumsy Cuban idiot smooshes them all in the final step of the dance. Overcome with trauma, Lucy and Ethel are unable to lay any more eggs, and their chances of fortune are once again dashed. The climax of this scene provoked the longest stone-silent stare of bemused puzzlement from a studio audience in television history. (original air date Mar 11, 1957)

• "The Black Wig": After repeated discoveries of lipstick on Ricky's collar, unfamiliar panties under the bed, and squishy condoms on the bathroom floor, Lucy concludes Ricky is not paying enough attention to her and might be tempted by other women. Lucy's hairdresser, Eve McVeagh, fixes her up in an Italian style black wig. Lucy's afraid Ricky won't like it, but surprise surprise, it really turns him on. Lucy kind of freaks out. It gets to the point that Ricky refuses to have Intimate Marital Relations with Lucy unless Lucy wears the wig. Lucy charges that Ricky's cheating on her via his fantasies. Ricky accuses Lucy of being jealous of her own wig. And blah blah blah, you know how it goes, until Ethel and Fred come in and throw off a laugh line or two, and everybody's happy and kissy again. (original air date April,19 1954)

• Note: The show is often mistaken for another CBS show with a similar title.