I Love Lucy ran from 1951 to 1957 and its impact on television was monumental. Comedienne Lucille Ball starred in the title role as Lucy Ricardo, the red-haired wife of Cuban band leader Ricky Ricardo, portrayed by her real life spouse Desi Arnaz. Their best friends were Fred and Ethel Mertz, an older couple who are former stars of vaudeville and also their landlords.
They were played by the curmudgeonly William Frawley and agreeable Vivian Vance. The premise of each episode centered around Lucy and her unsuccessful schemes to either break into show business or outwit her husband. Ball achieved the kind of superstardom on the small screen that she had never been quite able to attain in her big screen days. I Love Lucy has been in syndication for several decades all across the world and has brought laughter to millions. It proves the fact that laughter is indeed universal.
Five episodes I deem to be among the best are:
Lucy Does a Television Commercial
Ever ambitious to get the world’s recognition, Lucy agrees to become a commercial spokesperson for a so-called health tonic. This episode is a fan favorite and showcases her at her comedic best. Unknown to Lucy, Vitameatavegamin, the product she is promoting, contains a whopping amount of alcohol, which she discovers while rehearsing her routine over and over. With each rehearsal, she gets more and more soused until she can barely say the name of the tonic, much less go on the air. Lucy’s ability to show a gradual descent into inebriation was cleverly done and proved how expert her timing was.
Lucy Is Enceinte
It’s difficult for today’s television audiences to comprehend, but during the days of early sitcoms, bringing up the topic of pregnancy was pretty touchy. See, if you said somebody was going to have a baby, then that meant that the husband and wife were having …gasp!…sex, which, even within the confines of the institution of marriage, was something they just did not want to bring up, due to the censors of the time. How else do you explain the fact that so many old sitcom couples slept in twin beds? Anyway, this was a bold move for I Love Lucy to take on, as it also helped deal with the fact that the real Lucille Ball was pregnant, as wll.
In this episode, Lucy finds out that she is going to have a baby and, like many women, she has always dreamed of just how she would break the big news to her husband…you know, in the perfect setting, with the most romantic words. The thing is, though, that everything keeps disrupting her announcement. Neighbors keep interrupting, Ricky keeps getting calls from the club, nothing goes right.
Finally, the only way for her to get out the word to him is for her to send a message to Ricky during a nightly performance at his nightclub that somebody there wants to tell her spouse that she is pregnant He goes from table-to-table, trying to discover who it is, until he comes by a table where Lucy is sitting and she smiles and nods. At last, he gets it! The episode ends with Ricky, the happy father-to-be, singing, “We’re Having a Baby” to her.
Lucy Goes to the Hospital
Of course, everything had to culminate into the birth of the Ricardo child. At the time, this episode was one of the highest rated in television history. It’s close to Lucy’s due date and Ricky, Fred and Ethel are nervous as can be. They repeatedly rehearse the procedure they will go through for when “that moment” arrives. When it finally does come, however, things do not run so smoothly after all and Ricky Fred and Ethel pretty much go through a hilarious slapstick routine. After finally getting Lucy to the hospital, Ricky has to leave to go down to the Tropicana to perform a “Voodoo” number.
He puts on his makeup in the waiting room, before leaving, not realizing that he is causing a huge stir. When Ricky gets word, during the performance, that he has become a dad, he rushes back, still in voodoo makeup, to the hospital, again causing turmoil among hospital employees who apparently think he is a real “savage”. (Hm, is their response border just a little bit on racism?) Anyway, after the misunderstanding is cleared up, Ricky gets to see his new son- Little Ricky.
Tennessee Ernie Visits
Country performer Tennessee Ernie Ford plays the role of Lucy’s hillbilly cousin named…drum roll, please!…Ernie Ford. As a rule, I get a little bothered with Southern characters always being portrayed on television as backwards hicks, but you can’t help but like this episode and the obliviously cornball character Ford plays. He comes, unannounced, to the “big city” and ends up staying with the Ricardos, who feel sorry for him, when he has no place else to go. Their pity quickly turns into aggravation when he comes close to destroying the peace in their home with his sincere but bumpkin ways, so they think up a scheme to get Cousin Ernie to go back to the hills.
Lucy dons a black wig and tight dress to disguise herself as the seductive “wicked city woman” his mama warned him about, hoping to scare him onto the next bus to Pigeon Fork, Tennessee. It backfires, though, when he decides he likes the “wicked city woman”.After making
a number of unsuccessful attempts to rid themselves of their annoying redneck guest, they find relief when he finally leaves on his own. This episode is a guilty pleasure of mine.
L.A. at Last
Hollywood puts out a call to Ricky. He and Lucy and the Mertzes arrive there, so Ricky can work on the film about Don Juan that the movie studio put him under contract for. Meanwhile, Lucy, Fred and Ethel are left to explore Hollywood on their own. They decide to go to lunch at The Brown Derby, which was, at the time, a well-known hang-out place for movie stars. They hope to catch a glimpse of a few of the rich and famous and are not disappointed when film star William Holden shows up at the next table.
The starstruck Lucy tries, in her usually unsubtle manner, to sneak glimpses at him and even a waiter moving a huge plant in front of Holden’s booth to protect his privacy doesn’t deter her.
Fed up, the actor attempts to give her a taste of her own medicine, by staring at her while she eats. This disturbs her so much that she gets up to leave, but not before she bumps into a waiter, who spills a tray of food all over Holden. Unknown to her, Ricky, who has no idea what transpired, decides to surprise her by inviting her favorite actor home. Who else would it be, except William Holden?
In order to keep him from guessing that she is the same woman who caused such havoc for him at the Brown Derby, Lucy disguises herself by putting on a putty nose, but the gig is up when she mistakenly lights the end of her false nose instead of the tip of her cigarette. This is Lucy at her goofiest and most hilarious. Of course, Holden is gallant enough not to disclose to Ricky what happened earlier that day..
Of course …
Everybody has his or her own idea of which I Love Lucy episodes were the best, but, no matter which ones you choose, we can all agree that this was definitely a one-of-a-kind show that can never be duplicated.
