The Terrible Catsafterme

SEASON 1 – CBS

Theme music written by Eliot Daniel

NOTE: This series was loosely based on the radio show “My Favorite Husband” which aired between 1948-1951. When Lucille Ball was asked to take that series to television, she refused to appear without her husband Desi Arnaz. 

• 000. Pilot – UNAIRED, filmed 3/2/1951
  • Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo is happy keeping  his wife Lucy at home to do the housework, cook the meals, and bear the children, but she has aspirations of breaking into show business. Ricky keeps it a secret as to when the TV sponsors are going to come check out his show to see if he has a future in TV. During rehearsal, Pepito the Clown (Pepito Perez) does his routine by imitating a baby and riding a tiny bike, but then gets injured on a full-sized bike. Ricky suggests that Pepito recuperate at his apartment before showtime. Lucy then finds out that the sponsors will be in the club that night. She ends up standing in for Pepito and shows up dressed as a hobo known as “The Professor” and does an act with a cello and seal horns. Lucy ends up getting a TV offer and Ricky doesn’t, but Ricky convinces her that she belongs at home to clean, bake, and raise his children. She tells him that she has a surprise for him… that she has made him a pie. Bob LeMond is the announcer. Joanne Perez appears as herself as Pepito’s wife. NOTE: This pilot was later remade as The Audition. 5/26/15

• 001. The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub – 10/15/1951
  • Cuban bandleader Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) is married to scheming redhead Lucy (Lucille Ball), and they live in an apartment in New York City with their landlords and friends Fred (William Frawley) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) living directly above them. It is Ethel and Fred’s 18th anniversary and Ethel wants to go to the Copacabana nightclub while Fred wants to spend the anniversary at Charlie’s Steakhouse followed by the fights. Lucy and Ethel try sweet talking the men, but the men do the same thing to them… until they finally reach a stalemate. Lucy and Ethel threaten to go to the nightclub with dates if their husbands won’t go. Ricky is afraid they will actually do it, so they decide to get dates and go to the nightclub to keep an eye on them. Both the men and the women both call socialite Jenny Jones to look for escorts. When Lucy finds out, she decides that she and Ethel will be their blind dates… but they show up in costumes looking like aggressive frumpy hillbillies named Eunice and her Ma. When ‘Eunice’ finds out Ricky is in show business, she has him sing Guadalajara. When Ricky notices that ‘Eunice’ knows where the cigarettes are, he realizes who they are and they end up getting aggressive with the girls. They finally admit they know who they are and they all agree to get dressed up to go out and celebrate the Mertz’s anniversary… at the fights. NOTE: This episode was reran on March 16, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky and Fred watching a boxing match on TV. Ethel comes in and turns their fight off causing the men to miss the end of the fight, and then reminiscing about the events that took place during the Mertz’s anniversary. 4/2/15
• 002. Be a Pal – 10/22/1951
  • Lucy is tired of being ignored by Ricky at breakfast, but when Ethel reads her passages from the book How to Keep the Honeymoon from Ending, she realizes could put forth more effort so she comes to breakfast the next morning dressed glamorously…but she is still ignored. Ethel continues quoting from the book and gets to the section that suggests that the wife ‘be a pal’ by joining in her husband’s interests. So Lucy joins Ricky, Fred, Hank (Richard Reeves), and Charlie (Tony Michaels) in a game of poker and naturally makes a disaster of the game. The third suggestion in the book is for the wife to baby the husband and surround him with things that remind him of his boyfriend. Lucy decorates the house to look like Cuba and performs a dance to Mama Yo Quiero while dressed like Carmen Miranda, but the record ends up speeding up and slowing down as Lucy tries to keep up. Ricky assures her that he married her because she was different from the Cuban ladies. 4/2/15
• 003. The Diet – 10/29/1951
  • Lucy is forced to admit that she’s put on 22 pounds since her wedding day. To add insult to injury Ricky thinks that Lucy is too plump to try out for a role in his show that has opened up. Lucy tries out anyway amidst several younger dancers, only to rip the size 12 dress. Ricky agrees that if Lucy loses the twelve pounds necessary to fit in the costume, she can be in the show, never thinking she can do it by showtime in four days. Ethel puts her on a strict workout and diet, and Lucy resorts to pretending to be the Mertz’s dog Butch in order to get fed table scraps. Finally after spending all day in a steam machine, she loses the weight. She and Ethel lock the dancer who actually got the job, and Lucy joins Ricky on stage to join him in a rendition of Cuban Pete/Sally Sweet. Lucy is then taken to the hospital for malnutrition. Marco Rizo appears as Ricky’s piano player. NOTE: This episode was reran on February 9, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky discussing the baby with Fred and Ethel, stating that the new baby seems jealous of him. Ricky also states that Lucy plans to go on a diet when she gets out of the hospital and then reminisces about the events of this episode. 5/24/15
• 004. Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her – 11/5/1951
  • After Lucy reads The Mocking Bird Murder Mystery, she becomes jumpy, and following Ricky’s playful act of ‘murdering’ her to get her to go to sleep, Ethel drawing the death card as she tells her fortune, overhearing Ricky talk about getting rid of someone – actually a girl in his act – and finding a list of female names that are actually dogs (an act known as Hector and His Pals) in his a new act, Lucy becomes convinced that Ricky is trying to do her in. When Lucy starts acting especially strange, Fred suggests slipping her a sedative. Lucy think that it is poison and tries to switch the glass, but Ricky switches them, and Lucy ultimately drinks it. Still convinced it is poison, she then takes Ricky’s prop gun and attempts to shoot him at the club, but then finds out that she really did only take a sedative and that the gun was fake. Jerry Hausner is Jerry. NOTE: This episode was reran on November 3, 1952, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky and Lucy sitting around the apartment after dinner. Lucy suggests that they read books instead of watching TV, but Ricky is against it when all of the books are scary novels. He then recounts the events of this episode. 5/25/15
• 005. The Quiz Show – 11/12/1951
  • Ricky lambastes Lucy for not managing the household finances and decides to take them over himself and cut off her money unless she finds a way to pay the overdue bills. Lucy accompanies Ethel to the radio game shows Females Are Fabulous and after passing the qualification round during which host Freddie Fillmore (Frank Nelson) shoots her with water while she sings My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, she gets the chance to win $1000. To win it, she has to maintain that a man who will show up at her home was her first husband. She accepts the challenge, but when an eloquent street bum named Harold (John Emery) shows up at her door, she assumes he is the man in on the joke and tries to convince Ricky that she was married to Harold/Sam. Eventually Ethel recognizes the bum and kicks him out, after which Arnold (Philip Ober), the real actor, shows up. Lucy hold out until midnight before explaining the truth to Ricky, who is about to walk out on her, thus earning the money… which promptly goes to pay off all of the delinquent bills. Lee Millar is the game show announcer. Hazel Pierce is Mrs. Peterson, a former contestant. NOTE: On October 20, 1952, this episode became the first primetime rerun in television history, when it was re-broadcast out of the necessity of not filming enough episodes for the season due to Lucy’s pregnancy. A new introduction was filmed in which the Ricardos and the Mertzes sit in the Mertz living room, and Lucy tries to get them all to intermingle. When Ethel mentions going to a quiz show, Ricky interrupts and recounts the events of this episode. 7/16/15
• 006. The Audition – 11/19/1951
  • Lucy knows that sponsors are going to be coming to watch his act as an audition for a TV show, but Ricky doesn’t want her to know when it is because he prefers that stay out of show business and remain a housewife.. During his rehearsal, Buffo the Clown (Pat Moran) gets injured in a bicycle mishap. Ricky suggests that Buffo recuperate at his apartment before showtime. Lucy then finds out that the sponsors (series producer and writer Jess Oppenheimer, CBS Vice President Harry Ackerman, CBS network supervisor Hal Hudson) will be in the club that night. After Ricky performs a rousing rendition of Babalu, Lucy shows up standing in for Buffo dressed as a hobo known as “The Professor” and does an act with a cello and seal horns – a “saxovibatronophonavich”. Lucy ends up getting a TV offer and Ricky doesn’t, but Ricky convinces her that she belongs at home to clean, bake, and raise his children. She tells him that she has a surprise for him… that she has made him a pie. Desi Arnaz’s stand-in Bennett Green makes his first small appearance in this episode as a stagehand. NOTE: This is a remake of the Pilot episode. 7/17/15
• 007. The Seance – 11/26/1951
  • Lucy is obsessed with numerology, horoscopes, and superstition, and as a result of a warning she sees in Ricky’s Gemeni horoscope, she turns down what she thinks is a barber appointment for him… but it is actually Mr. Merriweather (Jay Novello), a theatrical producer who may have a lucrative job for Ricky. When Ricky and Lucy go to visit Merriweather in person to explain Lucy’s business refusal, they find that he too is obsessed with the supernatural. Lucy ends up inviting Merriweather for a seance in which they attempt to contact his lost love Tillie via Ouija Board. While Ethel poses as medium Madame Mertzolo, Lucy poses as Tillie, and Ricky has Fred do the same. In the course of the seance, they find out that Tillie was not Merriweather’s wife, but his cocker spaniel. Merriweather than tries to contact his late wife Adelaide, and Fred steps in to voice her. Everyone is puzzled by the ‘other’ voices they hear until Fred and Lucy both admit that they were each portraying a character. Ricky gets an even better job from Merriweather. NOTE: This episode was reran on March 23, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky speaking with Ethel. Lucy has gone to the library to research the numerology of the baby’s name, whom she currently wants to name Montmorency. Ricky recounts Lucy’s previous involvement with numerology and the events of this episode. The end of the rerun also featured Desi and Lucy making a plea to contribute to the Heart Fund. 9/16/15
• 008. Men Are Messy – 12/3/1951
  • Lucy gets irritated when Ricky comes home and sloppily makes himself comfortable in the house that she just cleaned. In retaliation for his messiness, Lucy divides the living room in half and refuses to clean Ricky’s half. Their war escalates for a while, but finally Lucy is ready to clean up the whole mess… until she is ordered by Ricky to clean it for a magazine spread. Since Lucy thinks it is for a minor musicians’ magazine called Half Beat, she decides to get revenge on Ricky by messing up the house even more, filling it with chickens, dressing herself like a hillbilly, and planting Ethel as her backwoods ‘granny’. The photographer Jim White (Harry Shannon) snaps pictures, but Lucy becomes distraught when she realizes that it is actually for the popular Look magazine, and winds up on the cover. NOTE: This episode was rerun on February 23, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky addressing the audience to deliver a message from Lucy and thank everyone for all of the letters of congratulations they’ve received. They then move onto the episode, during which Fred and Ethel run in with the new Look magazine featuring Ricky to show Lucy, who has taken the baby to the doctor for a check-up. Ricky acts nonchalant about appearing the magazine, but then Ethel finds that he’s purchased an entire stack of them in the desk. He says that the new article makes up for the last time he was in the magazine. They then reminisce about the incident that took place in the episode. Kenny Morgan is Ricky’s agent Kenny. Hazel Boyne is Maggie the cleaning lady. 9/28/15
• 009. The Fur Coat – 12/10/1951
  • Ricky brings home a $3500 mink coat that he has rented for one of the girls in his act to wear onstage. When Lucy comes home, Ethel pretends that the coat is hers, causing Lucy to throw a tantrum. When Ricky attempts to tell her the truth, Lucy assumes that Ricky has bought the coat for her for their anniversary and Ricky is unable to get a word in to tell her the real story, nor does he have the heart to. He hatches a plan to say the coat was stolen, but Lucy wears the coat constantly – even to bed. Ricky then convinces Fred to portray a robber and take the coat away at gunpoint. However a real robber (Ben Welden) beats him to the punch and breaks into the apartment that night. Ricky hands over the coat willingly, and even tries to chase him down to give it to him when he flees as Fred is showing up. Lucy cannot understand Ricky’s cowardice until Ethel tells her the full truth. Lucy then pretends to make ‘alterations’ on the mink, actually substituting a fake coat, causing Ricky to collapse in shock. Later after Ricky has given Lucy alternative anniversary gifts, Lucy confesses to Ethel that it really isn’t their anniversary, and she just says that when she wants something. NOTE: This episode was reran on November 17, 1952, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show with Lucy pretending she is freezing and once again asking Ricky for a fur coat, and Ricky declining and referring to the events depicted in this episode via flashback. 12/11/15
• 010. Lucy Is Jealous of Girl Singer – 12/17/1951
  • When Ethel shows Lucy a gossip blurb in the Daily Mirror about Ricky making time with one of his dancers, Lucy quickly becomes jealous and confronts Ricky about it. Ricky claims there is no truth in it and that it is merely a stunt from his publicist. That day at practice while practicing with this new dancer Rosemary (Helen Silvers), Ricky accidentally steps on her black lace garment and says he will take it home to have Lucy mend it. Lucy comes to realize that she has been acting silly and makes Ricky a nice dinner that night when he comes home, but things are made worse when she finds the black lace in his pocket. Ricky attempts the truth again, but Lucy is now far too suspicious. She sneaks into his chorus line that night at the show and bumbles through her dance as he sings Jezebel. That night she pretends she was never there, but Ricky finds the wig she used and comes out wearing it to show that he in fact knows that the fake chorus girl was her. NOTE: This episode was reran on April 6, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Ricky, Fred, and Ethel sitting around the apartment while Lucy is at the gym working on her figure. Fred notes a blurb in the newspaper about an unnamed bandleader having an affair. Ethel refreshes Ricky’s memory about the events of this episode. 12/12/15
• 011. Drafted – 12/24/1951
  • Lucy reads a letter from the War Department addressed to Ricky in which he is ordered to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and assumes that he is being drafted into the Army. Later Ricky confides in Fred that he is headed to Fort Dix to perform for the troops, and Fred decides to go along and plans to perform an old Civil War routine from his Vaudeville days. However, they do not want to tell the wives for fear that Lucy will try to get into the act. Lucy in inconsolable about Ricky being drafted, and soon Ethel believes that Fred has enlisted and is going with him. Both spend their time knitting their husbands socks to take with them. The husbands in turn think that their wives are pregnant due to their knitting and erratic crying. The men decided to throw their wives a surprise baby shower, while the wives plan to throw the men a surprise going-away party, both of them sneaking guests into the apartment to hide in the closet. Eventually the girls tell their husbands they are not pregnant but are surprised when the men fess up about Fort Dix and put on their Civil War uniforms. After clearing up the misunderstanding, they all realize that their guest are still in the closet… virtually tied in a human knot. In a tag scene, the cast dress as Santa Claus and sing Jingle Bells for the audience, only to be joined by a fifth Santa (Vernon Dent), who then mysteriously disappears. 2/13/16
• 012. The Adagio – 12/31/1951
  • When Lucy finds out that Ricky is looking for an Apache dancer, naturally she is interested in the job, but Ricky again turns her down. Fred suggests that he might rehearse with her and they can both join the show, but their rehearsals only end up with Fred on the floor. Ethel finds out that the French barber’s nephew Jean Valjean Raymond (Shepard Menken) is in town, and he comes over to rehearse with Lucy. Ricky comes home unexpectedly, and Lucy has Jean Valjean hide, which makes him think that Lucy wants to have an affair with him. When he pursues Lucy, she throws him out, but he later returns and climbs up a ladder to the bedroom window. Lucy initially tries to cover for him, making believe that his hands are his, but Ricky eventually finds him. Jean Valjean challenges Ricky to a duel with pistols and Ricky does not back down, which causes Jean Valjean to cower in fear when Lucy leaves the room. Jean Valjean admits that he had misconceptions that all women expected French men to be amorous, and that all American men would act like cowards when challenged. Ricky decides to play a trick on Lucy, and he and Jean Valjean fire their pistols into the air. Jean Valjean emerges from the room, and Lucy breaks down thinking Ricky has been shot, before Ricky also emerges and reveals that it was a joke. Lucy is initially ecstatic that Ricky is alive… but after thinking about it later pours water over his head in bed because of the joke he played. 2/13/16
• 013. The Benefit – 1/7/1952
  • After a card game at home, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel sing a rendition of Shine On Harvest Moon, and Lucy proves her inability to carry a tune when she joins them. Ethel asks Lucy if she can get Ricky to sing at her club’s benefit, and Lucy agrees to ask him… with the stipulation that she joins him in a duet. Ricky refuses until Lucy breaks down crying and finally agrees. Lucy tries to train herself to sing – using a book by F. Alsetto – but Ricky will only give her the “auf” portion of the song Auf Wiederseh’n, My Dear. Lucy balks at that song and ends up telling Ethel she will do the show herself. They look for a costume and settle on dressing up as a horse, but Fred brings a song that Ricky found for them to do: We’ll Build a Bungalow with frequent jokes interspersed throughout. Lucy realizes that she doesn’t have any of the punchlines, so when they perform it live, Lucy jumps in and gives the punchline to all of the jokes, much to Ricky’s chagrin. 5/8/16
• 014. The Amateur Hour – 1/14/1952
  • When Lucy spends $59.95 on a new dress, Ricky tells her that he will not pay for it so she looks for a job of her own. She finds an ad in the newspaper for a babysitter at $5 per hour – which is ten times the normal rate. She jumps at the chance, and Mrs. Hudson (Gail Bonney) brings her bratty son Jimmy (Sammy Ogg) over to Lucy’s apartment. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Mrs. Hudson also sneaks in his twin brother Timmy (David Stollery), who is equally full of mischief. Lucy is nearly driven nuts as the two get the better of her, before she actually realizes that there are two of them. At that point, the boys use Lucy as a maypole and tie her up. Mrs. Hudson calls and asks Lucy if she would take the boys to the Blue Bird Club Amateur Contest, and tells Lucy if they win, Lucy can keep the $100 prize. Ricky is acting as emcee at the contest and sings a rendition of I’m Breaking My Back. Lucy and twins perform the song Ragtime Cowboy Joe in cowboy regalia. When Jimmy’s frog Elmer gets down Lucy’s dress, her dance becomes considerably more animated. Lucy and the twins wins the contest, and then surprises Ricky by delivering a kiss… and her mustache… to him. 5/9/16
• 015. Lucy Plays Cupid – 1/21/1952
  • Lucy’s old neighbor Miss Lewis (Bea Benaderet) confesses to Lucy that she is in love with the grocery man Mr. Ritter (Edward Everett Horton). Lucy tries to teach her how to attract men with a come hither look and swagger, and agrees to pass Mr. Ritter a note to meet her for dinner. Ricky is adamantly against Lucy getting involved, but she does anyway and it backfires when Mr. Ritter thinks it is Lucy who is in love with her. He pursues Lucy and won’t quit, so Lucy tries to convince Ritter that she is everything in a woman that he can’t stand: sloppy, a poor cook, and the mother of 30 children. When Ricky finds out from Miss Lewis what has happened, he decides to teach her a lesson, and shows up and the apartment and tells Ritter that he can have Lucy. With Lucy and Ricky in the other room, Miss Lewis shows up and pursues Mr. Ritter… somehow managing to entice him with her new come-hither look and swagger. 8/14/16
• 016. Lucy Fakes Illness – 1/28/1952
  • Fred and Ethel catch wind that Ricky had placed an ad in Variety for actors to be in his show. When they tell this to Lucy, all three of them ramp up their efforts to impress Ricky with their talent. Ricky finally tells Fred and Ethel they can try out, but refuses Lucy. Ethel mentions that this might give her a complex and lead to some serious emotional issues, so when Lucy reads up on Abnormal Psychology, she begins to feign amnesia in the guise of an ingenue, a southern belle, and then as a little girl. Fred reveals to Ricky that he overheard Lucy planning this deception with Ethel and that she is faking. Ricky calls his friend Hal March (himself) to come and pose as a doctor. Lucy ‘snaps out’ of her illness when Ricky tells her that he is going to give her a part in his show, but the doctor tells her that she has a deadly disease known as the ‘go-bloots’ and could die if she starts turning green. When Ricky puts a green light bulb in her room, Lucy begins to panic, and Ricky finally admits that he has been tricking her. Lucy pushes to be in the show after all, but Ricky then fakes amnesia of his own. NOTE: This episode was reran on April 13, 1953, during Lucy’s real-life pregnancy hiatus, with new footage shot to open the show featuring Fred faking a lumbego flare-up when he thinks Ethel wants him to clean the furnace. When Ethel tells him that she just wanted to see if he want to go see a show, he suddenly feels better… and Ethel suddenly wants him to clean the furnace. They then reminisce about the time Lucy tried to fool Ricky into believing she was sick. 8/16/16
• 017. Lucy Writes a Play – 2/4/1952
  • Lucy is hard at work writing a play called A Tree Grows in Havana about a Cuban tobacco picker to enter into the Women’s Club’s play writing contest. Ethel is cast, and Ricky agrees to perform in the play as well… until he learns that they only let Lucy write the play if Ricky will be in it. Lucy brings in Fred to replace him but can’t do the Cuban accent. Lucy re-writes the play so that Fred can use his British accent instead and calls is The Perils of Pamela. When Ricky finds out that movie executive Daryl B. Mayer is going to be judging the contest, he shows up to claim the part after all. However the play makes no sense with him playing the part of the Cuban, while everyone else is British. Both try to compensate by reverting to the other, so Ricky turns British while everyone else becomes Cuban again. Myra Marsha in the club chairwoman and emcee. Maury Thompson is the stage manager. 10/25/16
• 018. Breaking the Lease – 2/11/1952
  • The Ricardos and Mertzes have a singing session, crooning tunes I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad and Sweet Sue, deep into the night, gushing over how great of tenants the Ricardos are and how great of landlords the Mertzes are. However once the Mertzes go home, they start complaining about all of the noise that Lucy and Ricky are making. This escalates into an argument and the Ricardos decide they want out of the lease. The Mertzes refuse to let them out, so the Ricardos begin stomping around the apartment making of the noise they can. When this doesn’t work, Ricky invites his band over to rehearse all night, and he sings El Cumbanchero. This also backfires when the Mertzes stand outside selling tickets to the jam session. Finally when everyone in the apartment contributes to La Raspa (Mexican Hat Dance) and causes the floor to nearly collapse on top of the Mertzes, Fred and Ethel give in and hand over the lease. However when it comes time to move, the sentimentality takes over and they realizes how great of friends they really are and the Ricardos decide to stay. Barbara Pepper, Hazel Pierce, and Bennett Green are party guests. 10/26/16
• 019. The Ballet – 2/18/1952
  • When Lucy finds out that Ricky has an opening for a ballet act and burlesque comic act in his new cavalcade show, she tells him about her days as ballet dancer as a petunia in The Dance of the Flowers. She attends a class taught by the militant Madame Lamond (Mary Wickes) where she is put through her paces, and decides to give up because it is too hard of work. She then focuses on the burlesque portion and brings in a comic to teach her a burlesque act. He teaches her the Slowly I Turn routine, resulting in Lucy getting beat with a cushion, soaked, and a pie in the face. Ricky fills the slots without her, but when one of the ballerina’s can’t make the show, Ethel encourage Lucy to come down and fill in. She misunderstands and comes dressed as the comic, interfering with the dance, and ultimately giving Ricky a pie in the face. 1/29/17
• 020. The Young Fans – 2/25/1952
  • Ricky has a teenage fan named Peggy Dawson (Janet Waldo), who is adamant about stealing her away from Lucy. When Lucy finds out that there is potentially another boy her own age named Arthur Morton (Richard Crenna), who might arouse her interest if he would learn how to dance, Lucy makes teaching him her pet project. This backfires when Arthur then falls in love with Lucy as well. Lucy and Ricky are afraid that the teens don’t see them as being too old, so they ‘age’ even more with the help of wigs, hair coloring, and make-up. They put on an elaborate show of displaying how old they are, forcing Peggy to ‘jiggle’ Ricky’s leg to keep the blood flowing. The final straw is when Lucy takes off her wig and hands it to Arthur, causing both teens to flee the apartment, leaving Lucy and Ricky laughing at their own antics. 1/30/17
• 021. New Neighbors – 3/3/1952
  • When new neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Tom O’Brien (Hayden Rorke, K.T. Stevens) move into the building, Lucy and Ethel’s curiosity gets the best of them and they sneak in to snoop in their apartment. After Ethel leaves, the O’Briens return in the middle of rehearsing a play in which they kill the neighbors, assume their identity, and blow up the capitol. When Lucy reports this to Ricky, the Mertzes, and a police sergeant (Allen Jenkins), no one believes her… until Ricky and Fred overhear it themselves. This prompts them all to bear arms and protect their apartment in military fashion. Unfortunately when they nearly blow away the sergeant, they are all arrested. The sergeant finds out that they have overheard a play, leaving Lucy to blame for the O’Briens moving out, a water pipe being shot, and Ricky’s name splashed on the newspapers for being jailed. 5/11/17
• 022. Fred and Ethel Fight – 3/10/1952
  • Fred and Ethel have recently quarreled and Fred is now staying at the Y, so Lucy decides to get involved and invite them separately over for dinner in hopes of getting them to reconcile. Neither is receptive when they show up and find the other one there, until Lucy lures them back with her pot roast. The argument escalates at first, but soon they both apologize and reconcile. However as Lucy and Ricky are discussing how they get through their arguments, it leads to a new one between them, and soon Ricky is moving out of the apartment. Both Lucy and Ricky are miserable, so Ethel suggests that Lucy pretend she was hit by a bus, and Fred suggests that Ricky ‘rescue’ Lucy from a simulated fire. With Lucy bandaged up and walking around in casts, she ends up falling out the window, when Fred and Ricky create a fake fire in the apartment. The Mertz’s awning saves her, and Lucy and Ricky reconcile… but now Ethel refuses to speak to Fred for coming up with such an idea as the fire. Hazel Pierce is the waitress. 5/15/17
• 023. The Mustache – 3/17/1952
  • Lucy can’t stand the mustache that Ricky is growing and demands that he shave it off. Ricky maintains that it will help him get a film role in Moon Over Baghdad, since talent scout Mr. Murdoch (John Brown) is flying in from L.A. and plans to meet with Ricky. In order to make a point, Lucy borrows a white beard and mustache from Fred and cements it on her face. Ricky finally caves in and shaves, but Lucy can’t get the beard off. When Murdoch comes to the apartment for a visit, Fred and Ethel come in and showcase an Arabian vaudeville act, but are flatly refused. Ricky sings I’ll See You in C-U-B-A, and Lucy comes in and does an Arabian dance, and Foster is actually impressed. However when he sees Lucy’s face with the beard, she is only offered the part or Ricky’s father in the film. 1/2/18
• 024. The Gossip – 3/24/1952
  • Ricky criticizes Lucy for gossiping with her friend, and challenges to keep her mouth shut about her most recent gossip involving her friend Betty find her husband Jack with another woman. Lucy exercises a loophole, and although she keeps her lips literally sealed, she is able to mime the gossip to Ethel. Fred and Ricky get caught up in it too, and admit that men sometimes gossip too – but challenge the girls to see how can refrain from gossiping the longest with the winner getting breakfast in bed for a month. Ricky has the idea to purposely mumble some gossip in his sleep about their neighbor Grace Foster running off with the milkman (Bob Jellison). Lucy takes the bait, but still understands that if she blabs it to Ethel, she’ll lose the bet. Fred pulls the same stunt on Ethel, and then they sit back and listen in as Lucy and Ethel struggle to keep it quiet. Eventually they can’t contain themselves any longer, and the husbands hear it from the basement heating pipes. After the wives fail at pointing out a technicality, the accept defeat and serve the husbands breakfast. But when Grace’s husband Bill (Richard Reeves) comes chasing the milkman through the bedroom, the girls pull out their technicality that the men were actually gossiping since they were the ones that spread the now-true rumors. After the men swap spots and serve the wives, Lucy pays of the milkman and Mr. Foster for faking the scenario. 1/3/18
• 025. Pioneer Women – 3/31/1952
  • Lucy and Ethel start discussing their chores and realize they’ve washed over 200,000 dishes, so the girls demand that their husbands buy them an electric dishwasher. The men not only refuse, they make fun of the girls for relying on their modern conveniences, so they wind up in a bet for $50 that they can go the longest without using anything that was made after the years 1900. They decide to make an exception with the oven so they don’t have cold food all week. Lucy and Ethel struggle with baking bread and churning butter, and when Lucy mistakenly uses 13 cakes of yeast instead of 3, the bread not only becomes difficult to manage, it expands in the oven and comes out all the way across the kitchen. Meanwhile the ladies are invited to a attend a tea for the Society Matron’s League, to see if they will be accepted into the club. Lucy wants to go to the beauty parlor to get ready, but Ethel reminds her that they’ll lose the bet if they do so. Lucy gets the idea that they all dress in turn of the century clothing, hoping the men will call off the bet. Ricky is reluctant to wear the clothes, but Fred loves it. It gives Ricky an idea to do a gay nineties show at the club, and he and Fred perform a rendition of I Was Strolling Through the Park One Day. A Surprise Investigating Committee from the League  shows up to investigate Lucy and finds them all dressed in the nineties clothes. Ricky tells the women, Mrs. Pettibone (Florence Bates) and Mrs. Pomerantz (Ruth Perrott), caught them in the middle of a rehearsal, but the women look down on them because they are show folk. Lucy gets offended and throws them out for being so snooty. Ricky is so proud of her that he calls of the bet and gives her the $50. 9/5/18
• 026. The Marriage License – 4/7/1952
  • While cleaning, Lucy comes upon her marriage license and realizes that Ricky’s last name is spelled “Picardi,” which leads to her panicking and heading down to City Hall to make sure it is valid. Fred has a friend who works there, so Ricky decides to play a joke and have the friend tell Lucy that the license isn’t valid. Lucy is inconsolable and before Ricky can tell her the truth, Lucy is demanding that they re-create their wedding, including the proposal in Connecticut. Ricky goes along and attempts to propose, but gets a little bit irritated when Lucy takes Ricky’s wallet since he had forgotten during the original proposal. When Ricky begins joking around, Lucy gets angry and calls off the proposal, and when they arrive at the Eagle Hotel. Lucy makes sure she registers separately under her maiden name. Since Lucy has Ricky’s wallet, he can’t pay for the room so he has to sleep in the lobby. The desk clerk Mr. Willoughby (Irving Bacon) fills up their car with gas the next morning, but when Ricky can’t pay for it, Willoughby puts on his sheriff hat and tries to arrest Ricky. When Willoughby gets the whole story, he offers to marry them since he is also the Justice of the Peace. Lucy insists on another proposal, and Willoughby calls his wife (Elizabeth Patterson) to watch the proceedings and issue the marriage license. She also sings a horrifying rendition of I Love You Truly, and Willoughby performs the ceremony. Once the wedding is over, Willoughby becomes the sheriff again and threatens to arrest them if they can’t pay a parking fine for leaving their car in a one-hour zone. However, as the Mayor, his wife trumps his decision. 9/5/18
• 027. The Kleptomaniac – 4/14/1952
  • Because of previous mishaps, Lucy knows that Ricky won’t like the fact that she’s volunteered to be chairman of a charity bazaar auction, so she hides the donated money and auction items from him. Ricky discovers the money in Lucy’s purse, but she won’t tell him where it came from, instead opting to tell him that she stole it. Later he sees her smuggling donated items into the apartment and hiding them in the closet. He believes that she is stealing these things and goes to Fred’s apartment to tell him. Meanwhile Ethel has asked Lucy to pick up Fred’s cuckoo clock for the auction because she doesn’t like it. Ricky and Fred both spy her taking the clock, which she attempts to hide in her coat. When it goes off in front of them, she pretends that she is learning bird calls. Ricky decides to bring home psychiatrist Tom Robinson (Joseph Kearns) to treat her. Ethel overhears Ricky making the appointment and tells Lucy, who gets angry that Ricky could believe such a thing. She decides to teach him a lesson by pretending to be a thug and along with Ethel, have attempted a bank heist and shot a pair of policemen as they made their escape. Robinson hypnotizes her and tries to get to the root cause of her issue. She says she will no longer steal, because she’s already performed the ultimate heist, stealing a baby elephant from the circus, which she proceeds to bring out of the bedroom. 6/1/19 
• 028. Cuban Pals – 4/21/1952
  • Some of Ricky’s old friends with whom he started in show business in Cuba come to visit and perform in his club for the opening night of their American tour. Lucy learns the hard way that the couple Calos (Alberto Morin) and Maria Ortega (Rita Conde) cannot speak English when she is left alone with them while Ricky goes for some wine. When he returns they ask if he might stand in for their friend Ramon who has been delayed, and perform with Renita Perez (Lita Baron). Ricky had performed as her father when she was a child back in Cuba, but Lucy becomes worried when she sees that Renita now she is full grown and beautiful. Lucy and Ethel disguise themselves as scrub women to see the pair rehearse at the club singing a duet of The Lady in Red. Lucy attempts to interfere in the act with her mop and bucket, but only ends up dousing herself with the bucket of water. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Ramon makes it into town, so Ricky foregoes performing with her, but Lucy has other plans and invites Renita over and then sends her home in a cab driven by a disguised Fred who ensure she doesn’t make it to the club. Lucy goes on in her place but is shocked to find that during the African Wedding Ceremony number, after Ricky croons the song Similau, Ramon comes out and stalks Lucy dressed in full headhunter regalia, to the point that she ends up fainting in Ricky’s arms. 6/2/19
• 029. The Freezer – 4/28/1952
  • When neither Ricky nor Fred will buy Lucy or Ethel the freezer they want, Ethel calls her Uncle Oscar, a butcher who is giving up his shop. He offers them his walk-in freezer for free if they will pay for delivery and installation. The gals decide to buy some meat at bulk prices in order to start saving money, so they order two sides of beef, not knowing that it equates to 700 pounds until the deliverymen (Frank Sully, Bennett Green) show up with enough meat to fill their kitchen. They initially try selling some of it to shoppers (Barbara Pepper, Kay Wiley) at he butcher’s (Fred Aldrich) shop until he runs them out. When they get home, they start stocking the freezer with it, and learn that the lock only works from the outside when Ethel gets locked in. Ricky and Fred come home and tell the girls that they known about he freezer because they ran into Oscar, but think it is a good idea to have the freezer. They even get the girls started by buying them 30 pounds of meat. When they head down to put it in the freezer, Ethel stalls Ricky by having him sing Mama Inez and Cielito Lindo to her, while Lucy hides the meat in the unlit furnace. Lucy ends up getting locked in the freezer for a long period of time, and by the time they find her, she is nearly frozen solid and covered in ice. They bring her upstairs and warm up, but when the air starts to smell delicious, she realizes that Fred has lit the furnace with the meat inside. She tearfully tells them to head to the basement with some ketchup for a huge barbecue. 2/17/20
• 030. Lucy Does a TV Commercial – 5/5/1952
  • Lucy is upset that Ricky has been going to rehearsals a lot, but then finds out that he is preparing to host a Saturday Night Varieties TV show. What’s more, she finds out that Ricky has been charged with finding a girl to perform a TV commercial during the broadcast, but he refuses to consider letting her do it. With Ethel out of town visiting her mother, Fred assists Lucy in proving how well she would do on TV, by having Ricky watch her perform a Philip Morris cigarette commercial while she is literally inside the television set, the inside parts having been removed piece by piece. When he still refuses, she gives him the silent treatment, but then overhears Ricky ask Fred to take a phone call for him and tell the girl when and where to report for the commercial. Lucy intercepts the call and tells her that the part has already been cast, then proceeds to report to the director (Ross Elliott). He runs her through several rehearsals as she pitches Vitameatavegamin, an elixer that contains vitamins, meat, vegetables, minerals… and 23% alcohol. Lucy becomes more and more drunk as she rehearses, slurring her speech and downing the entire bottle, until the director has his assistant Joe (Jerry Hausner) lead her back stage to take a nap before shooting begins. At air time, Ricky introduces the show and performs the song El Relicario, during which Lucy roams out on stage, tries to kiss, dance with, and join Ricky in singing the song, until he ultimately has to carry her off stage. Johnny Jacobs is the show announcer. 2/18/20
• 031. The Publicity Agent – 5/12/1952
  • Ricky is depressed because he has been getting very little publicity and makes the mistake of telling Lucy that his name never shows up in the paper. Lucy offers to become his agent but he declines. Nevertheless she starts planning to have her jewelry ‘stolen’, but when she finds an article about the Shah of Persia being a Benny Goodman fan, she gets the idea to manufacture a story about a member of royalty being a fan of Ricky Ricardo. She makes up the country of Franistan and the Maharincess of Sheherzade, and then phones the press posing as her mother to let them know she is coming to America for the sole purpose of seeing Ricky. When he reads the story, he thinks it is ludicrous and blames his agent Kenny, but when he finds out that Kenny was responsible, he is flattered and arranges a command performance for her at the club. The event draws a reporter (Peter Leeds) and photographer (Bennett Green), and Ricky performs I Get Ideas and two dozen more songs, including a repeat of Babalu over and over. After the show, Lucy and Ethel head back to the Waldorf-Astoria where they have taken residence. Suddenly the Chief of the Franistanian secret police Amjan Xanadu enters their room and tells Lucy that she is in danger due to revolution. Two apparent assassins (Richard Reeves, Gil Herman) then enter and kill Xanadu, demanding secrets from her. A third assassin called the Tiger come in and is about to kill her with a knife, when he pulls off his mask and reveals that he is Ricky, and Xanadu reveals himself to be Fred, both of them claiming payback for her pretending to be royalty. Lucy finds it funny while Ethel is angry. Lucy says that she was never scared, but then faints dead away. 5/29/20
• 032. Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio – 5/19/1952
  • The Mertzes visit the Ricardos for another night of watching television, but Lucy suggest that they attempt to talk instead of watch TV. The can’t find a topic of conversation so the TV goes on, but then they can’t agree on how to set the picture. Lucy and Ricky bicker over adjusting it until she breaks off the know. Finally they resort to listening to Mr. and Mrs. Quiz on the radio. Ricky surprises everyone when he knows all of the answers to the American History category. Later he confesses to Fred that he had been at the studio when it was recorded and he had heard the answers already. Lucy doesn’t know this when she calls the show’s host Freddy Filmore (Frank Nelson) and tells him that Ricky is one of the smartest men in America. Just before Freddy announces that Lucy and Ricky will be on the show the next night, Ricky admits to Lucy that he had already known the answers. He is angry, and insists that she will have to answer the questions. She goes to visit Filmore to try and get out of being on the show, but when he tells her that a new sponsorship from Philip Morris will be thanks to him getting guests like Ricky, she doesn’t have the heart to cancel. Instead she steals the answers to the quiz off of the floor and sneaks out with them. She memorizes the answers, but on the air they change the rules and have Ricky draw the questions from a jar. Lucy’s answers take on new meanings with the questions asked, and they miss all of them. Finally they give a $500 bonus question, which Ricky manages to inadvertently answer correctly by saying “Please let me sit down; this is making me sick” when asked what Washington had said crossing the Delaware. Robert Ellis is Tommy the office boy. Roy Rowan is the game show announcer. 5/29/20
• 033. Lucy’s Schedule – 5/26/1952
  • Ricky is pressuring Lucy to get ready to meet Fred and Ethel for a night at the movies, but despite all of his pestering she still makes him late. The next day he plans to have dinner with the club owner Alvin Littlefield (Gale Gordon) and his wife Phoebe (Edith Meiser) and insists that Lucy is on time. She does in fact get ready with a half hour to spare, but then tells Ricky that she tricked herself into doing by setting the clock back one hour… which actually meant they were late. His new boss has no patience for tardiness and he and his wife have dinner on their own before the Ricardos arrive, leaving Lucy so ravenous that she attempts to eat their wax fruit. Ricky is upset and embarrassed by the situation that he puts Lucy on a strictly monitored schedule. She is able to take shortcuts to get everything done, and also jabs at Ricky by serving him his breakfast frozen. Mr. Littlefield is considering Ricky for a promotion to club manager, but doesn’t like how late Ricky was to dinner, so Ricky brags about the new schedule and tells him that Lucy is now behaving like a trained seal. He invites the Littlefields over to watch Lucy perform. Both Ethel and Mrs. Littlefield confront Lucy about the schedule because their husbands are threatening to put them on it. The cook up a plan to have everyone over and then rush them through conversation, drinks, and the meal… all in the name of following the schedule. Littlefield gets the point and tells Ricky he is running his household like a tyrant, which he claims is not good for the home… but will be perfect for managing the club. 9/11/20
• 034. Ricky Thinks He’s Gong Bald – 6/2/1952
  • Lucy points out her own crows’ feet, and likewise mentions that Ricky’s hairline is receding as they get older. He takes a look and agrees… and then becomes obsessive about his hair and his appearance, even resorting to wearing a hat around the house. Lucy gets annoyed by it and decides to try and snap him out of it by visiting a hair restorer named Mr. Thurlow (Milton Parsons) to buy the most stinky and painful hair solutions she can find in order to get Ricky to forget about his hair. She doesn’t have the heart to apply them to him, and instead decides to invite a group of bald men over to make Ricky feel better about himself. She contacts Mr. Thurlow and arranges for some bald men to come over at ten dollars a head. He even collects ten himself as he is actually bald and wearing a toupee. Fred shows up as well, but he has added a toupee to his own head. Ricky calls and says he won’t be home that evening because he is stuck at work, so Lucy returns to her original plan. She painfully massages his head, then adds oil, vinegar, raw egg, and a mustard plaster to head, before slapping on a stocking and head warmer. She tells Ricky that he will need to do this every other night for six months. Ricky feels a tingle on his head and tells her that he want to do it every night. 9/11/20
• 035. Ricky Asks for a Raise – 6/9/1952
  • Ricky and Lucy are having Ricky’s boss Alvin Littlefield (Gale Gordon) and his wife Phoebe (Edith Meiser) over for dinner, and Lucy is pressing him to ask for a raise. Ricky wants to gingerly tiptoe around the subject, while Lucy wants him to present an ultimatum. After they eat, Lucy forces the subject and tells Littlefield that Ricky has offers all over town for double and triple the salary. Unfortunately, Littlefield calls their bluff and tells Ricky that he should take such an opportunity. Ricky becomes depressed, and eventually heads to the unemployment office. Lucy gets the idea to reserve all 300 seats at the Tropicana herself, so that no one shows up to see Ricky’s replacement, Xavier Valdez, King of the Kanga. After Lucy and Ethel booked all the seats with maitre d’ Maurice (Maurice Marsac), Fred borrows clothes from his quick change artist friend, and the three of them go the club each dressed as three separate customers, all of whom leave in a huff when they find out from the waiter (William H. O’Brien) that Ricky Ricardo no longer plays there. Eventually Mr. Littlefield realizes he’ll go bankrupt this way, so he has Maurice get hold of Ricky and have him come in. The next day, Ricky comes home all smiles and announces that Littlefield offered him double his pay because customers were leaving since he wasn’t there. However, Ricky declined the offer since he now realizes that with his ‘popularity’ he can write his own ticket anywhere. NOTE: Maurice is named as ‘William’ in the credits. 12/29/20 

SEASON 2

• 036. Job Switching – 9/15/1952
  • When Lucy writes a check she can’t cover, Rick and Fred, who seems to have the same money problems with Ethel, make an agreement with Lucy and Ethel to switch places and make the girls the breadwinners while they stay home and do the housework. Lucy and Ethel go to the Acme Employment Agency and meet with Mr. Snodgrass (Alvin Hurwitz) to find a job. When it is determined that the ladies have no identifiable skills, he assigns them to the Kramer’s Candy Kitchen. The factory foreman (Elvia Allman) assigns Lucy to do the candy dipping while Ethel works in packaging. Lucy winds up in a chocolate fight with her co-candy dipper (Amanda Milligan). Both ladies are re-assigned to candy packaging where they struggle to keep up with the conveyor belt. They wind up shoving some of the chocolate down their shirts and into their mouths to appear to be keeping pace, but this only leads the foreman to tell them to speed it up. Eventually the belt is going so fast that they can do nothing but shove the candy in their shirts and mouths. Meanwhile back home, Ricky and Fred are not faring much better. Ricky has already attempted to pass breakfast off as his own, although he purchased it at the drug store. Both Fred and Ricky destroy multiple items of clothing as they attempt to iron. They then agree to split up the dinner duties by having Ricky make the chicken and rice and Fred making the seven-layer cake. Fred’s cake winds up flat as a pancake, and the rice nearly covers the entire kitchen floor. When the ladies come home and see the mess, the men are forced to beg them to switch back. They even offer the boxes of candy as an apology… but the ladies are sickened after having had so much chocolate already. 12/30/20
• 037. The Saxophone – 9/22/1952
  • Ricky is getting ready to leave for a three-week road trip with the band, and naturally Lucy thinks she is going along. She and Ethel look through the attic in order to clear out a trunk for Lucy to use to pack, and she finds her own saxophone, demonstrating for Ethel how she auditioned with the song Glow Worm to get in the school band. After that, she learned to play nothing else, but only faked it silently for the rest of her band career. Ricky later tells her that he didn’t plan to take her. She tries to convince him that she can play the sax, but he says that the road is no place for a woman and she wouldn’t fit in. She consults Fred on how musicians normally act, and then takes his description, and tries to imitate a hep cat jazz fanatic, and sit in with the band while playing Glow Worm… but remaining silent when she is supposed to solo. Ricky tells her that she didn’t get the job, so she moves on to the next plan: to make Ricky think that a man is calling on her, by leaving a hat and pair of gloves that Ethel loaned her from Fred’s own wardrobe. The plan nearly works, and Ricky hits the ceiling with jealousy, but when Fred recognizes the accessories as his own, Ricky figures out what she is doing. She turns the tables by calling his friend Jule (Herb Vigran) and having him send over four men to hide in the closet. They then surprise her by popping out one by one, the first one (Charles Victor) claiming that Ricky has caught on, leaving Lucy to try and explains what is going on to Ricky. Lucy leaves the apartment and after hours of waiting for her, Ricky becomes worried. He then gets a call from Jule that he was unable to provide any men to send over. Ricky hits the ceiling again, but it turns out that Lucy is with Jule and they have a big laugh. 4/24/21
• 038. The Anniversary Present – 9/29/1952
  • Ricky and Lucy’s anniversary is coming up, and Ricky is planning to buy some pearls for Lucy. Since Bill Foster from Josef’s Jewelry is out of town, Ricky strikes a deal with his wife Grace (Gloria Blondell), who lives downstairs, to get the jewelry from her wholesale. Lucy doesn’t think Ricky even remembers the anniversary so she attempts to drop hints including circling the date on the calendar, leaving her wedding ring by his breakfast, and serving him rice. She starts to get suspicious when Ricky says he is going to see Fred, and then later Fred tells her that Ricky never found him. It gets even worse when Ethel reports to Lucy that she saw Ricky coming out of Grace’s apartment. Even during rehearsal, where the band performs Down Argentine Way, Jule is suspicious when Grace calls him at work. When Lucy catches Ricky in more strange phone calls, and leaving the apartment, she and Ethel listen in through the furnace pipes to his conversation with Grace, which sounds like they are having an affair. Lucy and Ethel then dress up like the painters who are painting the apartment building, and lower themselves on a scaffold in front of Grace’s window, where Ricky is trying to help her get off a stuck necklace that she has been showing him as a sample. They wind up nearly falling off the scaffold, and Lucy winds up with her head in a bucket of paint. Fred and Ricky rescue the girls, and then Ricky plays it up as if he and Grace really are having an affair… before he finally gives her the pearl necklace that he has bought for her. Barbara Pepper is the voice of the woman in 4B, and Richard Reeves is the voice of Albert, her husband. 4/25/21
• 039. The Handcuffs – 10/6/1952
  • Fred spends the afternoon at the Ricardo’s trying to entertain them with magic tricks, one of them involving a pair of handcuffs. Later that evening, Lucy wants Ricky to take her to dinner and the movies, but Ricky needs to rehearse for a TV show called Guest Stars. Lucy is irritated that he doesn’t have the evening free, so she borrows the trick handcuffs and attaches herself to Ricky. However it turns out that the handcuffs were not the trick ones, but rather made of solid steel during the Civil War era. They are unable to get the cuffs off, and they are forced to sleep with them on, going through every gyration possible so Lucy can sleep on her stomach in her bed. Ethel brings over locksmith Mr. Walters (Will Wright), but none of the keys fit the old handcuffs. He offers to go home and bring back his collection of vintage handcuff keys. As the TV show time approaches, and Walters has been gone for hours, he finally calls them and tells them that he is running late because he got locked out of his house. Ricky tells him to meet them at the studio, and they eventually have to go on while still in the cuffs. As Ricky sings In Santiago, Chile, Lucy stands behind a curtain, and simulates Ricky’s arm movements with his own. As he winds down the song, Walters shows up and pulls his arm backstage and finally unlocks the handcuffs, so he can take his final bow with his own arms. Paul Dubov is Ricky’s assistant Jerry. Veola Vonn is the emcee. 8/20/21
• 040. The Operetta – 10/13/1952
  • The Fine Arts League women’s club has their meeting a Lucy’s place, and they decide to put on a fund-raising operetta. Lucy is concerned because she has taken hundreds of dollars from the treasury and used it to replenish her own household fun that she has overspent. She gets the idea to bypass spending anything on the licensing or acting fees by writing and starring in the play herself, along with Ricky, the Mertzes, and members of the club. She promises Ethel that if she helps, she can sing the lead part. She gets to work on writing the music and script to a play she calls The Pleasant Peasant. Lucy tries to take back her promise and give herself the lead female part since Ricky is playing the lead male. However, Ethel claims to be the better singer…and proves it, so Lucy recants and takes the role of the snaggletooth gypsy queen. The story concerns a young girl named Lily who laments not being married. until the old gypsy queen shows up and predicts her future marriage, but declares it will be a disaster. Prince Lancelot falls in love with Lily and marries her, but on their way home, a group of highwaymen knock out Lancelot and kidnap Lily because a witch has put a curse on the leader of the highwaymen and turned him into a frog. He is also the long-lost brother of the Princess. This is the end of act one. Meanwhile, Ricky and Ethel discuss the fact that Lucy can’t carry a tune, so they have the chorus join her in singing everytime she opens her mouth. Lucy also reveals to Ethel that she had to post-date her check for the costumes and scenery since the treasury is still empty. On the night of the show, the club president (Myra Marsh) introduces the show, and the peasant girls launch into the song The Pleasant Peasant Girls, followed by a solo from Fred of The Good Squire Quinn. Ethel then makes her entrance and sings Lily of the Valley, followed by Lucy’s entrance in garish costume, and her performance of Queen of the Gypsies… joined by the chorus, which annoys Lucy. The entire ensemble then sings The Troops of the Queen, and Ricky as Lancelot, sings Good Prince Lancelot. A singer then enters the stage and ‘sings’ to Lucy that the men have come to take back the scenery and costumes, and they start to do this, even stripping Ricky of his pants onstage, as they dance around the stage during the wedding scene. Lucy is carried off the stage as the take out a bench. 8/20/21
• 041. Vacation from Marriage – 10/27/1952
  • Lucy starts thinking about how much of a rut she is in, and is able to verbally choreograph to Ethel every move Ricky will make when he wakes up. Ethel finds she can also predict Fred’s every move. Lucy gathers Ricky and the Mertzes together and proposes that they take a vacation from their marriage just to spice things up. Ricky is a little reluctant, but Fred realizes that this will allow them to be bachelors again. They agree that Lucy will move in with Ethel, and Fred can stay with Ricky. It doesn’t take more than a few days of going to the movies before Lucy and Ethel realize they are bored and miss their husbands. Ricky and Fred are upstairs in the same boat, both missing the wives. However, all of them are too proud to admit it to the others. Lucy proposes that she and Ethel dress up and pretend that they are going out on the town with dates, and furthermore they act as if they’ve been living it up, having dinner at Twenty-One every night. Ricky retaliates by telling the girls that he and Fred have dates for the night too. Although the girls believe that Ricky and Fred were lying about their dates, they aren’t quite sure, so they sneak up to peek in on them to see if they’ve really left. Fred and Ricky are equally worried, so they sneak down to check on the girls. Since they’ve both left at the same time, they just miss each other. As they’re both heading home, the girls hear the guys downstairs, so they flee up onto the roof. Ricky and Fred don’t see them, but decide to wait on the stairs to wait for them to come home so they can see who they went out with. At first, the girls wait for Ricky and Fred to go back into the the apartment before they leave the roof. Then they realize they are locked on the roof, cold and tired. They try to get the attention of Mrs. Sanders across the street, and then try to cross over to the next building, before finally just simply falling asleep on the roof. It isn’t long before Ricky and Fred come up to retrieve them, having gotten a phone call from Mrs. Sanders. They all agree that the vacation from marriage was a horrible idea. 2/18/22
• 042. The Courtroom – 11/10/1952
  • Ricky and Lucy buy Fred and Ethel a 20-inch TV for their 25th wedding anniversary gift, but Lucy has it delivered to their own apartment so they can hand deliver it to the Mertzes. After struggling to get it downstairs, they find that the Mertzes aren’t even home. Fortunately, they return shortly, and are delighted with the gift. They take it into the Mertz apartment to watch it, but the lines in the picture are too fuzzy. Ricky removes the back of the TV and pulls out two wires and attaches them, but when he does, it causes the TV to break and the screen to shatter. The Mertzes are furious that Ricky tinkered with it when he didn’t know what he was doing, Fred so much so that he goes upstairs and kicks in the screen of the Ricardos’ television. They talk about suing each other, and when a man comes to the door acting as if he is a fan of Ricky’s who wants an autograph, they find out that he is a process server (Harry Bartell) and that the Mertzes are in fact suing. Ricky decides to represent himself, and prepares a testimony for Lucy to give, even directing her on how to look during different parts of the speech. On their day in court, Lucy testifies first and gives the speech, pausing to look lovingly at Ricky, sneer at the Mertzes, and flirt with the judge. She also interject several lies, including saying that it was Fred who removed the back of the TV and caused the explosion. Similarly, Fred has Ethel give their testimony, which is also laden with untruths, including saying that Ricky hacked the TV apart with an axe, and then lifted Fred’s foot to put it through his own TV. The judge (Moroni Nelson) warns them that they are under oath to tell the truth and could face prison time for lying, causes them to change their tune and get a little closer to the truth. They bring his TV out of his chambers to recreate the crime. When Ricky notices that the wires are also not connected in his TV, the judge says that putting those wires together will not cause the TV to explode. He orders all four parties to go into his chambers and talk things through. Sure enough they all make up, and each agrees to buy the other a new TV. The judge reminds them to control their tempers. After they leave, the judge tries to connect the wires on his TV, and it does indeed cause an explosion. He gets angry and kicks out his own TV screen. Robert B. Williams is the bailiff. 2/19/22
• 043. Redecorating – 11/24/1952
  • The girls are visiting a home show, and Ricky and Fred are certain that they are going to come back wanting to redecorate their apartments with all new furniture. Ricky hopes to divert Lucy’s attention from furniture by using the four tickets he got to the opening of the new Rogers & Hammerstein show opening up that night. When they get home, they indeed cannot talk about anything but new furniture, but they are not asking Fred and Ricky to buy it for them. They have each entered 100 tickets in a contest at the show that was giving away five free rooms of furniture. In fact, they decline the tickets to the show for that night since they need to sit home by the phone and answer it if the call comes in that they’ve won. They are so hellbent to wait for the call that they trick two ladies, Agnes (Margie Liszt) and her friend (Florence Halop), into getting off the party line. Meanwhile, Ricky really wants to use the tickets that night, so he assigns Fred to call Lucy and act like he’s with the contest and tell Lucy that she’s won the furniture. That way she will feel free to leave. When she gets the call, she is ecstatic and wants to start planning for it right away, so she calls a used furniture dealer Dan Jenkins (Hans Conried), and he comes over and takes the furniture off her hands for a mere $75. Lucy then wants to take that money, and uses it to begin repainting and wallpapering the apartment, starting in her bedroom. She and Ethel decide to do the job themselves, which results in some of the most crooked wallpaper ever put up… even covering the window and door in the room. When Ricky gets home, he is furious, but mostly with himself for the lie. Ricky calls Mr. Jenkins back and offers to re-purchase his own furniture, which hasn’t even left the apartment yet, sticking him with a $395 bill. Ricky can’t believe his bad fortune, but then Fred rushes in to tell Ricky that he couldn’t get the nerve up to make the call to Lucy, meaning that she really did win the furniture from the home show contest after all. 6/23/22
• 044. Ricky Loses His Voice – 12/1/1952
  • While Ricky is the Tropicana rehearsing the song Mexican Giveaway while nursing a sore throat, Lucy is at home where her new furniture is being delivered. In order to get is situated, she shoves all of the old furniture out into the hallway and then expects Fred to take it to the basement. Ricky comes home and sees the furniture, but can’t get overly enthusiastic because his throat hurts so bad. Ricky even declines helping Fred carry the furniture because of his throat. The next day Lucy gets the doctor to come see him, and he tells Ricky that he has a virus and he needs to stay in bed for an entire week without talking if he plans to be in the show. Ricky tries to get out of it because he wants to impress the new manager Mr. Chambers (Arthur Q. Bryan) by staging the show to his liking. However Lucy won’t let him get out bed and insists that Chambers stage the show. Lucy heads down to talk to Chambers, but before he gets a chance, Chambers calls and tells her that he is going out of town, but knows that Ricky can be counted on to stage the show to his liking. With both Ricky and Chambers thinking the other will be staging the show, Lucy decides to stage it herself, and include Fred, Ethel, and even their old Vaudeville showgirls. On the night of the show during his performance of Sweet and Lovely, Ricky is surprised when the stage becomes filled with elderly showgirls (Barbara Pepper, Hazel Pierce, Gertrude Astor, and Helen Dixon). He is further surprised that the next number, Carolina in the Morning is performed by Fred and Ethel. And then he gets his final shock when Lucy, dressed as a flapper, enters the stage singing 5 Foot 2, Eyes of Blue. As the elderly showgirls and Fred and Ethel take the stage for the final number Charleston, Ricky notices that Mr. Chambers takes the stage performing with them. Ricky finally gives in and starts performing the Charleston as well. 6/24/22
• 045. Lucy Is Enceinte – 12/8/1952
  • Lucy is feeling a little ‘donsey’ and also feels like she is gaining some weight, so she makes a doctor appointment. Ethel speculates that possibly she is going to have a baby, but Lucy reminds her that she has been married for eleven years at this point. Still, Ethel waits at her apartment until she comes home. When she does, she is floating on air, and confirms to Ethel that she indeed is having a baby. Ethel wants to tell Fred, but Lucy asks that she wait until she tells Ricky. She has always had it in her head to do it a certain way, so when he comes home for lunch, she makes him food, and then tries to sit with him on the couch to tell him the good news. Unfortunately, they are interrupted several times with phone calls from the club, and Ethel and Fred dropping by to see if he’s been told yet. Ricky then brings Fred in to tell him all of his woes at the nightclub as he’s preparing for a show. Once Lucy gets them out of there, Ricky gets one more call from the club, in which he is told that the union is demanding that they have stand-by dishwashers, causing him to have to rush out and never hear the news. Over at the club, after Ricky and band rehearse the song Granada, Lucy shows up to try yet again. As she tries to tell him, various personnel ask Ricky questions, until he finally demands that they all be perfectly quiet while he hears what Lucy has to say. She then becomes too self-conscious with them all gathered around in silence, listening in. She breaks down in tears and leaves. Taht night during the show, while Ricky is performing The Lady in Red, Lucy slips a note to the Maitre d’ (William Hamel) to have Ricky sing We’re Having a Baby (My Baby and Me) to a couple in the audience who is having a baby. Ricky doesn’t know who it is, so he circles the tables while singing Rock-a-Bye-Baby and surveys the couple if they are the lucky parents, Finally he comes across Lucy sitting solo at a table up front. Ricky then realizes that it is him who is becoming a father. Lucy and Ricky share an emotional moment and then Ricky sings We’re Having a Baby (My Baby in Me) as Lucy accompanies him onstage. Richard Reeves is the electrician. 10/16/22
• 046. Pregnant Women Are Unpredictable – 12/15/1952
  • As Lucy starts to prepare for her life of motherhood, she works with a baby doll to practice bathing and diapering it. She’s also thinking overtime about the name of the baby. Ricky thinks they have settled on Scott or Pamela, but then Lucy wants to change them to Gregory or Joanne. Cynthia, Philip, John, Mary, Romeo, and Juliet follow as potentials as well. Ricky’s okay with anything as long as she decides. He also offers to cook her waffles in bed but keeps calling her in to help him find the waffle maker, and then the waffle mix in the kitchen. Eventually Fred comes over to help, and they wind up making a disaster of the kitchen and burn the waffles. Ethel stops by and helps her clean it up, but Lucy realizes it is the thought that counts. However, the more she thinks about it, she realizes that Ricky has never done this until she’s become pregnant. She breaks down thinking that Ricky no longer loves her, but only little Sharon or Pierpont. Ethel can’t get her calmed down, but when Ricky brings home gifts for Lucy, it brings a smile back. However, the gifts are all for the baby: a rattle, a bonnet, and baby clothes. Ethel chats with Ricky and tells him what is going on and advises him to take her out for dinner and dancing. Ricky sends Lucy an orchid and some candy, but Lucy is resistant to accepting anything from him. Ricky then calls her and invites her to come to the Tropicana that night for dinner and dancing and tells her to invite Fred and Ethel as well. They all have a lovely time dancing to an instrumental You Belong to Me, and then Ricky sings Cheek to Cheek to Lucy as they dance together. After they all return to their table, Lucy breaks down in tears again. This time it is because Ricky hasn’t mentioned their baby, Robert or Madelyn, all evening. Bennett Green is the deliveryman. 10/17/22
• 047. Lucy’s Show Biz Swan Song – 12/22/1952
  • Ricky is looking for barbershop quartet singers for his new show at the club which is a Gay Nineties Revue. Fred and Ethel show up at the apartment and put on an act singing Carolina in the Morning. Ricky agrees to give them an audition, but is certain that in Lucy’s pregnant condition, she wouldn’t even be interested in the show. She proves him wrong by appearing singing While Strolling Through the Park One Day. She tells Ricky that once the baby comes, she will no longer have any aspirations of being in showbiz, but he is adamant that she isn’t going to be in the show. This doesn’t stop her from recruiting Ethel to dress up as a man and going with her to the club and audition with the song By the Light of the Silvery Moon. After Ricky rehearses an act with Pepito the Clown impersonating a baby, doing mime as a lion tamer, and riding a tiny bicycle, Ricky makes a crack that he should try real lion taming. He then sees Lucy and Ethel’s act in which Lucy’s undergarments fall down at the finish of the song, and afterward, Pepito returns with a real lion. Ricky tells Lucy she can’t be in the show, but he adds Fred and Ethel to the barbershop quartet after the audition with Goodnight Ladies. Ricky plans to have the three of them play barbers, and then a fourth guy named George Watson as the customer in the barbershop. After everyone leaves, Lucy makes a phone call to George Watson. That night at the club, they all perform Sweet Adeline, with the fourth person in the barbershop under a towel. Naturally when they remove the towel, they find Lucy there. They try to prevent her from singing by covering her face and then shoving the shaving cream brush in her mouth. After each of them do this, Lucy manages to turn the tables and shove the brushes in their mouths while she finishes the song by herself. NOTE: The Christmas tag scene from the episode Drafted ended this episode as well. Jerry Hausner is the stage manager. 2/19/23
• 048. Lucy Hires an English Tutor – 12/29/1952
  • After Ricky brings Lucy home some pickles and papaya ice cream, they begin to discuss the baby. Both agree that they don’t care whether it is a boy or a girl, but Ricky’s gift of a football and boxing gloves, as well as Lucy’s work on a dress for the baby, proves otherwise. Lucy also begins to discuss the momentous task of raising a child and worries she won’t be able to answer the many questions that the child will ask, like where rain comes from. She is also concerned that Ricky’s English is terrible and that hers could be improved as well. After Lucy has Ricky read a child’s book as if he were reading to their child, Lucy realizes that Ricky’s speaking is worse than she though, especially when he struggles with any word spelled with an ‘-ough’. She decides to hire an English tutor for the two of them as well as Fred and Ethel and makes a deal with a professor named Percy Livermore (Hans Conried). Fred makes a joke out of their first day of teaching by wearing a Buster Brown styled outfit and coming in singing School Days. Livermore gives them a lesson on pronunciation and grammar, discouraging them from using words like ‘ok’, ‘lousy’, or ‘swell’. Later Livermore tries to discuss the deal that Lucy made with him and tells Ricky that he will be singing the song Tippy Tippy Toe in Ricky’s act. He even has parts for all four of them to sing with him. After running through the song once with everyone, Ricky nixes the idea completely. Later, it seems Ricky has had a change of heart and plans to let Livermore sing in the club after all. However, he confides to Fred that his plan will nix this idea once and for all. He has bribed Mr. Livermore by offering him auditions with every record company in town. When Lucy enters the room, Livermore begins speaking in slang phrases and pronouncing words the way Ricky does. Ricky claims that he and Livermore have grown on each other, so Lucy decides that Livermore has lost the battle of the accents and no longer wants hi services. 2/19/23
• 049. Ricky Has Labor Pains – 1/5/1953
  • Ricky is planning on hosting Fred and a couple of friends to watch a game in their apartment, but Lucy tells him that they’ll have to move it to Fred’s place as she is expecting a ‘surprise’ baby shower from Ethel and their girlfriends. Ricky also has to get his own lunch and pick up his own dry cleaning and tuxedo before he has to go to work, as Lucy was too busy getting the apartment ready. She also forgets to get his dinner before he has to go to work. Fred brings in a newspaper article about him by Walter Winchell, but it turns out to be about Lucy having the baby and barely a mention of him. Later, Ricky comes down with stomach pains that he attributes to something he ate. They get Dr. Rabwin (Louis Merrill) over to check him out, and he concludes that Ricky’s pains are psychosomatic, as he’s feeling like all of the attention is on the baby and he is getting none. He suggests that Lucy try to do something to make him feel special. She and Ethel come up with the idea of throwing him a Daddy baby shower. Fred agrees to help arrange it, but Lucy becomes worried when he refers to it as a stag party. She decides that she and Ethel will crash the party somehow so they can see what is going on. Ricky is excited when he hears that there will be newspaper coverage of the party. His friends all show up at lodge where the hold the party, and each member gives him a bottle of beer as a gift. The reporters show up and turn out to be Lucy, posing as Pete the reporter, and Ethel, posing as Sam the photographer for the ‘New York Herald Times Tribune’. Ricky recognizes them right away and tells the others. Fred refers to his wife as a ‘battle ax’ and their friend Jerry starts to tell an off-color story. Lucy and Ethel try to leave the party, but Ricky and Fred say goodbye to ‘Lucy and Ethel’. Ricky tells Lucy that he recognized her since she is wearing his tie and taped on her mustache. That night at home, Ricky brings home ice cream, chocolate syrup, and sardines, which Lucy mixes together to satisfy her craving. She tells Ricky that she’s surprised he didn’t have cravings to go along with his fake pains. Ricky is annoyed with this, especially when he figures out they threw the Daddy shower to try to make him feel better. Suddenly he develops a craving for Lucy’s concoction. 7/24/23
• 050. Lucy Becomes a Sculptress – 1/12/1953
  • Curious about what her baby will look like, Lucy begins browsing childhood photos of herself and Ricky. She also sees a photo ff her great-grandfather, who she claims was a great artist. She notes to Ricky that their baby will have some tremendous artistic influences, with Ricky being a musician and her having artists in her family. However, she thinks that should bring her personal skills back to the surface, so she visits an art store. The manager (Leon Belasco) convinces Lucy that she has the hands of a sculptress and has her try her hands with some clay. The store owner William Abbott (Shep Menken) comes out and immediately raves about her ‘sculpture’ after she has her hands in the clay for mere seconds. He also convinces her to buy about 50 pounds of clay. When she gets home, she starts working with the clay and shows off her sculpture of a child at its mother’s knee, which Ethel incorrectly identifies as a nose. Lucy claims she is struggling because she has no model, so she ropes Ethel into modeling, but she gets annoyed when Lucy puts her ear over her mouth, and her nose on her forehead. When she leaves, Lucy gets Fred to pose as a discus thrower in his long underwear. When he takes a break, he realizes he can no longer sand erect. Lucy then wants Ricky to pay for her to hire a professional model, but he says it is too expensive, especially since she has no talent to speak of. He then agrees to bring an art critic named Mr. Harvey (Paul Harvey) from the New York Times to check out her work. In order to obtain a rave review, she covers her own face in clay and hides under a table with her head coming up through a hole, and has Ethel try and pass her head off as one of Lucy’s sculptures. When Ricky and Mr. Harvey initially see it, they are very impressed. In fact, Harvey is so impressed, he offers to buy it. Ricky declines… until he offers $500 for it. In order to stop him, Ethel points out its flaws and tries to adjust the sculpture as Lucy contorts her face. When Harvey tries to pick up her head, Lucy finally panics and has to stand up, raising the table with her. Harvey takes back his check, as Ricky swears that he had nothing to do with this. 7/24/23
• 051. Lucy Goes to the Hospital – 1/19/1953
  • As Ricky is planning for his new show opening in which he will appear in headhunter makeup at the Tropicana, Lucy is told by her doctor that she will be going into labor any minute. When Ricky hears this, he wants to cancel his appearance, but Lucy insists that he go on with the show. Still, he wants to give her as much time as possible to go into labor before he heads to the show. As she knits, Ricky can do nothing but stare at her and fuss over her, so Lucy calls Fred and Ethel to come up and calm him down. At first, they pretend that the whole event is no big deal, but soon they become just as anxious as Ricky. They decide to rehearse their roles in being prepared when the moment comes. The do a couple of dry runs of Ethel calling the hospital, Fred getting her suitcase, and Ricky helping Lucy to the door. Soon after, the big moment really does come, and their plans are thrown into chaos as they bump into each other, assume the wrong tasks, and wind up all leaving without Lucy. They eventually arrive in the hospital, and the nurse (Peggy Rea) is pushing Ricky in a wheelchair, while Lucy is carrying the luggage. Ricky fumbles for the name of the doctor Joe Harris to the desk nurse (Adele Longmire). Ricky and Lucy say their goodbyes as Lucy heads off to the delivery room and Ricky heads to the room with other expecting fathers, namely one man named Mr. Stanley (Charles Lane), who already has six daughters and is hoping for a son with this, his final baby. Ricky calls Fred to bring his makeup case down so he can be ready to head to the Tropicana. A nurse (Ruth Perrott) comes out and informs Mr. Stanley that he has had triplets, all girls. Ricky puts his headhunter makeup and frightens a nurse (Barbara Pepper) in the nursery so much that she calls the police. By the time the cop (Ralph Montgomery) shows up, Rick has already left for the club to perform the Voodoo number. During his performance, the maitre d’ gets a call from Fred and relays it to Ricky on stage. He announces that he is a father but forgets to ask what sex the baby is. When he arrives at the hospital, he asks Fred if the baby is a girl or a boy, but Fred faints before he can tell him. The nurse then returns and tells Ricky that they’re bringing his new son (James John Ganzer) to the window. Fred and Ethel help Ricky move to the window so he can see his boy, then faints dead away. Hazel Pierce is a nursery nurse. Bennett Green and Marty Rhiel are the orderlies. NOTE: Following the action onscreen, Phillip Morris offers congratulations to the happy couple Lucy and “Ricky” for the birth of their new baby. 11/25/23
• 052. Sales Resistance – 1/26/1953
  • Ricky sings a new song that he wrote called There’s a Brand New Baby at Our House for Fred and Ethel, while he records it on a tape recorder that Lucy bought from another patient in the hospital. Ricky laments how women have no sales resistance, especially when it comes to Lucy. He flashes back to a time when he came home and found that Lucy had purchased a $7.95 Handy Dandy Kitchen Helper. When Ricky sees it, he expresses his annoyance, so she tries to demonstrate it for him, only to fail miserably at cutting a potato. Since it was purchased on a three-day trial basis, Ricky demands that she call the company and get her money back. They agree to send over salesman Harry Martin (Sheldon Leonard), and when he arrives, he happily agrees to give her the money back. However, he also manages to slip in a demonstration of the Handy Dandy vacuum cleaner that is selling for $8.95. She is so impressed with the items that she ends up begging for him to sell her one, but then after she purchases it, he tells her that many of the parts and accessories are extra charges, and she winds up spending over $100 in total. Lucy tries to hide it from Ricky when he gets home, but she leaves it plugged in and every time he hits the light switch, the vacuum comes on in the closet. Ricky demands that she call Martin back and get her money back, but she’s too afraid to face him, thinking he will just sell her more items. She decides to try and finds someone else to buy the vacuum, thinking that other women will be just as susceptible as she is. Using Mr. Martin’s sales pitch, she goes to visit neighbor Mrs. Simpson (Verna Felton), throws dirt on her floor and then tells her that she will give her ten dollars if she doesn’t pick up the dirt in two minutes flat. Unfortunately, the electric in the apartment is off from not paying the bill.  Lucy not only loses the ten dollars but has to pick up the dirt by hand. Lucy comes home defeated but tells Ricky that there are plenty of women with sales resistance. Lucy admits that she can’t resist buying things from Mr. Martin, so Ricky agrees to handle him. Lucy wants to keep her distance, so she and Ethel head off to the movies. When they return, Ricky tells her that they successfully go their money back for the vacuum, but then has to admit that they now own a Handy Dandy refrigerator. Fred tells Ethel that they are now the proud owners of a Handy Dandy washing machine. NOTE: Following the credits, an announcer promotes the ‘new baby song’ record that was written by Desi Arnaz and Eddie Maxwell. 11/25/23
• 053. The Inferiority Complex – 2/2/1953
  • Ricky is getting ready to bring Lucy gifts at the hospital because she is starting to feel depressed that other mothers that she knows had twins and triplets and she only gave Ricky one baby. Ricky reminds Ethel and Fred what happened the last time Lucy started to feel this way by flashing back to evening at the Ricardo house. The four friends are sitting around telling jokes, but when it comes to Lucy’s turn, she botches the joke, and the others make fun of the fact that she is unable of telling a story. Then when they start to play Bridge, both Ricky and Fred fight over who gets to be Ethel’s partner, so she feels unwanted in that area as well. She runs off crying, and then the next day morning, she tells Ricky that she feels like she’s not very bright. Ricky tries to make her feel better, but then Ricky discovers seeds in his orange juice, that his eggs are over-salted, and that she has burnt the toast. Lucy cries again and calls herself a ‘big fat flop.’ Both Ricky and Ethel try to cheer her up, but neither one can come up with things that she can do well. Ricky decides to call psychiatrist Dr. Henry Molin (Gerald Mohr) and ask for advice. He suggests that the compliments need to come from another attractive man in order to resonate with her. Ricky can’t come up with anyone, so Molins says he will find someone, who will show up at their place answering to the name ‘Chuck Stewart’. Ricky tells Lucy that a talent scout is dropping by, and it turns out to be Dr. Molin himself. He compliments Lucy from the moment he walks in and doesn’t let up. Ricky starts to get uncomfortable when he insists on dancing with her, until he can stand no more and throws the doctor out, admitting to Lucy the ruse they were pulling on her. Lucy becomes more depressed then ever, so Rick encourages Fred and Ethel to spend more time with them, and this time to laugh at all of her jokes and pretend they want her to be her partner in Bridge. This goes over well, and Lucy starts to feel cheered up. Lucy says that since they now find her funny and want to be her partner, they must also want to hear her sing, which leads her into a nerve-rattling rendition of the song Who? 4/1/24
• 054. The Club Election – 2/16/1953
  • While Ricky is tending to the baby, Ethel stops by to give her the message that the Women’s Fine Arts Group is meeting on Friday. Ricky reminds Ethel about the last time Lucy got involved with running for an office in the women’s club. Via flashback, Lucy prepares for the club meeting at the apartment and mentions to Ricky that she feels she will likely sweep the nominations for all of the officer’s positions. Lillian Appleby (Doris Singleton) shows up first and admires Lucy’s new sweater and bag. They all share the dirt on Marion Strong (Margie Liszt) … until she walks in. Once everyone arrives, they take a vote on whether to admit the new club member Ruth Knickerbocker, and all vote her in. The club president (Lurene Tuttle) then takes nominations for the club officers, with Pauline Lopus (Peggy Rea) kicking it off by nominating Grace Munson (Hazel Pierce) for Treasurer. Lucy’s face drops when she hears this, but then tells Ethel that being a treasurer is a terrible job. Marion Strong then nominates Lillian Appleby to be the secretary, and again Lucy is disappointed but tells Ethel that it is a thankless job. Lillian then nominates Marion to be the vice-president, a figurehead job according to Lucy. The outgoing president makes her nomination for the role as president … Ethel Mertz. Lucy is not so disappointed that she proposes that there should be more nominations for president. She takes Lillian out of the room, and when they return, Lillian nominates Lucy for president. Later, when Lucy and Ricky have the Mertzes over for cards, Ricky shares some of Lucy’s campaign posters, many of them belittling Ethel. Likewise, Fred mentions some of the posters Ethel made that bash Lucy. Lillian later comes over and makes phone calls to the other members to try and find out who is voting for who. The votes are all tied up, but they have been unable to get hold of Ruth Knickerbocker. Lillian leaves and takes the new bag that Lucy has given her. Lucy and Ethel then begin their campaign with Ruth to try and win her vote. Fred and Ricky discuss this among themselves and decide that neither one wants their wife to be the next president. Fred and Ricky then decide to try and butter up Ruth to vote for the opposite wife. Fred asks her out on a date and takes her to the Tropicana, where Ricky croons the song Cuban Cabbie to her. Lucy and Ethel then show up at the Tropicana and not only tell Fred and Ricky that the woman they are schmoozing is Ruth’s mother-in-law (Ida Moore), but that Lucy and Ethel are no longer running against each other in the election; they have decided to be co-presidents since Ruth didn’t show up for the vote after being sick from all of the food Lucy and Ethel fed her all week. Jerry Hausner is the uncredited voice of Little Ricky. 4/2/24
• 055. The Black Eye – 3/9/1953
  • When Ethel accidentally hits Fred in the nose with a door, he worries about no one believing him about how he got a black eye. Ricky reminds both Fred and Ethel how quickly they once jumped to a conclusion about a black eye in their home as well. Via flashback, Ricky and Lucy argue over a steamy domestic novel about Madge and Gordon, and they eventually agree to read it out loud to each other. When Ricky can only read it in Spanish, Lucy takes over and reads aloud scenes of Gordon being abusive. Fred and Ethel overhear them through their door and it sounds as if Ricky has hit Lucy. They decide to go back downstairs and telephone to see if Lucy needs help. Lucy has no idea what they are talking about but invites them to come up. Ricky and Lucy decide to finish the book when they go to bed, and Ricky tosses the book to Lucy, who misses it and gets hit in the eye. When Fred and Ethel arrive at their place, they are double convinced now that Ricky has hit Lucy, but when Lucy merely jokes about Ricky hitting her and their aloof attitude about it, Fred and Ethel get angry that they wouldn’t confide in them as best friends and storm off for the night. The next day, Ethel returns and apologizes for being so hard on Lucy, but then pleads with her to tell her the truth. Lucy humors her and tells her that Ricky beat up on her because she told him that she was in love with another man. Ethel pleads with Lucy to tell her who it is, but Lucy will not say anything further. Elsewhere, Fred approaches Ricky and also apologizes for being so hard on him. He suggests that Ricky own up to his mistake, apologize, and send Lucy flowers. Ricky laughs it off and still maintains that he didn’t do anything. Fred decides to buy a nice floral arrangement from a florist (Bennett Green) and send them to Lucy as if they are from Ricky. Unfortunately, he mistakenly signs his own name to the flowers. Once he realizes this, he rushes home to try and stop Lucy from seeing them. Ethel tells him that the flowers did show up and that she put them in Lucy’s apartment. Fred sneaks up to try and intercept the flowers, but then Ethel comes up to snoop and find out who sent them. Fred hears her and hides in the closet. Lucy then comes home before Ethel can read the card, so Ethel sneaks out and pretends she is just coming up for a visit. Lucy assumes the flowers are from Ricky, but humors Ethel and lets her read the card. Both are shocked when they hear that Fred had sent the flowers, and they are even more shocked when they discover Fred in the closet. Ethel hits Fred in the eye with the box of flowers, and then when Ricky comes home, Fred punches him in the eye too. Later, Fred comes up to apologize for doubting that Lucy could have gotten the black eye from a book, because Ethel now has gotten a black eye from a tossed book to match the other three. 8/20/24
• 056. Lucy Changes Her Mind – 3/30/1953
  • Ethel comes to visit Lucy, only to find that she isn’t home but has rearranged the furniture again. When Ethel questions why she can’t make up her mind, Ricky reminds her of a dinner they once all had together. Via flashback, Fred and Ethel arrive at the Ricardo apartment to go out to eat. They haven’t yet decided where to go, and when Ethel suggests Chinese food and Fred suggests Italian, Lucy can’t make up her mind between them. Eventually, they turn to the newspaper to find someplace exciting, and they wind up at the Jubilee restaurant. After they are seated, Lucy decides she’s rather have a window seat, so the four of them relocate, much to Henry the waiter’s (Frank Nelson) annoyance. Everyone is surprised when Lucy quickly orders roast beef, but when Ethel orders lambchops, she changes her mind. Then when Ricky orders a fat, juicy steak, Lucy changes her mind again. When Fred orders pork chops, the waiter changes Lucy’s order before she has a chance. When Lucy feels a draft in their seat, she has them all change again. This time, when the waiter returns, he has trouble finding them and decides to simply walk off the job. Later, Lucy tells Ethel that she is cleaning out the closet because in fit of rage, Ricky demanded that Lucy start finishing what she started and stop changing her mind all of the time. Among the junk, she finds a love letter she started to an old boyfriend named Tom Henderson, who now owns a fur shop. Lucy thinks it would be funny to follow Ricky’s order to the letter and finish the letter that she started many years earlier. However, Ethel tells Fred about this, and Fred tells Ricky so that he is expecting the gag to be played on him. When Ricky returns home, Lucy acts as if she doesn’t want Ricky to know what she is writing, although she continuously flashes the paper in front of his face. When she tells Rick what it is, he simply laughs at her, and then challengers her to actually let him mail the letter. Although Ricky confides in Fred that he doesn’t want to actually mail it, Lucy decides to go downtown with Ethel and see Tom so that he can explain the situation to him. She’s not sure what he looks like, so when she’s a customer named Mrs. Corner (Sally Corner) speaking to a short, bald man named Mr. Henderson (Phil Arnold), they assume he must be Tom. When Lucy sees Ricky and Fred coming, she sends Ethel to keep Tom busy, while she pretends that she is making time with the mannequin in the window. When the mannequin starts to fall apart, Ricky and Fred can’t help but laugh at her mercilessly. Lucy admits that she was just angry that Ricky was onto her and admits that Tom was not so hot anymore, but if he was, Ricky should have been worried. Ethel then reveals that the short, bald man is actually Harry Henderson, the younger brother of Tom (John Hart), who is actually a tall, striking man. 8/20/24
• 057. No Children Allowed – 4/20/1953
  • Lucy is up late trying to get Little Ricky (Richard Lee Simmons and Ronald Lee Simmons) to stop crying, as her upstairs neighbor Mrs. Trumbull (Elizabeth Patterson) keeps pounding on the floor. Ethel comes up to try and help her with no luck, but when Fred shows up and starts whistling like a mockingbird, this does the trick. Unfortunately, when Ricky gets home from the club, he bumps into the baby’s crib and starts him crying all over again. Ricky is too tired to tend to the baby, but when Lucy tries to sing Rock-a-Bye Baby to him, he mercifully takes over and puts Little Ricky back to sleep. The next day, as Lucy and Ethel are planning a Bridge party in Lucy’s house with the women from Lucy’s Bridge group and Ethel’s Bridge group all attending, Mrs. Trumbull stops by with a copy of the lease in which it states that no children are allowed in the apartment. Ethel stands strong in defending Lucy, and when Mrs. Trumbull threatens to move out, Ethel says that her friendship with the Ricardos means more than money to her. She then continues to repeat the story all day long to everyone they come in contact with, and when the husbands get home from work, she repeats it them as well. By this time, Lucy is fed up with hearing about it, but Ricky tells her to remember that she did a very nice thing for them. Lucy and Ethel’s friends all show up for the Bridge party, and Ethel immediately starts telling the story all over again. After the third time, Lucy starts to mock her by repeating it line for line in unison with Ethel. She becomes insulted and storms out of Lucy’s place, taking all of her Bridge players with her. The commotion starts the baby crying again, and Mrs. Trumbull returns and threatens to call the police. When Ricky gets home again, Lucy tells him about the fight with Ethel, and he says she is being childish and encourages her to go apologize. Downstairs, Fred also tells Ethel that she does harp on things too much and that she should apologize to Lucy. Ricky and Fred then force the women to meet up at Lucy’s place, and they each give an insincere apology, which then melts into a legitimate apology and a big hug. Fred privately tells Ricky that he was getting sick of Ethel’s story as well, and Ricky agrees that she did get sickening about it. This doesn’t sit well with Fred, and the two begins to swap insults about each other’s wives, nearly leading to a fist fight between them. As the bicker into the hallway, Ethel and Lucy follow them down to the Mertz’s apartment. Little Ricky starts to cry again, and Mrs. Trumbull shows up looking for Lucy. The wives finally get the men to apologize to each other, just as they all realize that they’ve left Little Ricky alone. They scramble back upstairs, only to find that Mrs. Trumbull is rocking the baby and telling him that she will always be there for him in case he is ever left alone again. Jerry Hausner is the voice of Little Ricky. Vivi Janiss, Charlotte Lawrence, Margie Liszt, Peggy Rea, June Whitley Taylor, and Kay Wiley are members of the Bridge Club. 12/19/24
• 058. Lucy Hires a Maid – 4/27/1953
  • As Lucy and Ricky head to bed, Lucy pleads with Ricky to get up with the baby if he starts crying, as she is going on very little sleep. He is reluctant, so they each promise that the first one to hear the baby and wake up will be the one who takes care of him. When Little Ricky starts crying in the middle of the night, both of them pretend to be asleep, each one trying to out-snore the other. Lucy finally declares Ricky the winner, and she gets up to see about the baby, ultimately falling asleep standing up with her head in the crib. The next day, she can barely stay awake throughout the day, and Ricky and the Mertzes find her sound asleep with her head on the card table she was setting up for their card game. Ricky decides that he is going to allow her to get a maid since she can barely handle the housework along with taking care of the baby. Ricky leaves it up to her to interview the woman being sent from the agency and advises her to be firm so that she can establish a dominant relationship with her. She rehearses what she will demand on Ethel, but when Mrs. Porter (Verna Felton) arrives, it is she who lays down the law to Lucy. She demands her days off and her fixed hours and flatly refuses to do anything for the baby including his laundry. Lucy is too intimidated to say anything to her, but she feel uncomfortable in her own house. Mrs. Porter gives Lucy a sticky, dry peanut butter sandwich for lunch after she has eaten the roast beef, lettuce, jelly, and milk herself. Lucy complains to Ethel about her, and she advises Lucy to be firm and fire her, but when Lucy tries this, she can only ask Mrs. Porter for a glass of water. When Ricky gets home, she asks him to fire her, but Ricky is unable to do it either. Lucy then gets the idea to make the apartment so messy that Mrs. Porter will want to quit, so she, Ethel, and Fred completely trash the living room and kitchen, scattering paper everywhere, while Ethel coats everything in the kitchen with molasses and peanut butter. Ricky comes home as Fred is instigating a feather pillow fight in the living room to make it even messier. Ricky is aghast at what he sees, mostly because he had already called the agency and had Mrs. Porter fired. 12/19/24

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