Original Air Date: February 16, 1953
Hey Ballers! It’s election day down in Alabama, and would you consider it? Our subsequent episode of I Love Lucy is an election episode. In honor of my mom’s dwelling state, I’m going to offer credit score to the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for bringing an election episode on election day. There is just no different rationalization for this miracle. Now let’s share some candy tea and bitch concerning the new assistant pastor.
I’ll additionally pre-empt anybody’s fears. Yes, that is the episode the place Little Ricky seems for the primary time (in a bundle). No, I’m not going to make a Roy Moore-dates-babies joke. That could be apparent, exaggerated, and admittedly, gross. I’m going to make a Roy Moore and malls joke as a substitute, as a result of that’s a warmer take.
Lastly, ideas and prayers to all y’all voters on the market at the moment. Remember, it doesn’t matter what you resolve or how unhealthy it’d make you look, Alabamians invented windshield wipers and the transportable electrical listening to support, and nobody can ever take that away from you.
We open on Ricky holding a child. A BABY! That’s proper, THE BABY IS HOME! Lucy is again, sitting in a sizzling rest room sitz tub holding her anal fissures at bay.
Nope JK she went out purchasing as a result of infants don’t change the elemental truths about an individual, and purchasing is Lucy’s elementary fact.
Sadly, the infant appears like a flower bouquet or perhaps a wrapped turkey.
There’s no stay child in there. It’s a hoax, or understanding Lucy, she introduced again a bag of frozen hen legs considering it was her child as a result of hilarity follows her in every single place.
Ethel is available in searching for Lucy:
Ethel: The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League is assembly on Friday this week.
Ricky: Why couldn’t you meet on Wednesday?
Ethel: We tried that however nobody may make it.
Then out of nowhere the three-week-old begins speaking. That child feels like Harvey Fierstein threw up a gremlin they usually each began singing “Down in Fraggle Rock.” Do they settle for return orders on these items?
Ricky recommends cancelling the membership altogether, and he’s not improper. The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League (or, maybe, WAFAL) is neither tremendous, nor artsy, nor a league. And it doesn’t meet on Wednesday. It’s nonsense, like that child’s bizarre alien noises.
Then we transfer right into a flashback. These maintain occurring as a result of Lucille Ball was on maternity depart on the time. In preparation, they filmed some episodes prematurely so she may have time to get better from her real-life delivery of Desi Arnaz, Jr. (Because regardless of what TV tells you, bitch ain’t out purchasing. She’s sitting on that sizzling rest room sitz tub holding her anal fissures at bay!)
WAFAL desires a clubhouse. Ricky desires them to satisfy on the again fence “like the opposite cats do.” What does that even imply? Does he imply they maintain themselves clear and are laborious to please and specific about the place they poop as a result of if that’s ladies hear us roar.
Lucy received an incredible sweater and bag that price her three months’ price of allowance, and all the ladies find it irresistible. Pay consideration, for it returns later like some haunted cashmere ghost.
Lucy desires to vote in Ruth Knickerbocker, whereas Ethel thinks she’s quiet and mousy. But apparently Ruth has a punch bowl with a ton of cups, so that they let her in. This is what I maintain making an attempt to elucidate to my husband when he desires me to Marie Kondo the punch bowl away. I clutch that crystal monstrosity to my chest and inform him I NEED THIS TO KEEP MY FRIENDS.
WAFAL Member: Have you heard the grime about Marian?
Lucy: Marian Strong?
WAFAL Member: Yes! You know the way she’s all the time making an attempt to fake she’s “anyone?” Well she received her come-uppance. I bumped into her on the street the opposite day, and she or he had on essentially the most – MARIAN!!!
They begin gossiping about Marian, after which Marian is available in and also you notice these are the ladies who hate ladies. These are those with the contemporary new Medium submit about how we’re in a warlock hunt proper now and girls ought to study to take a rape joke.
Lucy retains hoping for a nomination. But once they don’t give her one, she talks down all of the positions as being beneath her, as a result of screw these individuals. She was additionally gonna be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, however she wouldn’t conform to an interview. SAD!
And then they nominate Ethel for president.
We spend a whole scene adoring Lucy’s new purse. But you may see it in Ethel’s eyes: for one temporary and wonderful second, she’s going to be particular.
Any of us who’ve finest mates know the way terrible it’s once they succeed or expertise happiness. So naturally, Lucy stands and asks for extra nominations – , to be truthful and the whole lot. This isn’t Lucy’s finest second. In truth, it is a excessive velocity prepare wreck that may finish in flames the colour of Lucy’s hair.
Lucy: I wish to caucus.
President: Caucus?!
Lucy: Didn’t you watch the conventions on tv?
No. No, Lucy, that is WAFAL, not NARAL. These ladies completely elected their representatives on their wedding ceremony day.
They all begin combating whereas Lucy takes a fellow member into the kitchen and offers her fabulous sweater away. She fairly actually strips for the job and will get the nomination. If we demanded that as a rustic, we’d have Martin O’Malley as president proper now, and also you’d hear zero complaints from me. “We simply selected whoever was hottest” is lots higher than “Boom oops the world simply ended.”
The subsequent day, Lucy and Ethel collect with Ricky and Fred to play playing cards. If each ladies depart that room with their eyes nonetheless of their sockets, we should always make them secretaries of state.
Their husbands showcase their wives’ marketing campaign slogans:
“Happy you may be with Lucy, solid your vote and wait until you see.”
But they get step by step worse:
“Nertz to Mertz!”
“A vote for the redhead is a vote for a deadhead.”
Really low, but in addition sorta true? Like how nowadays the slogans say “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T VOTE FOR THE PEDOPHILE!”
And then an enormous struggle ensues. Both of those ladies will connive their method to the highest to win the coveted presidency and its omnipotent management of the 13-person WAFAL gang.
Lucy and her pal take a ballot, and it’s tied 6-6. Maybe they need to attempt pandering to the Jewish vote. LOLOLOL simply kidding. Jews weren’t allowed on this membership.
Ricky is consuming pork and beans (see? not into Jews) out of a can, presumably as a result of Lucy and Ethel are so busy campaigning and Ricky can’t make himself something in addition to an open can of mush. No PB&J, no grilled cheese. Not even a rattling banana. This man goes to be a father and if Lucy will get caught in visitors someday, his whole household will starve to dying.
Ruth Knickerbocker is the tiebreaker for the WAFAL election. So Ethel and Lucy have been busy taking her throughout city, wining and eating her like a few lobbyists.
Fred: Just suppose how concerned my life shall be if Ethel is president of that membership!
Ricky: Just suppose how concerned my life is with Lucy simply being Lucy. Boy, she’s not going to be elected president of that membership if I can assist it.
He brainstorms some method to torpedo Lucy’s ambitions. Might I like to recommend tapping right into a systemic tradition of harassment and abuse? It’s labored for you earlier than. He decides to sway the Knickerbocker vote. So he calls data.
Ricky: I don’t know tips on how to spell it. Maybe Nikerboker?
Hey! That’s my IKEA desk lamp!
But Ms. Knickerbocker has a date with Fred Mertz already.
Later on the membership, each males attempt to sway Ms. Knickerbocker away from voting for his or her spouse. Ricky romances her by singing about Havana and the way broke he’s carrying individuals round in his taxi. Yes, nothing will get wealthy, white Upper East Side socialites going like a poor latino cab driver begging for “dinero.”
He begins singing seductively to Ms. Knickerbocker after which brings her as much as dance.
On Ok Street, they offer out steak dinners and rent high-end hookers to get individuals’s votes. On I Love Lucy, they do the identical.
Ricky options Ms. Knickerbocker greater than he’d ever characteristic Lucy in his present, and all for the objective of creating positive this stranger votes in opposition to his spouse and permits him to retain his energy as husband.
This is a few critical Francis Underwood shit.
But then Lucy and Ethel are available in. It seems the membership tied the vote, and each ladies received. And by some means Ethel is gracious about it. Her crap pal stole half the glory from her however she simply smiles and holds it in till Christmas, when she will be able to lastly ask Santa for some higher mates.
And then they discover out the boys have been seducing the improper Knickerbocker. They’ve been going after Ruth’s aged mother-in-law. But due to wealthy white ladies’s classist, racist fetish for the unique, the impoverished taxi driver act completely labored. That sexy MILILF is able to take her Cuban singer dwelling and be una chica sucia por toda la casa.
As for WAFAL, they’re screwed. They ought to disband instantly. Lucy and Ethel operating a membership collectively makes that membership by its nature corrupted and a hazard to world affairs. They won’t rule in dignity just like the Narnia children, let’s be clear. This is not any benevolent dictatorship. They will possible not concede the following election, which can lead the group into constitutional disaster and trigger a everlasting rift, if not all-out civil conflict.
Hopefully Lucy survives, as a result of in any other case Ricky is simply gonna feed that child canned pork and beans each meal till he’s a youngster and inevitably takes his father to court docket to demand full emancipation.
And when his declare goes to trial and turns into a groundbreaking second for the way forward for household regulation, we are able to simply hope and pray we’ve elected good judges. Or on the very least, that by then Ricky’s kids nonetheless stay far, distant from a sure decide within the nice state of Alabama.
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Join me subsequent time for S2 E20: The Black Eye. And observe WTF Lucy on Facebook and Twitter!