Original Air Date: February 16, 1953
Happy New Year, Ballers!!! I believed this week’s episode was about retaining your resolutions, however I used to be improper. That’s subsequent week, and this week it’s about getting punched within the face. Which, come to think about it, is a fairly stable metaphor for 2018 up to now.
So yeah, I can’t consider I’m saying this, however TW: home abuse. That’s proper, I Love Lucy wants a set off warning. In all seriousness, I promise there have been girls in 1953 who curled up sobbing after this episode. It actually embodies the “WTF” that began this complete undertaking.
For it is a story of 4 idiots, a dissertation in rubbish individuals. My husband watched the episode with me, mouth agape as mine, and simply quietly requested, “How was this televised?”
Now all that stated, there’s no precise abuse proven. But someway the truth that they received round that and nonetheless discovered a solution to hang-out my daydreams makes it even worse in a means. And whereas I’m all for jokes, I don’t make enjoyable of set off warnings, and I don’t assume they’re for snowflakes. Survivors shouldn’t watch this episode.
OK! FUN STUFF! Let’s get began (places on her gasoline masks).
We open on Fred and Ethel making an attempt to enter the Ricardos’ condominium. They bang the doorways into one another’s faces, complaining and arguing. They’re just like the White House workers as of late, however Fred and Ethel have extra progressive values.
Ricky is anxious they’ll wake the child. You know, perhaps you have to be extra anxious about how your landlords (and certain anybody) can consistently go out and in of your condominium with out asking? Like, get a lock?
This is one other flashback episode, and it begins with 5 minutes of Fred complaining the door harm his head. If you’ll be able to think about a feather stroking a bowling ball, that’s how onerous the door hit Fred. Besides, it’s another person’s door and at the same time as landlord, you’re trespassing. Just thank Ricky for not suing you and go residence.
In the flashback, Lucy is terrifying herself with a scary guide. It’s paying homage to Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her – one among my very favourite episodes.
LUCY: Mumble mumble “dismembering the housekeeper, disposing of the physique within the rubbish disposal” mumble mumble.
She’s true crime obsessed! If this girl lived to listen to the My Favorite Murder podcast, she’d lose her thoughts. Our woman would spend all day knitting Karen and Georgia ill-fitting homicide socks and baking inedible homicide desserts.
She wants a superb Mitch Albom bestseller or a type of novels concerning the household canine. An night alone with a pleasant, milquetoast Hallmark Movie and our pal Lucy would get into about 1/5 the difficulty.
Ricky desires to learn the guide, too, in order that they resolve to learn it collectively. But Lucy can’t learn except she sounds it out, and Ricky can solely learn in Spanish. Suddenly their issues make a lot extra sense! They’re illiterate. No marvel she ordered 700 kilos of meat by chance again in season one.
They resolve to unravel the issue by her studying it aloud. And she reads as “aloud” as attainable:
LUCY (studying): YOU HATE ME DON’T YOU?! DON’T YOU!!!! (acts out punching)
Just then, Ethel and Fred method and listen to Lucy behind the door, studying from the guide. It sounds fairly clearly like abuse, though it’s truly very harmless.
ETHEL: We can’t simply bust in on them at a time like this!
You bust in on them once they’re consuming dinner, nursing their child, and presumably once they’re having intercourse. But positive, why not let this one slide. If you go in there proper now you might need to cease a person from beating his spouse. You’d need to rename the present, it will be a complete factor.
So as an alternative, Ethel calls from her condominium to say they’re developing, and she or he gives iodine.
ETHEL: This is Ethel… your good friend… who you’ll be able to flip to in a second of disaster.
That’s like saying “Requiem for a Dream… the film… which you’ll be able to flip to in a second of melancholy.” Going that route will solely make issues worse, I promise.
Ricky tosses the guide to Lucy and it hits her within the face. Her eye begins to show black, and naturally that’s when Fred and Ethel arrive.
LUCY (joking): Ricky slugged me.
RICKY: Yeah I lastly determined to BOOM, let her have it.
And right here’s the place it will get additional bizarre: Fred and Ethel storm out as a result of Lucy refuses to ship a protracted monologue about how Ricky hit her. Ethel is personally offended they received’t entertain her with a melodrama, so she simply…leaves. But she comes again the following day, thrilled to get a extremely “juicy story.” She couldn’t sleep as a result of she was so excited to listen to about how Ricky grabbed Lucy’s hair and punched her within the face (I’m critical – that’s within the episode).
ETHEL: You know the way wild these Cubans are once they’re mad.
Earlier within the episode, Fred says one thing related:
FRED: She ought to know higher than to dare that hot-blooded Cuban.
This episode is a type of Get Out moments when pasty individuals are like “OMG I had no thought such healthful, well mannered white individuals could possibly be so gross” and everybody else is like “Really? We’ve been telling you for 400 years.”
Lucy will get uninterested in Ethel’s prodding and eventually tells a narrative of how Ricky beat the shit out of her. In the story, she cowers and begs for her life, after which he laughs and kicks her. She acts it out in a scene I personally felt earned the TW.
It’s like she’s writing Hard to Watch, Based on the Novel Cold Stone Bummer by Manipulate. (And should you don’t know that reference, then I don’t know you.)
Ethel treats the brutal assault story like a maple bacon donut:
ETHEL: Oh that is even higher than I anticipated!
She desires to know what made Ricky so offended, so Lucy says she informed Ricky she’s in love with one other man.
Now to be truthful, on this scene, Vivian Vance isn’t given the prospect to be a superb individual. Her strains are so dangerous, they don’t give her room to play an empathetic human being. It’s like that point SJP was pressured at gunpoint to star in Sex & the City II as a result of why else would a dwelling goddess have agreed to that dumb-as-bricks film.
Outside, Fred runs into Ricky on his solution to rehearsal.
FRED: I wasn’t actually sore with you, I used to be simply going together with Ethel.
Fred explains he is aware of precisely how Ricky feels. He inform Ricky he ought to be a person about it and apologize.
FRED: If you give her an opportunity to brood, it’ll value much more than flowers.
So it’s actually a budgetary difficulty. Ricky explains that nothing occurred (as a result of nothing did) and walks off. So Fred takes it upon himself to ship Lucy flowers on Ricky’s behalf.
OK so let’s recap: Fred’s going to purchase flowers for his good friend, an abuse sufferer, to persuade her to stick with the person who Fred believes simply beat her mindless. Who is that this man, Bob Weinstein?
FRED (signing): Darling I like you, I like you, I like you. Eternally yours, Fred.
He realizes too late that he signed along with his personal title, so he runs residence.
Back at residence, Ethel’s sitting there slowly consuming a banana. I imply, actually? It makes me marvel if this complete episode is a meta-symbolic social satire of internalized misogyny. (It’s not).
Ethel took the flowers to Lucy’s place and now desires to examine them to search out out who Lucy’s in love with. Meanwhile Fred desires to get to the cardboard to take away his title, however he finally ends up hiding within the closet.
Ethel is so excited to search out out Lucy’s thriller lover! She’s utterly bathing in that blissful power you’ll be able to solely really feel when your greatest mates’ marriage dissolves into nothing.
But the cardboard says Fred’s title!!! Fred comes out of the closet, and Ethel hits Fred within the face with the flower field. He runs out with a black eye, sees Ricky, and punches him within the face.
Can’t we simply Game of Thrones this factor and kill off all the Mertz household?
The subsequent day, Fred is available in with a black eye from the flower field and says he believes them now, that you simply CAN get a black eye from a guide. Because he gave one to Ethel when he threw a guide at her.
If anybody on this present truly gave somebody a black eye, it will be Fred to Ethel. Or me to Fred, pending time journey.
Honestly how do you make this episode humorous? It wasn’t humorous then, it isn’t humorous now. It’s like in these cooking reveals once they hand all these superb cooks a moldy octopus and are like MAKE A DESSERT they usually do however, like, it doesn’t look that incredible as a result of they’re cooks, they’re not omnipotent stove-demons who can change the legal guidelines of chemistry. That’s this episode and me.
MAKE A JOKE, JO! Well okay but in addition right here’s the quantity for the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE.
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Join me subsequent time for S2 E21: Lucy Changes Her Mind. And observe WTF Lucy on Facebook and Twitter!