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I Love Lucy: Difference between revisions
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''And life is heaven you see,''
'''Cause I love Lucy, yes, I love Lucy''
''And Lucy ([[Beat]]) loves me!''
|''[[Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics]]''}}
A ground breaking [[Sitcom]] from the husband-and-wife creative team of [[Lucille Ball]] and Desi Arnaz, under the auspices of their studio, Desilu Productions. ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' followed a young married couple through a series of wacky misadventures.
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Until [[The Sixties]], Latin people were not considered a separate racial group (and, admittedly, Ricky is white Hispanic); they were just "foreigners," and a lot of humor between Lucy and Ricky was in their cultural dissonance or in Ricky's funny accent. By today's standards, however, Lucy and Ricky were the first inter-ethnic married couple on TV.
The show was filmed, which was a big deal. At the time, most shows were archived by "kinescope", which is simply a movie camera taking footage of a TV ''displaying'' the show's live broadcast. Obviously, this produces really crummy-looking video; that's why most shows from the 1950s have either been lost or are of very little interest in reuse (videotape didn't become available until late in the decade). In contrast, ''I Love Lucy'' required two-camera pairs, one to broadcast the live TV and one to take down the results on film. Even better, the show invented the live-studio [[Three Cameras]] technique, which resulted in ''six'' cameras running simultaneously and was wildly expensive. This show also invented the [[Rerun]]: when Lucille Ball became pregnant and needed a reduction in her workload, Desi came up with the idea of showing a previously-aired-but-much-loved episode instead of something new
It has erroneously been called the first television sitcom to deal with the subject of pregnancy and delivery. This is incorrect, as "Mary Kay and Johnny", the first television sitcom in the United States, had tackled the subject four years earlier. Nonetheless it was still a very sensitive topic at the time, and the [[Moral Guardians]] were horrified. ''Viewer'' reaction was actually quite positive, and the episode where Lucy gives birth broke the all-time viewer record up to that point. Because they couldn't actually say "pregnant" on air, they instead <s> invented</s> popularized the euphemism "expecting". [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle|And now you know.]]
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In short, this show was [[Trope Maker|responsible for more tropes]] than anything on television before or since (excepting perhaps ''[[Star Trek]]'', which was also produced by Desilu Studios). As noted above, [[Rerun|it has not stopped airing]] since October 15, 1951. The ''entire reason'' that [[The Oldest Ones in the Book]] super-index has a cutoff date of November 8, 1960, is to include the complete first run of this pioneering series (which, including [[Retool]] ''The Lucy and Desi Comedy Hour'', lasted until April 1 of that very year).
{{tropelist}}
* [[After Show]]: ''[[The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour]]''.
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* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Ricky Ricardo often spoke Spanish which was nice for Spanish speakers.
* [[Bland-Name Product]]: Phillip Morris had the writers change "Lucky Bucks" to "Bonus Bucks" out of fear viewers would think of competitor Lucky Strike.
* [[Book Ends]]: The Europe trip is bookended by two variations of the 'Why don't you think I'd believe that?' gag - Ricky saying it about Lucy getting locked in the trunk, and [[Frank Nelson]]'s [[Why Do You Keep Changing Jobs?|
* [[Bridge]]: The popular game among the ladies.
* [[British Royal Guards]]: The European vacation story arc during the show's fifth season began in London where Lucy visited Buckingham Palace and missed out on seeing the Queen when she became preoccupied with desperately attempting to get a guard to crack a smile. The scene ends with the Changing of the Guard. {{spoiler|If one looks really closely, one can see the guard's lips curling up slightly}}.
* [[Bob Hope]]: Guest starred [[As Himself]] on the sixth season premiere episode, just before the Connecticut move. In an age when the Networks
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Everyone at one point or another, usually Ethel at the hands of Lucy, Lucy at the hands of Ricky, Ricky at the hands of Lucy, or Fred at the hands of everyone.
* [[Calvin Ball]]: In the episode "The Golf Game", Lucy and Ethel want to take up golf, and ask Fred and Ricky how to play. The men don't want their wives following them around the golf course, so they try to discourage them by inventing a set of crazy and overly complex instructions for play. The girls get back at the boys by convincing a famous golf pro to play exactly the way the boys taught them, leading Fred and Ricky convinced they'd been playing the game wrong all these years.
* [[Can't Hold His Liquor|Can't Hold Her Liquor]]: Lucy. The infamous Vitameatavegamin Girl bit where Lucy gets drunk from the alcohol in the medicine after repeated takes. In her defense, it was 23% alcohol by volume; not proof, ''percent''.
* [[The Cast Showoff]]: All four leads, at various times. Justified in-show, as Ricky is a bandleader/singer, the Mertzes are former vaudeville hoofers, and Lucy aspires to a career in showbiz.
* [[Catch Phrase]]: "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do." - Ricky, despite being something of a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]]. "Waaaaaah" or "Ewwwww" by Lucy and "Oh, for corn's sake!" for Fred are more accurate.
** "Aye-yi-yi-yi-yi!" for Ricky. In one of the England shows he translates it as
* [[The Celebrity Lie]]
* [[Celebrity Paradox]]: In an early episode, Lucy mentions
* [[The Chew Toy]]: What Lucille Ball comedy is complete without slapstick characters? All four characters play this role at one point or another, but Lucy and Ethel tend to get roughed up more often than Ricky or Fred.
* [[Clip Show]]: The ''I Love Lucy'' [[Christmas Episode]], where the gang decorates the Ricardo tree and recalls moments from Lucy's period of expectancy. It was kept out of the syndication package and did not receive another broadcast for 25 years.
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** Lampshaded on an episode of ''[[Mad About You]]'' in which Paul tries to find out what the secret is that his wife Jamie doesn't want to tell him.
{{quote|'''Paul''': Did you buy a new hat?
'''Jamie''': (
* [[Domestic Abuse]]: Averted. Several characters mention fear that Ricky will hit Lucy because of some of her more extreme schemes, but it's unknown if Ricky really ever did or would. Essentially, it's played roughly the same way as ''[[The Honeymooners]]'' did. In this show, at one point, one of Lucy's schemes cost Ricky his job, and when he heard the news, he hit himself in the hand as Lucy began giving him things to smash to take his anger out on, and he threatened to punch her in the nose more than once.
** Really the most he ever did was spank Lucy, and it was played for laughs as if she were a child. One episode was the focus of this when Ricky accidentally hit Lucy in the eye with a book and it swelled up. Fred and Ethel thought he actually did hit her (they were eavesdropping outside their apartment and mistook her narrating a chapter from said book as the two arguing).
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* [[Funny Foreigner]]: Ricky could be regarded as a mild one of these.
* [[Fun with Foreign Languages]]
* [[Furry Fandom]]: Ricky's nightclub acts include dressing showgirls up as prancing horses and
** In the Scotland episode, Ethel and Fred are in-story [[Nightmare Fuel]] as a two headed dragon.
** In one episode, Fred plays a Frog in Little
* [[Get Rich Quick Scheme]]: Lucy would form these on occasion, but not out of simple greed. Usually it was because she had spent too much of her allowance and Ricky refused to give her any more.
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]
* [[Hollywood California]]: Ricky gets the starring role in ''Don Juan'', forcing the Ricardos to move to Hollywood, with the Mertzes tagging along.
* [[Hollywood Pudgy]]: [[Urban Legend]] has it that Vivian Vance (Ethel) was contractually obligated to remain overweight, though there isn't evidence of it being true, especially since Ethel only looks fat in comparison to Lucy. Get her alone and she's rather thin.
* [[Hollywood Tone Deaf]]: Lucy Ricardo. Lucille Ball was no diva, but she was no slouch either, as seen when she starred in ''[[Mame]]''.
* [[Housewife]]: Lucy is an example of a rebellious housewife.
* [[Impossible Leavening]]: In "Pioneer Women", a loaf of bread with this trope applied ends up expanding to fill the entire oven, and when the door is opened, it stretches ''out'' of the oven, far longer than the oven is deep, and pins Lucy to a wall.
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** Charles Lane also had multiple appearances, usually as a different clerk at a government office or business each time.
** Mary Jane Croft played a former classmate of Lucy's in "Lucy Is Envious" and a nosy airplane passenger in "Return Home from Europe" before becoming a semi-regular as Connecticut neighbor Betty Ramsey in Season 6.
** [[Frank Nelson]] played eight different characters, including radio host Freddy Filmore and Connecticut neighbor Ralph Ramsey.
** Ball's close friend Barbara Pepper appeared in eight episodes, each time as a different character.
* [[Your Favorite]]: Lucy's favorite breakfast is waffles.
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{{reflist}}
{{TV Guide's 50 Greatest}}
{{Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time}}
[[Category:Comedy Series]]
[[Category:American Series]]
[[Category:The Fifties]]
[[Category:Dom Com]]
▲[[Category:I Love Lucy]]
[[Category:TV Series]]
[[Category:Live-Action TV of the 1950s]]
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