Cuban Bandleader Ricky Ricardo would be happy if his wife Lucy would just be a housewife. Instead she tries constantly to perform at the Tropicana where he works, and make life comically frantic in the apartment building they share with landlords Fred and Ethel Mertz, who also happen to be their best friends.
Air date: 1953-10-05
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Lucy is upset because a 'Life' magazine feature on Ricky's home life didn't include a picture of her.
Air date: 1953-10-12
Runtime: 24 min
Overview: Lucy and Ethel are all set to go into business when they buy a new dress shop. But what to call it? Ethelu's? Lucyeth's? Unfortunately, naming the shop isn't their only problem when they are unable to sell any dresses and must sell the shop.
Air date: 1953-10-19
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy and Ethel buy the same dress for the upcoming talent show for the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League. True, they'll be doing a duet, and their number is Cole Porter's corny "Friendship" but wearing the same dress isn't exactly what they had in mind. Meanwhile, Lucy needs to persuade Ricky to host the show, so she decides to use a little reverse psychology.
Air date: 1953-10-26
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy and Ethel demand equal rights for women. Okay, say Ricky and Fred at the restaurant: separate checks for the four of them. Thus begins Lucy and Ethel's careers as restaurant dishwashers. So they plot revenge: they'll scare their husbands by claiming to have been robbed.
Air date: 1953-11-02
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: The Ricardos and the Applebys always brag to each other about their little sons. But when Lucy's and Caroline Appeby's exchanges turn hostile and sarcastic, Ricky worries that it will jeopardize a TV job that's been offered to him by Caroline's husband.
Air date: 1953-11-09
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Ricky and the Mertzes bet Lucy that she can't go twenty-four hours without telling a lie. The outcome? Lucy insults all her friends and has to admit her real age, weight, and hair color. But she nearly gets a part on a TV show, by telling the truth, more or less.
Air date: 1953-11-16
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Ricky is planning a French revue for the club, and since Lucy is determined to be in it, she hires a Frenchman to coach her. When Ricky forbids her to come near the place, she tries various disguises, and finally succeeds as a chorus girl.
Air date: 1953-11-23
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: It's redecorating time at the Mertzes', and Lucy and Ricky volunteer to help. But when Fred turns on a fan as Lucy is unstuffing a chair, the paint and feathers they were using go flying. Lucy feels responsible for the ruined furniture, so she gives Ethel her own living room furniture as a gift.
Air date: 1953-11-30
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Lucy sneaks into the Mertzes' apartment to borrow one of Fred's suits so that she can order him a custom-made tweed suit for his birthday. This leads Ethel to think that Lucy is the notorious neighborhood burglar, "Madame X", and she goes spying on her friend to prove it.
Air date: 1953-12-07
Runtime: 24 min
Overview: Lucy and Ethel are disgusted by their husbands' old clothes, so they secretly give them away to a secondhand store. Unfortunately for them, the boys find out about their plan, and buy everything back. Later on, Ricky learns that a magazine has named Fred and him as two of the "Best-Dressed Men in New York City." He and Fred, dressed in tuxedos, invite the girls to meet them at the club for pictures. The girls arrive in their grubbiest attire.
Air date: 1953-12-14
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy finally gets her chance to be in show business, when she tricks Ricky into letting her do the "Jitterbug" in one of his shows. She's terrific during rehearsals, but problems occur when Lucy accompanies Ricky (who's been suffering from headaches) to the eye doctor just before the show. There, the doctor decides to examine Lucy's eyes, as well. He puts some eyedrops in Lucy's eyes which "relaxes" them, but Lucy's vision is blurry for the next twenty four hours. Naturally, this causes problems since Lucy has to perform that night.
Air date: 1953-12-21
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Ricky is jealous when Lucy comes up with a long list of ex-boyfriends, so he invents an old flame-who just happens to be in town. Her name? Carlotta Romero, with whom Ricky DID perform years before.
Air date: 1954-01-11
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: The Ricardo household budget is in shambles (as usual) after Lucy decides to put her salad dressing on the market. Her plan? To market it on a TV morning show on the station her friend Caroline Appleby's husband runs. Home economist Mary Margaret McMertz (Ethel) will invite "an average housewife," (Lucy) to taste the dressing on the air.
Air date: 1954-01-18
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Ricky agrees to watch his son, but while Daddy is engrossed in a football game, Little Ricky wanders off. Lucy finds him in the hallway, and calls Ricky to ask where the baby is. Panicking, Ricky searches everywhere, before Lucy walks in with his son.
Air date: 1954-01-25
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: It's time for charm school for Lucy and Ethel when their men eye a pretty woman at a party. But Ricky and Fred are anything but charmed by the results.
Air date: 1954-02-01
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy and Ricky want to spend their 13th wedding anniversary alone, but the Mertzes have another idea: a surprise party.
Air date: 1954-02-08
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: A reporter for a fan magazine, Eleanor Harris, spends an "average day" with the Ricardos. Of course, it's anything BUT average for the happily married couple. And they might not be one so happily married, thanks to a publicity stunt that Ricky's agent Jerry has cooked up.
Air date: 1954-02-15
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: The Ricardos and Mertzes as oil millionaires? Lucy and Ethel get a hot stock tip from their new neighbors from Texas. But Ricky and Fred say no. At first, anyhow. But are these neighbors swindlers? Lucy and the gang eventually think so, so they come up with a plan to find out.
Air date: 1954-02-22
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Ricky explodes when Lucy buys an expensive hat. She offers to return it, and bets him he'll lose his cool over something else before she buys another hat. But no matter what she does to provoke him, the hot-tempered Cuban remains unruffled.
Air date: 1954-03-01
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Ricky's home movies move the Mertzes to walk out, and prompt Lucy, Fred and Ethel to make a movie of their own, a "Western musical drama" shot in the Ricardo living room. But that's not to mixed up with a TV pilot Ricky's making, is it?
Air date: 1954-03-08
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: A dollar bill takes a zany trip-with the Ricardos and Mertzes in hot pursuit. It's a winning bill (worth $300) in a newspaper contest. It belongs to Ricky, but he gallantly slips it into Lucy's purse. Gallant isn't necessarily smart: Lucy unthinkingly gives the bill to the grocery delivery boy-who gives it to Ethel in change. The wild ride has only begun!
Air date: 1954-03-22
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Ricky's band is to play in Hawaii-and guess who wants to go also? Lucy's plan: to go on a game show that gives away airline tickets. It calls for some trickery, and Lucy just might meet her match in the show's host, Freddie Fillmore, a prankster par excellence.
Air date: 1954-03-29
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: Lucy's past fibs to her rich and snotty ex-schoolmate are about to catch up with her when she unwittingly pledges $500 to a charity drive. In order to come up with the money, she and Ethel agree to a publicity stunt that puts them on top of the Empire State Building posing as women from Mars.
Air date: 1954-04-05
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy writes a novel in which the characters are thinly-veiled caricatures of Ricky, Fred and Ethel. Too thinly veiled, Ricky, Fred and Ethel think. So they burn it. But not before Lucy gets a copy to a publisher.
Air date: 1954-04-12
Runtime: 25 min
Overview: The Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League forms a quintet (with Lucy on sax) as a fundraiser. It's no way to raise money (Ethel likens Lucy's sound to a "moose with a head cold"). Maybe bandleader Ricky can whip them into shape--but first, Lucy has some persuading to do.
Air date: 1954-04-19
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy plays a black-wigged temptress to test Ricky's fidelity. The result makes makes her see red so she schemes to get even. But she won't divorce him. Ethel agrees: "Yeah, stay married to him," she says. "That'll teach him."
Air date: 1954-04-26
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: The Ricardos and the Mertzes buy a diner, name it "A Little Bit of Cuba" and go to work. Well, the Mertzes go to work; the Ricardos "greet." Not surprisingly, relations are soon strained. Can a food fight be far behind?
Air date: 1954-05-03
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: The corn starts popping when Tennessee Ernie Ford comes to visit in Part 1 of a two-part episode. He's Lucy's "Cousin" Ernest, an earnest young man from Bent Fork, Tenn., who knows nothing of city ways and is inadvertently infuriating. He's got to go but he's so sweet that they can't just throw him out. What to do? Lucy will pose as a wicked city woman, and "vamp" him out of town.
Air date: 1954-05-10
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Lucy gets sick of an extensive visit by Tennessee Ernie, who claims he is her cousin. She tries to get rid of the likeable character by pleading poverty. The scheme backfires when Tennessee Ernie promotes a benefit hoedown to assist Lucy and Ricky. Look for "Ernie Ford and His Four Hot Chicken Pickers" in this episode.
Air date: 1954-05-17
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: Championship golfer Jimmy Demaret visits the Ricardos when Lucy and Ethel arrive at a bizarre scheme for combating their "golf widowship." The girls install a basketball court in the Ricardo living room and pretend to be as deeply absorbed in the game as their husbands are in the fairways.
Air date: 1954-05-24
Runtime: 26 min
Overview: The Ricardos are off to Maine for the summer, so they decide to sublet their apartment. Their landlords, the Mertzes, don't like the idea, and like the potential tenants even less. Nor are they wild about their new roommates.
