I Love Lucy

7.9
195130m

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.

Production

Logo for Desilu Productions

Seasons

35 Episodes • Premiered 1951

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 1: The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

1. The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

7.2

An argument ensues among the couples when Ethel wants to celebrate the Mertzes's anniversary at the Copacabana while Fred wants to attend the fights. Ethel and Lucy decide that they will go to the club with dates.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 2: Be a Pal

2. Be a Pal

8.0

Thinking Ricky is losing interest in her, Lucy follows the advice of a book Ethel gave her and takes up Ricky's hobbies.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 3: The Diet

3. The Diet

8.0

To her dismay, Lucy finds out that she's put on twenty-two pounds since marrying Ricky. When one of the girls in Ricky's new show quits, she tricks him into promising, she can be in the show if she fits into the dancer's size twelve costume.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 4: Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her

4. Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying to Murder Her

7.5

After becoming too involved in a murder mystery book, Lucy believes that Ricky is trying to murder her.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 5: The Quiz Show

5. The Quiz Show

8.0

When Lucy needs to balance her household accounts, she decides to go on quiz show. To win the $1,000 cash prize, she has to introduce her "long lost first husband" to Ricky.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 6: The Audition

6. The Audition

8.0

Ricky lands a TV audition at the club. When Buffo the Clown injures himself and cannot make it, Lucy takes his place.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 7: The Séance

7. The Séance

5.5

Lucy tells an important talent agent that Ricky cannot appear in a show because of his horoscope. The agent is also interested in the occult. So Lucy arranges a séance.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 8: Men Are Messy

8. Men Are Messy

5.7

Fed up with Ricky's messiness, Lucy divides the Ricardo apartment in a clean part for her and a messy part for him.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 9: The Fur Coat

9. The Fur Coat

8.0

Ricky returns home with expensive mink coat that he has rented for an act at the club. Lucy jumps to the conclusion that it's her anniversary present.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 10: Lucy Is Jealous of Girl Singer

10. Lucy Is Jealous of Girl Singer

7.0

Lucy is jealous of one of Ricky's dancer at his nightclub after hearing about a gossip column item linking the two.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 11: Drafted

11. Drafted

6.0

When Lucy opens Ricky's a telegram ordering him to appear at Fort Dix, she assumes that he has been drafted. Ethel suspects that Fred has been drafted as well when she hears, Fred is joining Ricky.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 12: The Adagio

12. The Adagio

6.3

Lucy thinks she is a perfect fit for Ricky's Parisian apache dance number. But her dance teacher has more than dancing on his mind.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 13: The Benefit

13. The Benefit

6.7

Ethel wants Ricky to a headline a benefit show for her women's club, but Lucy refuses to ask him, unless she can be on the bill too.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 14: The Amateur Hour

14. The Amateur Hour

8.0

Lucy spends too much money on a dress. So she tells Ricky that she will get a job babysitting in order to pay for it.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 15: Lucy Plays Cupid

15. Lucy Plays Cupid

7.7

The Ricardo's neighbor Miss Lewis wants Lucy to deliver a dinner invitation to her grocer. But he misunderstands and thinks the invitation is from Lucy herself.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 16: Lucy Fakes Illness

16. Lucy Fakes Illness

7.3

Lucy pretends to suffer from numerous psychological ailments so that Ricky will feel sorry for her and let her go into show business.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 17: Lucy Writes a Play

17. Lucy Writes a Play

4.7

Lucy writes a play set in Cuba hoping to cast Ricky, But when he refuses, she has to settle for Fred and changes her setting to England.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 18: Breaking the Lease

18. Breaking the Lease

5.3

After a big quarrel between the Ricardos and the Mertzes, Lucy and Ricky decide that they want to move out. Ricky and Lucy become the most undesirable tenants ever so that they can break that lease, while the Fred and Ethel resist.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 19: The Ballet

19. The Ballet

6.3

Lucy learns that there is an opening in one of Ricky's acts for a ballet dancer as well as a burlesque comic.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 20: The Young Fans

20. The Young Fans

6.5

A shy young teenager named Peggy has a major crush on Ricky. Ricky, however, is tired of all this "attention" that this girl is giving him, so asks Lucy to have a talk with her. During their conversation, Lucy asks Peggy to think of some other boys her own age that she might like to go out with instead. Peggy, it seems, also likes a boy named Arthur Morton. Unfortunately, Arthur is painfully shy and cannot dance, so Lucy volunteers to give him a dance lesson. But it is then that Arthur becomes infatuated with Lucy! To get the two off their backs, Lucy and Ricky come up with a solution: they will dress up and act like 90 year olds, and scare their "young fans" back to reality.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 21: New Neighbors

21. New Neighbors

7.0

Lucy becomes afraid that one of her new neighbors is threatening to kill her and convinces the others that the neighbors are trying to kill them...which gets them into big trouble.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 22: Fred and Ethel Fight

22. Fred and Ethel Fight

7.0

Fred and Ethel have been going at each others' throats for the past few days now, and aren't talking to each other any more. (Fred: She called my mother a weasel!)To get them back together, Lucy comes up with a plan: She will invite Ethel to dinner, while Ricky will invite Fred. Neither Mertz will know that the other is coming, Lucy hopes that she can bring the Mertzes together so they can talk out their issues. Lucy commences with her plan, but during dinner, she and Ricky start to bicker. By the end of supper, the Mertzes leave the Ricardos' apartment as happy as larks, but Lucy and Ricky are now at each others' throats. It's now up to the Mertzes to bring the Ricardos back together.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 23: The Moustache

23. The Moustache

7.0

Lucy dislikes Ricky's new moustache. In order to take revenge, she glues a moustache and beard on to her face. Then, Ricky agrees to shave his moustache off, as long as Lucy gets rid of hers. Lucy tries to get the facial hair off, and is unsuccessful. They try to get a special substance to take the glue off, to find out that it is not made anymore.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 24: The Gossip

24. The Gossip

7.5

Ricky is disgusted by Lucy's obsession with gossiping about other people. According to Ricky, Lucy acts as if it is her ""life's blood."" Fred, too, is disturbed by Ethel's love of gossiping. The two girls then point out that both Ricky and Fred have been known to gossip, also. The boys then challenge the girls to a bet: They will see who can go without gossiping the longest, and the winners will receive breakfast in bed for a month. The bet commences, and everything is going fine until Ricky comes up with a plan to cheat so that he and Fred can win.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 25: Pioneer Women

25. Pioneer Women

6.5

Having been bet by their husbands that they can't do without modern conveniences, Lucy and Ethel churn butter and bake bread from scratch-an eighteen foot loaf! But then Lucy demands that Ricky live as if it's the turn of the century for him, too.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 26: The Marriage License

26. The Marriage License

5.5

Lucy thinks she and Ricky aren't legally married because his name was misspelled on their marriage license. So she wants them to renew their vows at the same place in Connecticut where Ricky first proposed to her. But they run out of gas getting there.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 27: The Kleptomaniac

27. The Kleptomaniac

6.5

When Ricky finds a closet full of valuables that Lucy has collected for a bazaar, he mistakenly thinks that she's become a kleptomaniac. He secretly calls in a doctor to hypnotize her, but Lucy is wise to his plan and feigns recalling a notorious past.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 28: Cuban Pals

28. Cuban Pals

4.5

Lucy burns with jealousy when she gets an eyeful of Ricky's dance parter Renita (Lita Baron) from the "old days" in Cuba. She was a child then, but no more! Determined to keep them apart, Lucy heads to the club in disguise, and finds herself in the clutches of a wild man named Ramon.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 29: The Freezer

29. The Freezer

7.0

Where's the beef? It's in Lucy and Ethel's new walk-in freezer (according to Lucy, the "human popsicle"). Of course, Ricky and Fred have a beef with their wives, because they paid $483 for it. The meat company won't take it back, and they can't sell it to customers waiting in the local butcher shop, so they're stuck with it. And speaking of stuck, Lucy gets herself locked in the freezer!

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 30: Lucy Does a TV Commercial

30. Lucy Does a TV Commercial

6.7

Desperate to be in Ricky's new television commercial, Lucy makes every attempt to get her way; which eventually pays off. But her one-and-only chance flops when she is forced to test the sponsor's product over-and-over, a vitamin syrup called Vitametavegimin, which is 25% alcohol.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 31: The Publicity Agent

31. The Publicity Agent

2.0

Lucy poses as a princess for a publicity stunt.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 32: Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio

32. Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio

3.0

Lucy secretly books Ricky on a radio quiz show.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 33: Lucy's Schedule

33. Lucy's Schedule

2.0

Ricky puts Lucy on a rigid time schedule.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 34: Ricky Thinks He Is Getting Bald

34. Ricky Thinks He Is Getting Bald

2.0

Ricky fears that he is going bald, so Lucy takes it into her head to help him: she stages a "bald people's party" to show him that he's not so bad, after all. But when that doesn't work, she resorts to showing some new "hair treatments" (or "torture tactics" as Lucy calls them) to show Ricky how silly he's been.

Still image for I Love Lucy season 1 episode 35: Ricky Asks for a Raise

35. Ricky Asks for a Raise

5.0

Ricky asks for a raise, but his boss (Gale Gordon) turns him down, prompting Lucy to prove just how popular a performer he is. Her scheme involves making a lot of bogus reservations at the club on the night that somebody else is playing, then show up in various guises(including Fred in drag) feigning indignation that Ricky's not performing--and leave in a huff.

Cast

Photo of Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Lucy Ricardo

Photo of Desi Arnaz

Desi Arnaz

Ricky Ricardo

Photo of Vivian Vance

Vivian Vance

Ethel Mertz

Photo of William Frawley

William Frawley

Fred Mertz

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Reviews

G

GenerationofSwine

10/10

Is anyone else tired of this? Seriously, it first aired a year before my father was born and I don't think its been off the air sense.

But then, there is a reason for this, it represents the golden age of television...the first golden age at least.

It represents Americana and one of it's most unique art forms.

But honestly, it's still funny. It can still make you laugh. It still stands the test of time...that is it does for anyone that hasn't seen every episode multiple times

You've reached the end.