Episode 1: The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

Episode 1: The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub

Airdate: October 15, 1951

Grade: C+

It's Fred and Ethel's 18th wedding anniversary. Frawley, by the way, was 64, while Vance was 42, although she had to frump up to seem older than Ball. And when the girls disguise themselves as the boys' blind dates (and, yes, they say "girls" and "boys"), Ethel is supposed to be Lucy's mother. There's a lot of suspension of disbelief that the guys don't recognize their own wives, even with "necking."

It's implied that Lucy and Ricky have been together 11 years, and they got married when he'd been in the U.S. only a few months. But the real bonds here are of course same-sex, with Fred and Ethel wanting to celebrate their anniversary in different ways, and Ricky and Lucy each taking the side of their best friend, to the point that they argue and say that the Mertzes should get divorced.

I don't know what to make of all this yet, other than the series is so far more interesting than entertaining. At least the first episode to air is a bit better than the pilot that would wait another four decades.

Marc Daniels directed for the first of 39 times, just in the first two seasons.