• Air date: 15 Sep '52 31 episodes
      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.
  • List of Episodes (31)
    • 1. Job Switching

      15 Sep '52
      After Lucy snaps a pair of antique handcuffs on herself and Ricky, they realize there's no key. A locksmith is found, but not before the Ricardos go to bed handcuffed together, and Ricky has to do a TV show with his ""attached"" wife trying to upstage him.
    • 2. The Saxophone

      22 Sep '52
      Lucy's women's club wants to stage an operetta, but they're completely broke. (Lucy, the treasurer, seems to have spent it all to pay her own bills.) Thus, Lucy and Ethel write and star in the musical, but when their postdated check bounces for the costumes and scenery, the rental company repossesses everything in midperformance.
    • 3. The Anniversary Present

      29 Sep '52
      Ricky wants Lucy to try working for a week, so she and Ethel get jobs at a candy factory, where they are totally inept-especially at wrapping chocolates-due to a speeding conveyor belt that has them stuffing chocolates in their mouths, blouses, and hats.
    • 4. The Handcuffs

      06 Oct '52
      When Lucy fails her saxophone audition for Ricky's band, she tries to stop him from going on the road by pretending there's another man in her life. Ricky gets back at her by hiring several ""lovers,"" and hiding them in Lucy's closet. But Lucy gets the last laugh in the end!
    • 5. The Operetta

      13 Oct '52
      Lucy thinks that Ricky is pitching woo with a sophisticated neighbor. The woman is actually a jeweler who Ricky has commissioned to fashion a pearl necklace to surprise Lucy with on their anniversary. Lucy takes to spying before the deal can go down and almost loses out on her big surprise.
    • 6. Vacation from Marriage

      27 Oct '52
      The Ricardos and the Mertzes take a week off from their in-a-rut marriages. But each spouse misses the other too much, and despite a last-ditch attempt to make each other jealous, they all decide that they'd rather be in a rut with their mates.
    • 7. The Courtroom

      10 Nov '52
      The Ricardos give the Mertzes a television set for their anniversary, but Ricky's zealous tuning causes it to blow up. Fred retaliates by breaking the Ricardos' set (by kicking it!) The foursome end up in court, where they manage to destroy the judge's TV, too!
    • 8. Redecorating

      24 Nov '52
      Waiting to find out if she has won a home furnishing contest, Lucy won't leave the house, much to Ricky's annoyance. He tells Fred to call her and say that she's won. In her joy, Lucy sells all the old furniture, leaving Ricky with the job of buying it back.
    • 9. Ricky Loses His Voice

      01 Dec '52
      Ricky's laryngitis makes it impossible for him to perform in a big reopening show for the Tropicana. So Lucy substitutes herself, the ex-vaudivillian Mertzes, and a chorus line of middle-aged showgirls from the Flapper Follies of 1927. Look for Barbara Pepper as one of the showgirls.
    • 10. Lucy is Enceinte

      08 Dec '52
      Lucy tells Ricky she thinks that their child should learn all about being an artist. So Lucy then goes to the local art store where the ever-so-helpful clerk urges her to shape something out of a chunk of clay. She makes some sort of a blob and the clerk pretends that it's a masterpiece. This, of course, is all a ruse to sell her a bunch of clay. When Lucy gets home, she wants Ricky to be a model for her new sculpture, but he refuses. Ethel refuses too, but Fred obliges. However, he stands in
    • 11. Pregnant Women are Unpredictable

      15 Dec '52
      Ricky and the Mertzes rehearse for pregnant Lucy's trip to the hospital. It turns out to be predictably chaotic, but Lucy does deliver Little Ricky.
    • 12. Lucy's Showbiz Swan Song

      22 Dec '52
      Convinced his wife is a sucker for a sales pitch, Ricky demands that she return the vaccum cleaner she bought from a door-to-door salesman. Instead, she tries (unsuccessfully) to sell it. Ricky insists that he'll return it-and ends up buying a refrigerator.
    • 13. Lucy Hires an English Tutor

      29 Dec '52
      When no one laughs at her jokes or wants her to be their bridge partner, Lucy comes to the conclusion that she is inferior to everyone else. Worried by Lucy's behavior, Ricky goes to the psychiatrist (or ""fizz-a-key-a-tryst"" as Ricky pronounces it,) to find the remedy. But it turns out that this doctor's ""remedy"" isn't exactly what Ricky had in mind.
    • 14. Ricky Has Labor Pains

      05 Jan '53
      Because they both want to be president of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League, Lucy and Ethel both engage in cut-throat competition. Prior to the elections, Lucy and Ethel independently engage in a little ""spywork."" It seems that half the club plans on voting for Lucy and the other half plans to vote for Ethel. But there is one undecided vote--that of the new member, Ruth Knickerbocker. So Lucy and Ethel both go to extremes to sway Knickerbocker's vote.
    • 15. Lucy Becomes a Sculptress

      12 Jan '53
      Lucy misses catching a book tossed to her by Ricky, and winds up with a black eye that Fred and Ethel are convinced was intentional. Trying to patch things up for the Ricardos, Fred sends Lucy flowers, but inadvertedly uses his own name instead of Ricky's.
    • 16. Lucy Goes to the Hospital

      19 Jan '53
      Ricky is furious that his wife can't make up her mind and never finishes what she starts. To get even with Ricky, Lucy decides to pick up where she left off with an old boyfriend, but meeting her former beau after all these years turns out to be a major disappointment.
    • 17. Sales Resistance

      26 Jan '53
      Lucy is delighted to learn she is pregnant-but how to tell Ricky? At lunch, he's too preoccupied with work to listen to her, then it's off to the club-where Lucy finds the right moment and just the right way to tell him.
    • 18. The Inferiority Complex

      02 Feb '53
      Lucy thinks Ricky cares more about the baby they're having than about her, especially after he buys her presents like bonnets and rattles. But when he takes her out for a night on the town, she thinks he's lost interest in the baby.
    • 19. The Club Election

      16 Feb '53
      Despite her pregnancy, Lucy wants to appear in Ricky's Gay Nineties revue at the Tropicana. After a disastrous audition, Lucy disguises herself and sneaks into the barbershop quartet number, and then proceeds to ruin it.
    • 20. The Black Eye

      09 Mar '53
      Lucy hires an English tutor so that Ricky won't give their yet-to-be-born baby bad speaking habits. The lessons are free, but Lucy does promise the tutor a payback: he'll get to sing at the Tropicana. Of course, Lucy neglects to tell Ricky this.
    • 21. Lucy Changes Her Mind

      30 Mar '53
      Whether it's getting dressed or ordering dinner at a restaurant, Lucy seems unable to finish anything without changing her mind. Ricky loses his temper, so Lucy tries to play a trick with an old, unfinished love letter to a beau from high school. Fred warns Ricky of Lucy's plot, and Lucy is soon in over her head.
    • 22. No Children Allowed

      20 Apr '53
      When a cranky tenant (Elizabeth Patterson, in her first appearance as Mrs. Trumble,) threatens to move because of Little Ricky's loud crying, Ethel makes it clear that her friendship with Lucy is more important than a rental agreement. But Ethel doesn't let the Ricardos forget her loyalty.
    • 23. Lucy Hires a Maid

      27 Apr '53
      Lucy's sleepless nights with the new baby are exhausting, so the Ricardos hire a maid. Unfortunately, this new maid turns out to be a terrible shrew, who takes better care of herself than of Lucy or the apartment. Unable to get the gumption to fire her, Lucy wrecks the apartment, hoping it will make the maid quit.
    • 24. The Indian Show

      04 May '53
      Even the arrival of the baby hasn't dampened Lucy's showbiz aspirations. Wanting to get into the new Indian act at the Tropicana, Lucy pays off one of the performers and appears herself, carrying Little Ricky papoose-style on her back.
    • 25. Lucy's Last Birthday

      11 May '53
      Convinced everyone has forgotten her birthday, a forlorn Lucy sits on a park bench and meets up with a group of musical ""lost souls."" To embarrass Ricky, she brings them to the Tropicana, only to discover that a surprise birthday party awaits her.