Do We Love Lucy?

Have you ever watched I Love Lucy?

I mean really watched it?

I always said it was one of my very favorite shows. When Saturday morning on TV Land rolled around, I was always there to catch the morning marathon. It was a a nice cure to my slight hangovers and made me laugh. I could always count on Lucy and Ethel and their latest schemes to perk me up. What's not to love, right?

WRONG.

Last night I decided that I needed to start unwinding a bit before going to bed, instead of just putting down the books and closing out the Word documents and shutting my eyes immediately. So I thought, Why not take advantage of that first season of I Love Lucy that's been sitting on the TV shelf since Christmas? I liked the idea of watching 23 minutes of Lucy before having to think about the next day of classes and work all over again. I popped in the first disc and settled into bed.

Sounds good, right?

WRONG.

I couldn't believe what I was watching. I found myself literally gasping aloud at the episode. Was this the same show that nursed my hangovers? Was this the same Lucy that I had loved?

No, my friends, it wasn't.

Have you ever seen the episode "The Quiz Show?" Absolutely outrageous. Let me give you a little synopsis:

Lucy gets in trouble with her overbearing father (I mean, husband) because she didn't balance her "household accounts" correctly. When Ricky finds out (which Lucy fears) he tells her that he's going to withhold her "allowance" until she can settle the accounts. Seeing as how she has no way of doing this, she and Ethel go on the Freddie Filmore radio show in the hopes of winning the $1000 prize. His show is called "Females Are Fabulous, based on the theory that any woman is willing to make an idiot out of herself in order to win a prize" (Yes, that's a direct quote). Lucy is introduced as Mrs. Ricky Ricardo (apparently she's not worthy of her own name) and has to put on a raincoat and hat to be sprayed with water every time she mentions anything about water or the ocean or the sea.

Okay, the rest isn't really important--she ends up having to introduce a stranger to Ricky as her first husband and make him believe it for four hours before she can be given the prize money. Chaos ensues, Lucy-style.

But I couldn't even get past that first ten minutes. Was that really what life was like in the 1950s? Wives being forced to work in the home and be given allowances from their husbands that risk being withheld if they deviate from what their husbands deem appropriate? Radio shows that make fools out of women to prove that they're idiots? Hold on, let me just go puke on my shoes.

And the episodes go on. In "Be a Pal," Lucy thinks Ricky is losing interest in her, so she finds a book on how to make herself more desirable to rekindle the flame. In "The Diet," Ricky says he'll only let Lucy appear on his show if she loses enough weight to fit into a size 12. In "Lucy Writes a Play," Lucy writes a play she wants to be aired on Ricky's show casting Ricky as the lead, only to have him refuse it.

This is the show America loves? The show was even produced in part by Lucille Ball. Apparently, this was good stuff to her.

I guess we've come a long way. I guess TV shows aren't quite this sexist nowadays. But still--was this really the norm of the time? I'm baffled.