Therapy session #1 “I Love Lucy” Pilot 3/2/51

I came home, opened up my mailbox and saw the little red netflix envelope that held my favorite red head.
On March, 2 1951 (happy birthday Dad! even though you weren’t born), Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz performed the pilot for the “I Love Lucy” show. This episode was aired later in the first season and named “The Audition”.
The pilot plot is pretty much Lucy wants to be in Ricky’s show, shocker, and he wont let her (isn't’ this the plot for most episodes) In this show Ricky was having an audition for his first television show. The clown, who I didn’t think was very good and was kind’ve creepy looking, hurts himself and Lucy fills in for him. She does an old vaudeville style clown act and of course the tv people offer her a contract and not Ricky. In the end she wants to stay being a housewife for Ricky, how 50’s TV.
The network didn’t introduce Fred and Ethel until the first real episode and they were missed in the pilot. Having Fred and Ethel involved makes Ricky and Lucy, who were married in real life, more believable as a real TV couple with “real” friends. Even though we missed Fred and Ethel in the pilot episode, there was nothing off about Lucy’s menacing eyes and comedic timing or Ricky’s charming over verbrato voice.
A quick small history of the show, when Desi and Lucy decided they were going to do a show together Lucy wanted to stay in LA and she wanted to do it in front of a live audience. At that time TV shows were all being taped in New York, Desi also knew that Lucy worked better in front of an audience so he worked hard to find out what had to happen for all these elements to work. Desi developed the multiple-camera setup production style using adjacent sets that became the standard for all subsequent situation comedies. Remember how they would walk from the kitchen into the living room through the swinging door? This way, they could shoot the episode in a studio in front of an audience and mail it to New York to be edited. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desi_Arnaz) Not only were they pioneering the way tv was being filmed, they were changing the face of television comedy. Shops would post signs in their window that said “closing early. We love Lucy too”.