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.
Episodes
Ricky is opening a new club, and he wants Bob Hope to appear at the grand opening. Lucy fears Hope won't appear because of her widespread reputation for monkey-wrench throwing, and wants to reassure him that this time she's butting out.
Little Ricky gets drums and the Mertzes get headaches. So do Lucy and Ricky, but they're not about to evict themselves.
Lucy tries to get in a skit with Orson Welles at Ricky's club, thinking it is a Shakespearean play that he will be doing. When Orson Welles tells Lucy she can be in the show, she calls her old high school drama teacher to tell her the news. Lucy's old teacher sends her whole drama class to Club Babalu to see Lucy perform. But poor Lucy! It turns out Welles only wanted her to be his assistant for a magic trick.
Little Ricky is scheduled to play the drums in a children's orchestra. Although his parents and their friends the Mertzes are overcome with nervousness, Little Ricky seems calm until his big moment arrives; then he goes to pieces. His next performance is six months away, but Lucy feels she must do something about his stage fright now.
Mario, the Ricardos and Mertzes' gondolier in Venice, comes to New York to surprise his brother Dominic, but turns up at the Ricardos' apartment when he can't find him. Lucy is sure Dominic is in San Francisco and sets out to help Mario raise the bus fare. Her earnest efforts pay off in a surprising way.
When Lucy misplaces two train tickets to Florida, she and Ethel consult the classified section, hoping to share a ride with someone driving south. They team up with a peculiar middle-aged woman, Mrs. Grundy, who's bent on getting to Florida in record time.
It's Lucy and Ethel vs. Ricky and Fred in a fishing contest while they're on a Florida vacation. The wager: $150 (about what Lucy and Ethel had spent in hotel boutiques), so both sides do a little cheating to ensure a victory.
Lucy and Ethel will do anything to keep Ricky and Fred from judging a Miami Beach beauty contest (and end up being menaced on a seemingly deserted island as a result).
Still on their vacation, the Ricardos go to Cuba, where Ricky wants to introduce his relatives to Lucy and Little Ricky.
Little Ricky's school pageant "The Enchanted Forest" is coming up and it's coming up short on cast members, so the Ricardos and Mertzes volunteer. Ricky's a hollow stump, Fred's a frog and Ethel's the fairy princess. And Lucy? She's a witch.
The Ricardos and Mertzes spend Christmas Eve decorating a tree - and remembering moments that led up to the birth of Little Ricky five years earlier.
Ricky's disapproval of Lucy's new hat leads to her trying on a loving cup which Ricky has planned to present to jockey Johnny Longden at a National Turf Association dinner. The problem is that Lucy can't get the trophy off her head.
When Stevie Appleby, Caroline's son, has a birthday party the same day as Little Ricky's, Lucy looks for unusual entertainment to lure the children. Ricky remembers that Superman is in town, and he invites him. But when Ricky is unable to corral Superman, Lucy is left with no choice but to dress as the Man of Steel herself. George Reeves makes a special guest-star appearance in this episode.
The Ricardos' apartment begins to resemble a pet shop when Little Ricky gets a puppy. Lucy and Ricky are both determined to get rid of the puppy after their son brings it home -- as are their landlords, Fred and Ethel. They have a hard time overcoming Little Ricky's arguments that a puppy would be a welcome addition to a home that already boasts a canary, a frog, a lizard, a turtle, and some goldfish.
Lucy decides that it would be nice to move to the country and prevails on Ricky to place a comfortable deposit on a big house. Ricky agrees and puts a down payment on a house in Westport, Connecticut. It is not long before Lucy changes her mind. Lucy, Ethel, and Fred put on disguises to try and help poor Ricky get his deposit back.
The Ricardos find themselves, and all their belongings, boarding with the Mertzes while they wait to move into their new Westport, Connecticut home.
As the Ricardos get settled in their new country home, they immediately wind up in a mix-up with their old friends Fred and Ethel Mertz. Missing their old friends already, Lucy and Ricky decide to visit the Mertzes. At the same time, the Mertzes decide to trek to the country to visit the Ricardos, and what began simply becomes complicated.
With the best intentions in the world, Lucy somehow causes a misunderstanding with her neighbors, the Ramseys. It all starts when Betty Ramsey offers Lucy some advice and a wholesale deal on furniture. For a time, the Ricardos' whole future at their Connecticut home seems threatened.
The Mertzes find a way to stay with the Ricardos: chicken farming. But the scheme puts Lucy over her head in chickens when she and Ethel bring home 500 baby chicks before the hen house is ready.
Chicken-raising and practicing a tango for Little Ricky's school PTA meeting combine to get the Ricardos and the Mertzes in a verbal battle. It's up to Ricky, Jr. and his neighborhood pal Bruce Ramsey to straighten things out.
When Ricky refuses to bring his rumba band out to Westport to play for a Historical Society benefit, Lucy and the Mertzes put together a combo of their own, with Little Ricky on drums.
After spending six whole weeks in their new Connecticut home, Lucy dreams of a night in New York City and it turns into a nightmare. Four carefully hoarded tickets to the Broadway musical hit "The Most Happy Fella" are supposed to get the Ricardos and the Mertzes in to see the sold-out show. But difficulties arise when Fred Mertz gets nervous about pickpockets because he's carrying $500 in cash in his pockets.
Ethel is jealous of Lucy's friendship with Betty Ramsey. But when Betty reveals that she's from Ethel's home town of Albuquerque, the two become fast friends, and now it's Lucy who feels left out.
Lucy has a problem deciding what to do to get her vacationing husband, Ricky, out of her hair so she can do her housework. She and Ethel solve the problem by putting their husbands to work building a barbecue.
Lucy, Ethel, and Betty want their husbands to dance with their friends' visiting houseguest - until they see that she's a sultry, young blonde. Now the boys are only too happy to oblige - and the miffed wives decide to fight glamour with glamour.
Suburban living gets Lucy into a flower-show competition, and she raises tulips with a vengeance as she tries to beat out her neighbor, Betty Ramsey, for first prize. Lucy asks Ricky to mow the lawn so that her garden will look just right. But he only mows half before taking off for a baseball game, leaving Lucy and Ethel to tiptoe through the tulips -- with the lawnmower.
Ricky has been chosen to dedicate a new Revolutionary War statue in the Westport Town Square. There's a problem: Lucy has accidentally destroyed the one-of-a-kind sculpture.
