TV Show Review: I Love Lucy - Season 1 Volume 8

Stars: 5 out of 5
Pros: "Lucy Does a TV Commercial"

Cons: "The Publicity Agent" suffers from placement

The Bottom Line:

Season one's best known

Episode plus three others

All you need to know

Laugh Your Way to Health with Vitameatavegamin

Every season of I Love Lucy produced at least one truly classic episode that stands out in everyone's mind when considering the greatest episodes of the show. That episode for season 1 is one of the four on this disc.

"Cuban Pals" - Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) is thrilled to finally get to meet some of her husband Ricky's (Desi Arnaz) friends from Cuba. She gets a visit from the green eyed monster, however, when she sees Renita, Ricky's former dance partner. Last time they danced, Renita was a little girl. Now, she's a beautiful woman. In order to keep Renita and Ricky from dancing together at Ricky's nightclub, Lucy plans to take her place in the Rumba. But things don't quite work out like she had planned. The beginning is fairly routine (but watch for Desi to mess up the language he is speaking near the beginning). It's the Rumba at the end that makes this episode so great.

"The Freezer" - Lucy and her neighbor Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) buy a huge walk in freezer and put it in the basement of their apartment building. Anxious to save money, they order two sides of beef, not knowing just how much that is. When Ricky and Fred (William Frawley) want to see the freezer, Lucy has to do some quick meat moving to keep the husbands from learning what a mistake they've made. This one has a great scene at a butchers, and Lucy's makeup at the end is funny.

"Lucy Does a TV Commercial" - Now we come to the previously mentioned classic. And if the title of the episode doesn't mean anything to you, I have just one word, Vitameatavegamin. Ricky is doing a TV show, and Lucy has schemed her way into getting the part of the ad girl. The sponsor's product, however, is 23% alcohol and the director wants Lucy to run through the script several times. While I normally don't find drunk people funny, this episode kills me every time I see it. Heck, I have the majority of that scene memorized, and I still laugh. Now that's classic.

"The Publicity Agent" - When Ricky is upset that his name hasn't been in the paper recently, Lucy comes up with the perfect solution; she becomes the Maharincess of Franistan, a loyal fan who comes all the way to New York to see Ricky perform live. Maybe it's because it follows such a true classic, but I don't feel this one lives up to its full potential. The best part is the final scene where Lucy runs afoul of the political unrest "back home."

The early episodes of the show often feel more like radio then TV scripts. Here, the show is finally turning into a TV show. And the other characters are truly being used to their full potential. Ironically enough, the one show that doesn't follow this trend is "Lucy Does a TV Commercial." Ethel isn't in it, and the show focuses mostly on Lucy. Yet it works so well I hardly ever notice. All the acting is wonderful. Based on these four episodes, it's easy to see why the show is such a lasting classic.

And this disc contains the same great bonus material we've come to expect. There are two flubs, the previously mentioned case of Desi giving his Spanish lines in English, and a glimpse of Lucy behind the scenes when we aren't supposed to see her. They've added some footage cut from "TV Commercial" back in, and they include the original animated opening for the show. There's an episode of Lucy's radio show, "My Favorite Husband" which ties into "The Freezer." Finally, we get an audio excerpt from creator/head writer Jess Oppenheimer's book that talks about the creation of "The Freezer" and "TV Commercial."

If you want to own one of the iconic episodes of the series, this is the disc to get. But if you are a big enough fan that you want to own it all, skip this disc and head straight for the complete first season.