We always think of the Italian grape-stomping or the chocolate factory episodes when we think of I Love Lucy, but a deeper cut with the tightest writing lies in Season Six of I Love Lucy in which she grows tulips for a Home and Garden competition. She’s moved Connecticut, has adopted a green thumb, and thinks her pink tulips have a shot at first place. Her competitor is Betty Ramsey, her next-door neighbor, who wins every year with her perfect yellow tulips. The more I watch this episode over the years, the more I retrieve the nuances. Maybe the writers didn’t intend it, but it speaks so loudly about women and how we pit ourselves against one another and sometimes miss the whole point—to move in stride and encourage each other during new ventures. But that’s not nearly as fun to watch.
Ethel Mertz tried to foster that friendly comradery with Betty earlier in the episode, but failed. What is genius about the episode is how early on the fake tulips on Lucy’s kitchen table are mentioned. Ricky thinks they’re real. Now the viewer is given that information because a writer knew to foreshadow--put that tidbit in the pocket of your memory for later.
Besides the solidly wrapped plot and gorgeously penned narrative, it’s got the physical comedy the makes this show the legendary classic it is. There’s a scene where Lucy and Ethel stare at the old-fashioned (even for them, yes) lawn mower that they borrow from the Ramseys, trying to figure out how it works. Once atop the mower, and once the engine is “cranked up” thanks to Ethel, Lucy’s comedic prowess does the rest. The mower runs amuck, and unless you’re dead inside, you laugh for real. Lucille Ball utilized every fiber of her body for comedy.
See, Ricky promised up and down, repeatedly, that he’d mowed the lawn before Lucy’s tulip competition for Home and Garden. Lucy thinks, Screw it. I’ll do it myself. This is when she plows down Betty’s tulips because she cannot control this beast of a mower. It even takes her down the Boston Post Road. She returns with piles of New England nature in her hair.
Later in the episode, Ricky finally gets around to the mower late at night after returning from a Yankees game with Fred, and ends up doing the same thing to his wife’s tulips that Lucy did to her neighbor’s tulips. It’s a truly well-sewn plot. We get to hear Ricky’s high-pitched falsetto while explaining how dark it was outside—as dark as the inside of his sombrero. We get to watch the tulips “melt” in the sun during the judging. God, I wish I could see this episode in color.
I go back to this episode all the time because I love the season six episodes, but mostly because it has all of the elements: good writing, physical comedy, relationship problems, Lucy and Ethel in their Sunday spring attire, communication problems, Little Ricky’s terrier named Fred, and the fake outdoors, which we rarely get to see in the NYC episodes.
We also learn both men’s real full names which always tickles me. Fred’s middle name is Hobart. The writers even throw in a bit about Fred begging Ricky for a “turn” on Ralph Ramsey’s ride on mower, like two kids on the playground. The details always set shows like this apart from the rest. Also, it’s just really f*cking funny. It’s the second to last I Love Lucy episode ever aired, and it’s gold.
Elaina Battista-Parsons is a writer across genres. Elaina loves antiques, pop culture, and snow. Elaina is the author of Italian Bones in the Snow with Vine Leaves Press. She also has a young adult novel in the works with Inked in Gray Press. Elaina’s poems and prose have been published in The Spring City, Malarkey Books, Read Furiously, superfroot, Wingless Dreamer, Drunk Monkeys, and Backlash Press. She lives on the Jersey Shore with her family.