I Love Lucy

The other day I was pedaling away madly on my stationary bike. I watch TV at the same time to while away this dismal duty.

I Love Lucy happened to come on as I was heading down the home stretch.  I like that show, so I didn’t change the channel.

It was an episode where Lucy is pregnant with Little Ricky.  I don’t know if it was the oxygen deprivation I was suffering, but I noticed some things I had never paid much attention to in over 30 years of off-and-on Lucy watching.  (And I’m not just talking about the twin beds.  Weird.  Oh, but I did notice this - above Ricky’s bed there is a picture of ballerina, and above Lucy’s, a picture of a man ballerina.  Really weird).

Here is what got me to thinking.  Lucy and Ricky are a prosperous couple.  Ricky has his own club, and it is a popular New York City hotspot.  Compared to Fred and Ethel, Lucy and Ricky are sophisticated, glamorous, and stylish.  Even so, it’s interesting to note the difference between their “glamorous” lifestyle of the ’50’s and a typical middle-class existence today.

Compared to most people today it seems that Lucy and Ricky lead a very simple life.  Their apartment is pretty sparse. It is so tiny - one little bedroom, one little living room and one little kitchen.  They don’t have much stuff, either.  A plain sofa (kind of uncomfortable looking, too), a side chair, a coffee table, a little desk with a telephone on it.  Two twin beds.  Not too many knick-knacks.  Clutter in Lucy and Ricky’s apartment is very much at a minimum.

Also, Lucy’s wardrobe is pretty small.  You see the same outfits over and over again in different episodes. This is totally unlike sitcoms today where characters are hardly ever seen in the same outfit twice in one episode, let alone in different episodes.

Lucy and Ricky don’t even have a car.  Apparently they didn’t get one until the (in)famous road trip to California.  They just didn’t need it. So why buy it?

Of course, it’s good to remember that TV is not reality.  But as a snapshot of ’50’s sophisticated urban living I think there must be some truth to it.  After all, they were trying to create an image that would be believable to TV-viewers of that era, so it must not be too far off.

So what is the difference?  I mean to say, why does Lucy and Ricky’s affluent ’50’s life seem so stark in comparison to a regular old middle-class household of today?

I think the difference is credit cards.  They didn’t have them in the ’50’s.  Lucy would sometimes go into a hatshop, buy a hat she couldn’t afford, and tell the clerk, “Put it on my account.”  Then the whole episode would revolve around Lucy worrying about Ricky’s anger when he gets the bill at the end of the month.  Because he had to PAY the whole entire bill when he got it, not let it linger on for years and years accruing insane interest like us “smart” moderns are used to doing.

I guess that’s why Lucy and Ricky didn’t have as much stuff as we do today.  When they bought something they had to pay for it at the time of purchase.  They couldn’t buy anything unless they actually had the money for it.

So, are there lessons to be learned from I Love Lucy?  Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea today to live that ’50’s affluent lifestyle.  Oh - minus the spanking.  Unless you like that sort of thing, of course.

There are lots of advantages to living like this.  It’s much cheaper, for one thing.  Peace of mind, for another.  Also, I notice that Lucy and Ethel have plenty of time for socializing and shenanigans.  That’s because they don’t have to spend a lot of time cleaning and caring for lots of stuff.  They just don’t have lots of stuff.  It’s hard for me to get into too much trouble because I have a ginormous house filled with things that I must keep cleaned and organized.  I spend quite a bit of time on this every single day.  No time for me to dress up like a Martian and climb the Empire State Building.  Drat!