The Lucy Show season 3 continues with the adventures of the widow Carmichael (Lucille Ball) and her friend Viv (Vivian Vance) driving poor Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) crazy. Ann Southern joins the cast this season as The Countess – an old friend of Lucy’s who married well, but is now a penniless widow.
Episode list
- Lucy and the Good Skate – Wanting to spend more time with her daughter, Lucy & Chris go roller skating. But when Lucy gets home, her feet had swollen — and she can’t get the skates off ! To make matters worse, she’s attending a dance that evening …
- Lucy and the Plumber – Mr. Mooney approves of Lucy hiring a plumber to fix her kitchen sink. Oddly, the plumber looks exactly like Jack Benny (and his assistant: Bob Hope)
- Lucy and the Winter Sports – Lucy tries to impress her athletic boyfriend by bragging about her mastery of various winter sports. Of course, she has no skill at any winter sport. When he invites her on a ski trip, she takes a crash course in skiing from Mr. Mooney.
- Lucy Gets Amnesia – Lucy once again needs money from Mr. Mooney. It should be easy this time–Mooney’s fill-in is a former sweetheart of hers. When she can’t recall her old pet name for him, she fakes amnesia.
- Lucy and the Great Bank Robbery – Lucy and Viv rent a spare room to a couple of guys in town for the New York World’s Fair. But are they bank robbers who plan to knock off Mr. Mooney’s bank?
- Lucy, the Camp Cook – Lucy and Viv need to raise funds for the kids’ summer camp. When the camp cook quits, the two take over the kitchen. Slapstick ensues!
- Lucy, the Meter Maid – Proving that “power corrupts”When Lucy’s new job as a meter maid goes to her head, she accuses Viv of many violations and takes her to traffic court.
- Lucy Makes a Pinch – Lucy continues looking for the “right” job. Here, she becomes a policewoman. A notorious robber is holding up cars parked on Lovers’ Lane. The lovely Lucy is chosen to be the cops’ decoy.
- Lucy Becomes a Father – Lucy goes with her son Jerry on a father-son camping trip. The other fathers don’t like having a female “dad” around, so they try to make things so tough she’ll go running home. They don’t know her very well, do they?
- Lucy’s Contact Lenses – One of Lucy’s new contact lenses pops out when she’s icing a chocolate cake for a bake sale. She thinks that Mrs. Mooney bought her cake … So she and Viv sneak into the Mooney’s home to switch a new cake for the one with her lens. What could possibly go wrong?
- Lucy Gets Her Maid – Lucy wants a maid, even if she has to go to work as a maid to afford it! With Kathleen Freeman as their new maid. Their new, lazy, maid, who doesn’t start until noon. And Lucy has to run home from her job to feed the maid. The funniest part is when maid Lucy convinces Viv to join her in serving an important international dinner party. However, the dinner guests are the art club that Lucy & Viv are trying to join! So, they try to disguise themselves with each course … Russians serving borscht, French serving bread, etc. The funniest part of the epissode, frankly.
- Lucy Gets the Bird – Mr. Mooney’s pet parakeet is boarding at the Carmichael house. Until “Greenbacks” flies away! So, Lucy and Viv try to pass off a new parakeet as his beloved pet.
- Lucy, the Coin Collector – What will Lucy do for $16.50? When her son Jerry finds a penny worth fifty cents, Lucy & Viv withdraw 2,000 pennies from the bank. They search through them until they find one worth $16.50. Until Lucy drops the penny down a storm drain. So, they work their way through the sewer system to look for it.
- Lucy and the Missing Stamp – While trying to sell Mr. Mooney a vacuum cleaner, Lucy accidentally vacuums up a rare stamp that he just bought for $3,000. When it winds up on an envelope sent through the mail,what can they do? Obviously, break into the post office!
Lucy Meets Danny Kaye – Lucy plans to take the family to a taping of The Danny Kaye Show. When she can’t get her hands on any tickets, she goes to Danny Kaye himself and begs for help. His solution is to make the Carmichaels and Bagleys extras on the show. It ends with a very funny suitcase on stage skit with Lucy and Danny.- Lucy and the Ceramic Cat – Lucy and Viv break the ceramic cat Mr. Mooney plans to give his wife as a surprise birthday present. So, Lucy winds up pretending to be a mechanical man in a department store window. Why? To steal another ceramic cat.
- Lucy Goes to Vegas – The good news is, Lucy and Viv has won a free trip to Las Vegas! The bad news is, they can’t afford to stay anywhere. So, the pretend to be “high rollers” in order to get complimentary rooms. But then they have to put up or shut up at the casino table!
- Lucy and the Monsters – Lucy and Viv’s kids aren’t frightened at all by the monster movie they all went to see. Lucy and Viv are a different story, however. This leads to a nightmare dream sequence where they’re turned into witchees.
- Lucy and the Countess – Lucy’s childhood friend Rosie, is now known as the Countess Framboise. And, Mr. Mooney is suitably impressed. Now a widow, Rosie has a title … but no money. The two attend a high society wine-tasting and proceed to get plastered.
- My Fair Lucy – The Countess wants to open a charm school, but needs financing. To impress the wealthy Dunbars, she will take a ratty scrubwoman (Lucy as Liza Lumpwhomper) and turn her into a sparkling debutante. But then Lucy’s allergy to caviar threatens the whole thing …
- Lucy and the Countess Lose Weight – Mr. Mooney’s made a bad investment in a “fat farm”. To help him out, Lucy and the Countess volunteer to attend to generate some needed publicity. But the fat farm’s more like a torture camp, and the duo try to escape.
- Lucy and the Old Mansion – The Countess doesn’t want her foreign visitors to know she’s broke. Lucy decides to borrow a dilapidated mansion and get Viv to help her fix it up. But, when the Countess hosts a party for her guests, their temporary improvements fall apart comically.
- Lucy and Arthur Godfrey – Lucy and Viv get Arthur Godfrey to perform in a musical staged by the Danfield Community Players. Song include Reconstruction Time (Arthur Godfrey), Drop the Hankie
- Lucy and the Beauty Doctor – Lucy’s visit to a beautician is taped on a hidden TV camera. How will she explain to Mr. Mooney how she spent the money for “medical expenses”?
- Lucy the Stockholder – Lucy and Vivian try to get the town’s wealthiest doctor to become a depositor in Mr. Mooney’s bank. However, the doctor mistakes them for volunteers for an experiment in hypnosis. And regresses them to childhood!
- Lucy the Disc Jockey – Lucy gets a trial as a disc jockey. And nothing can go wrong, since she’s been left with a list of notes about what to do, step by step. Until she turns on the fan when the show’s live!
Amazon.com
In this timelessly funny third season of The Lucy Show, in which iconic I Love Lucy cohorts Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance star as two single women, one widowed and the other divorced, who share a home with their children, Lucy and Viv are awarded ample opportunities to carry on like a proto Laverne & Shirley. “What we need is a plan and we need it fast,” is this series’ comedic raison d’être.
Lucy’s lost her contact lens? What are she and Viv to do but frantically and messily search through 14 bake sale chocolate cakes for it? Lucy also gets Emmy-worthy support from the great Gale Gordon as Mr. Mooney, the ever-exasperated banker in charge of her precarious finances. But this is, after all, The Lucy Show, and Lucy (“that fantabulous dynamic gifted ball of fire,” to quote Danny Kaye in one of this set’s bonus features), like all great clowns, will do anything for a laugh.
- In “Lucy, the Great Skate,” she again evokes Charlie Chaplin when she takes to the dance floor on roller skates (don’t ask) at a swank country club dance.
- In “Lucy Meets Danny Kaye,” she’s a scene-stealing extra on the entertainer’s TV show.
- She has two great comic set pieces in “Lucy Becomes a Father,” trying to extricate herself from a sleeping bag, and interacting with a real live bear.
- This season’s Very Special Episode is “Lucy and the Plumber,” featuring guest star Jack Benny as a plumber whose cross to bear is that he looks like Jack Benny. Non-spoiler alert: Another legendary FOL (Friend of Lucy) makes a surprise cameo at episode’s end.
This would be Vance’s last season, and she is absent for several episodes. Enter Ann Sothern as an old school friend who is by all appearances a fabulously wealthy countess, but who is actually broke, and whom Lucy helps maintain the charade. Added pleasures for radio, TV, and comedy buffs include appearances by Harold “The Great Gildersleeve” Peary, Pat Harrington (Schneider on One Day at a Time), and episodes cowritten by Garry Marshall (creator of Laverne & Shirley).
Each episode can be viewed in color as they were filmed, or in black and white as they were broadcast in 1964-65, complete with vintage openings, closings, and commercials. Bonus features also include footage of Lucy Day at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, text bios of the show’s cinematographer and costume designer, and bonus clips of a Lucy appearance on The Danny Kaye Show. –Donald Liebenson