TWO FOR TUESDAY - WATCHING "I LOVE LUCY" AT THE OLD ONE-TWO

'BARNEY MILLER'

"COPYCAT"

Nick Yemana had the lead on a case involving a store owner who was robbed by a guy who threatened to blow the place up with the dynamite he had shoved down his pants.  The victim said that he had seen a similar robbery already... in a TV show.

So Nick conducted his own kind of research - he read that week's TV Guide....

Barney didn't know that's what he was doing when he caught Nick perusing the issue.  He just figured Nick was goofing off as usual.  But the Captain should have realized something was up because it wasn't the Racing Times he was reading.

Barney was slightly impressed with Nick's initiative and asked him if he found anything yet that would lead them to the copycat.

Nick showed him one entry: Lucy was pregnant and didn't know how to tell Ricky.  Barney added that this was also the episode in which Ricky lost his job.

Actually in the Trueniverse, these were actually two different episodes.

'I LOVE LUCY'

"RICKY ASKS FOR A RAISE" 

Episode aired 9 June 1952

After Ricky loses his job when he asks for a raise, Lucy comes up with a plan to demonstrate to his boss how important he is.

'I LOVE LUCY'

"LUCY IS ENCIENTE"

Episode aired 8 December 1952

When Lucy learns that she's going to have a baby, she tries to find the right way to tell this to Ricky.

Had this been in the real world, I might have just shrugged it off as Barney conflating the two plots into one.

Forget it, Jake.  This is Toobworld.

Long ago I had to accept the reality that even though most TV shows share the same dimension, many times they would refer to each other as TV shows.  Paraphrasing Warhol, everybody in Toobworld will have a TV show made about them.

So there is a televersion of the 'I Love Lucy' sitcom.  It's been mentioned in other TV shows beside Barney Miller:

• 'Our Miss Brooks'
• 'The George Burns And Gracie Allen Show'
• 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis'
• 'Green Acres'
• 'Sanford And Son'
• 'Rhoda'
• 'M*A*S*H'
• 'Lou Grant'
• 'St. Elsewhere'
• 'E/R'
• 'Webster'
• 'Charles In Charge'
• 'Miami Vice'

And most recently, 'Gilmore Girls', 'Fuller House', and 'Mom'.

The shows from the 1950s, which would include 'M*A*S*H' on the Toobworld timeline, mean that the show is as old as it is here in the real world.  And that means it was being produced around the same time as Ricky Ricardo was performing at the Tropicana, acting in "Don Juan", traveling through Europe, and the family moving to Connecticut.  It's not surprising that a show about the Ricardos would be on the air before their full story had played out in their "real" lives - after all, they were celebrities and thus of interest to the general public.

But the show doesn't have to be exactly as it was in the Trueniverse, the one we all watched over the years.  And this is a good example that the show they talked about was not the same sitcom that we watched in the real world.  The real 'I Love Lucy' had two episodes - one dealt with Lucy being pregnant and the other about Ricky losing his job.  But in Toobworld, the televersions of the show's producers combined those two plots into one.

Two for Tuesday!