There aren't too many of these kinds of episodes, but if I had to pick one, it would be "Lucy Cries Wolf." This is a fun, if admittedly not great offering, featuring a super childish Lucy, and only shows the interior of the Mertz building for the entire show.
Any others?
Another of my all time favorites!
Some "apartment only" favorites of mine are "The Business Manager" and the episode that kicks off the Hollywood arc. It's the one where Ben Benjamin gets brained by Lucy. Why am I BLANKING OUT on the title??
"Ricky's Movie Offer "
Actually, both your "apartment-Only" episodes are not only better offerings than "Lucy Cries Wolf", but they're truer to the thread theme.
"Wolf" has a brief scene of Mrs. De Vries - calling from HER apartment across the street.
My bad.
Well it was STILL inside an apartment! LOL
The scene where Ricky speaks to her on the phone has a detail I always wonder about. Why did Ricky keep pretending to be on the phone (holding it against his ear). He pressed down on the button and pretended to still talk about "the costumes". Then he wrote the note to Fred and Ethel? It wasn't as if Lucy could actually SEE him. It would've made more sense to just hang up and carry on a fake conversation while pointing at the window. Fred and Ethel would've picked up on that immediately.
Never thought of that, but you have a point.
Incidentally, there's a fascinating still of this episode on IMDB. It shows that the set of the ledge Lucy was sitting on was placed in front of the adjoining bedroom set. This made it easy for the studio audience AND the cameras to catch Lucy's expressions while the other three converse while she's sitting "outside."
How about "Vacation From Marriage" I've always thought that episode was funny. It takes place all over the building though, You see the Mertz's apartment, the Ricardo's and the roof haha. When Ricky starts to spray water on them and Lucy says, but Ethel, its not raining out there! AHAH cracks me up.
shareAnd it's the only time we see Fred and Ethel's bedroom.
shareYes, and they had twin beds too unlike the supposed double bed that Ricky called "a canoe" in "First Stop". Ethel said that it was just like their bed at home.
shareAgain, it's highly possible that Fred purchased a CHEAP queen-sized mattress between the 1952 "Vacation" episode and the 1955 "First Stop" offering. Hardly qualifies as a blooper.
shareFred? Purchase new furniture? I doubt it. LOL Remember how he balked at buying new living room furniture when the Ricardos offered to paint? He said that he just got all that stuff "broken in".
Of course it is possible that Fred bought a new mattress. But when Lucy asked her if she did that "every night", i.e., getting Fred into bed and propping pillows around him, Ethel replied that it took "years of practice." I can't imagine that even a cheap mattress would fall apart so quickly. Of course, who KNOWS where Fred shopped! ha!
If Fred or Ethel's twin bed collapsed shortly after 1952's "Vacation from Marriage" (they probably bought THOSE in the 1930s), then Fred could've easily bought a used, saggy queen mattress (probably using the one remaining twin bed as a trade-in!). If, by 1953, it sagged so much, Ethel had to tie Fred to the side, she would indeed have had "years of practice" by 1955's "First Stop." Again, this doesn't qualify as a genuine blooper.
share I never thought of it as an actual "blooper' as such. It was more like an inconsistency in the writing, like when Ethel called her washer "an old relic" when Fred had actually bought her a new one from the Handy Dandy Company just a few years earlier. Of course, that company may HAVE sold old, used items!
I just never thought of purchasing a used mattress, so the idea of Fred buying one never crossed my mind. When I was eight my mom bought a used bedroom suite for my sister and me. It was in good condition and very nice. But she drew the line at a "used" mattress. She bought us a new one. She was totally against using some stranger's mattress.