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I Love Lucy: The Most Influential Sitcoms In History

840 Words4 Pages

Kasey Chen
History of Television
Dahlia Schweitzer
Jun 18th 2018

I love Lucy: The greatest and most influential sitcoms in history

When I love Lucy first aired on October 15, 1951. The show had six seasons with a total of 180 episodes recorded on 35 mm film. No one could have thought that an average housewife being married to a “foreign” man with an indecipherable accent would become one of most beloved and enduring programs of all time. During its run, the series garnered 24 Emmy nominations and 5 wins, and it's the first show ever to feature an ensemble cast. At the time, I Love Lucy focused on the problem what people were facing in the fifties, such as race and gender. More than almost 70 years after I Love Lucy began the series are …show more content…

The show involves Lucy and Rick, a relatable young couple to many people. They lived in Manhattan with typical worries like paying bills and buying new household commodities. The humor of the show is when Lucy exaggerate the ordinary situations and manage to get herself involved time after time, and the husband, Rick, would discover her numerous schemes. When I Love Lucy first aired on CBS, there was competition on NBC the same time slot “Lights out” a top ten television version of the radio show. Critics predicted that I Love Lucy would not stand a chance. However, after watching the first episode, the critics changed their mind, TV Guide defined I Love Lucy as “the season’s most popular …show more content…

Lucy and her friend contest to that and wanted to switch places for a week; the men will cook and clean, and the women has to go out and find a job. At first, both parties feel that their new roles are easy, but as the day goes on they realized that they do not have suitable skills to do their new jobs successfully. The show portray women as homemakers and men as breadwinners, I Love Lucy Attempts to universalize and legitimize the notion that certain gender roles ought to be upheld.(Morrison) By showing men’s failure attempts at houseworks, and women could not keep pace at the stressful factory job. Ultimately, the switch was walled off after just one day. The show stresses that women and men inherently possess the skills need to survive. I Love Lucy emphasis that women’s skills were more suited for cooking and cleaning, but men also needed women in order to function, since men does not know how to take care of themselves once they are at

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