Like most of her shows on all Lucy's series, there is a big unbelievable devise used to get Lucy into a wild situation...but once you get her there, the show may be funny, or not. In this one, it was quite funny to see her miserable attempt at refereeing the youth football game, knowing full well that there is no way someone who knew so little about the game would ever really be placed in such a situation.
The story begins with the two sons informing their parents that their big upcoming football game has been cancelled because there is nobody available to officiate. Lucy convinces the pair that she can do it, by memorizing a couple of facts off the back of football bubblegum cards, and then gets her friend Harry (Dick Martin) to try to teach her some fundamentals--like what a line of scrimmage is, or even what a lineman is.
I liked that they actually had enough kids in the scene to look like a real kids football game. Some series would have made do with 6-8 kids only, trying to suggest the others were off-camera. I would have preferred a part of the show to have been filmed on a real field instead of a tiny fake field in the studio, but it was early-60s TV with quite limited shooting budgets.
Lucy had memorized official signals, even though she had no idea of when to use them. But her officiating in the scene essentially dealt with her bungling the coin toss, getting in the way during the kickoff, then looking the other way and entirely missing the next play. When her son intercepted a pass and raced for the end zone, Lucy forgot she was supposed to be neutral and physically helped him to score--leading to her being chased from the field and the game called off.
Since there was no winning team, nobody got the prize of going to the Giants' upcoming game at Yankee Stadium. Oddly, they talked of the NFL and named the stadium, but never said the name of the team. So Lucy volunteered to pay for all the boys on both teams to see the game. But a big snowstorm that morning caused all the roads to the city to be closed, so she hosted a TV viewing of the game in her home, with Viv helping her serve the food to the two dozen boys.
Then they learned that the heavy snow meant all the boys would have to stay overnight. This led to some tricky sleeping arrangements and another funny scene with Lucy.
In watching the DVDs I just bought of these early episodes, I find that Viv has many of the funniest quips in the show. The two ladies really were a wonderful team.
If you're hung up about how Lucy would never be a referee, you could still enjoy most of the episode, but that wild scene with her in stripes was the funniest of the episode to me. Good, silly fun, somewhat in the mode of the Marx Brothers, or, for my generation, Green Acres.
The story begins with the two sons informing their parents that their big upcoming football game has been cancelled because there is nobody available to officiate. Lucy convinces the pair that she can do it, by memorizing a couple of facts off the back of football bubblegum cards, and then gets her friend Harry (Dick Martin) to try to teach her some fundamentals--like what a line of scrimmage is, or even what a lineman is.
I liked that they actually had enough kids in the scene to look like a real kids football game. Some series would have made do with 6-8 kids only, trying to suggest the others were off-camera. I would have preferred a part of the show to have been filmed on a real field instead of a tiny fake field in the studio, but it was early-60s TV with quite limited shooting budgets.
Lucy had memorized official signals, even though she had no idea of when to use them. But her officiating in the scene essentially dealt with her bungling the coin toss, getting in the way during the kickoff, then looking the other way and entirely missing the next play. When her son intercepted a pass and raced for the end zone, Lucy forgot she was supposed to be neutral and physically helped him to score--leading to her being chased from the field and the game called off.
Since there was no winning team, nobody got the prize of going to the Giants' upcoming game at Yankee Stadium. Oddly, they talked of the NFL and named the stadium, but never said the name of the team. So Lucy volunteered to pay for all the boys on both teams to see the game. But a big snowstorm that morning caused all the roads to the city to be closed, so she hosted a TV viewing of the game in her home, with Viv helping her serve the food to the two dozen boys.
Then they learned that the heavy snow meant all the boys would have to stay overnight. This led to some tricky sleeping arrangements and another funny scene with Lucy.
In watching the DVDs I just bought of these early episodes, I find that Viv has many of the funniest quips in the show. The two ladies really were a wonderful team.
If you're hung up about how Lucy would never be a referee, you could still enjoy most of the episode, but that wild scene with her in stripes was the funniest of the episode to me. Good, silly fun, somewhat in the mode of the Marx Brothers, or, for my generation, Green Acres.
