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Plot[]
Lucy wants to be in Ricky's new show at the club, but, of course, Ricky refuses to let Lucy perform. Ethel makes a comment about how holding Lucy back from doing the things she enjoys may make her develop a complex and become mentally unstable. The next morning, Lucy starts planning a scheme from Ethel's remark. She finds three different complexes in an abnormal psychology book, and she decides that she's going to pretend to have all three of them as a way to make Ricky agree to let her be in the show.
Ricky is distraught by Lucy's unusual behavior until he finds out from Fred that Ethel revealed how Lucy is just faking. To get even, he hires an actor friend to play the part of a doctor, and he has his friend diagnose Lucy with a rare disease called the go-bloots. The last stage of this lethal disease makes one's skin turn green, so Ricky puts in a green light bulb in the lamp beside Lucy's bed while she's taking a nap.
When Lucy wakes up and discovers that she's green, she believes that she only has minutes to live. Ricky has his orchestra come in to play her a farewell dirge, but the band shakes the room with the peppy jazz number "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" instead. Lucy can't believe that her husband is taking her impending death so well, and that's when Ricky reveals that the case of the go-bloots was all a hoax.
The episode ends when Lucy tells Ricky that, while she was "sick," he said she could be in the show. Ricky pretends to feign amnesia just like Lucy did, to avoid talking about the subject.
Trivia[]
- The go-bloots is a rare tropical disease that is carried into America on the hind legs of the boo-shoo bird.
- The go-bloots can lead to a person needing to have part or all of their zorch removed via zorchectomy. But even if the doctors are able to save half of a person's zorch, the person will never be able to trummle again. Trummling is an involuntary internal process that much is unknown about.
- If you turn green while having the go-bloots, you will be dead in 30 minutes.
- The three complexes that Lucy adopts from the abnormal psychology book are acting like a famous actress (in Lucy's case, "Taloo," an imitation of Tallulah Bankhead), developing amnesia, and acting like a child.
- Lucy fans will recognize the actor who plays phony Dr. Stevenson as also having played Eddie Grant in "Lucy Is Matchmaker."
- One part of the episode that doesn't make sense is when Ethel comes in to find Lucy colored green. Ethel, of course, didn't know that Ricky secretly changed the lamp's bulb to a green one, but wouldn't Ethel have noticed that SHE was seeing everything colored in green, too?! You'd think that Ethel would either have figured out the trick from the sudden appearance of the green light, or at least think that she had caught the go-bloots, too.
- This episode was rerun during season 2. The new "flashback" intro has Fred faking his "yearly case of lumbago" to get out of cleaning the furnace. Ethel knows Fred's faking, and she proves it by pretending to have tickets to a show that night. Fred, of course, wants to go to the show, so he suddenly "recovers" from his lumbago. Fred asks, "Are the seats good?" Ethel replies with, "They sure are- right in front of the furnace!" Ricky then chides Fred for faking, saying how nobody ever falls for "that phony sick routine." Ethel and Fred remind him when he fell for it with Lucy and her "psychological problems."
- A good bit of the beginning scene of this episode, regarding Fred and Ethel showing Lucy the ad in Variety, was cut for syndication. The DVD restored the episode to its full length.
- When pretending to have amnesia, Lucy pretends to be Tallulah Bankhead, who makes an appearance in the "Lucy Desi Comedy Hour" in the episode, "The Cellebrity Next Door".
- A mistake is easy to spot. When Lucy tells Ricky that she has amnesia after he says that she could be suffering from "magnesia", it could prove that she still has her memory.
Quotes[]
- Ethel: (about Lucy and Fred pulling on her) Wait a minute! One of you let go, or I'm gonna have a split personality!
- Lucy: Haven't you got a place for me in the show?
Ricky: Why, sure, honey, I got just the place for you.
Lucy: Where?
Ricky: Out front in the audience.
- Lucy: I can see it now, "Ricky Ricardo and His Heavenly Orchestra. Starring Lucy and Her Magic Harp"!
- Lucy: (as Tallulah Bankhead-type celebrity) I'd be very happy to tell you if I knew who I am. Who am I?!
- Ricky: Could it possibly be that you're suffering from magnesia?
- Lucy: (as Southern belle amnestic about picture of self) Oh, she's pretty! Who is she?
- Ethel: She has a terrible fever.
Childish Lucy: (exhales cigarette smoke) I'm playing jacks, Mister!
- Hal March (as "doctor"): Half a zorch is better than none!
- Lucy: I'm looking at the world through green-colored eyeballs!