(Her first coincided with the filming of the series’ pilot, in which Ball is clearly showing, but her condition is never acknowledged.)īut that’s thankfully not the case with “Lucy Is Enceinte,” which, with a few minor tweaks-namely getting rid of Arnaz’s main musical spotlight-isn’t too far removed from a standard sitcom premise we might see today: Lucy discovers she’s pregnant and wants to tell Ricky in the manner she’s dreamed of her whole life. But such was the clout of Lucille Ball at the time: Her second pregnancy was written into the second season of I Love Lucy. But “Lucy Is Enceinte” was scandalous at the time, at least in the eyes of the CBS executives who balked at the idea of its star-who slept in a twin bed next to her husband onscreen-actually acknowledging and openly displaying the biological consequences of S-E-X.

It’s a sweet and downright quaint (to modern eyes) episode that’s about nothing more eyebrow-raising than an over-the-moon pregnant housewife trying to tell her husband that they’re having a baby, complete with not one but two full-on musical numbers. Genevieve Koski: Coming on the heels of the episode that put the nail in the Smothers Brothers’ coffin and a Brass Eye pedophilia special that’s still squick-inducing today, it’s tough to consider this 1952 I Love Lucy episode as “controversial” television. In which Ricky and Lucy had… In which Lucy is… Look: They’re having a baby…

Lucille ball i love lucy