Inktober 31: #Fire
In which Lucy Ricardo gets drunk
I watched quite a lot of syndicated sit-coms when I was little. People on sit-coms were always getting fired. Especially Lucy Ricardo. In half the episodes, it seemed, Ricky fired her from his night-club show. In the other half of the episodes, she was usually getting fired from something else. When she got a job making TV ads for a health tonic called Vitameatavegamin, for instance, she accidentally got drunk. As part of the ad spot, she was supposed to take a swig of the stuff. What she didn’t know was that Vitameatavegamin was mostly alcohol. Since she had to repeat the take so many times, Lucy got as drunk as an owl. The director had no choice but to fire her.Â
Back then I didn’t realize that to #fire a person simply meant to take away their job. I thought the boss actually set you on fire (and also took away your job). No wonder Lucy was so upset whenever she got fired! I couldn’t explain how or why she was always able to return for another episode after getting set on fire.
When I found out that getting fired only meant losing your job, I couldn’t explain that either. How was it a punishment not to make a person get up and go to work every morning?
**We have come to the end of #inktober2024. Thanks for your time and attention. I realize that, when it comes to anecdotes and halfway decent drawings, you have many choices. Thank you for choosing mine. I’ll see you again for Inktober2024.
That there is one of my favorite episodes.