Ep 16. Building a Bar-B-Q

In The Best of I Love Lucy season 5 episode 16 titled "Building a Bar-B-Q," Lucy and Ethel decide to surprise their husbands with a brand new barbeque grill. The episode kicks off with Lucy and Ethel returning from a shopping trip, where they decided to purchase a barbeque as a gift for their husbands. They want to make dinner that night on the new grill to surprise them.

However, things quickly turn south when the women realize they have to assemble the grill from scratch. Neither Lucy nor Ethel have any experience with assembling a grill, so they begin to panic. Lucy suggests they read the instruction manual, but it proves to be useless. They even attempt to follow a picture diagram, but that doesn't work either.

As the women struggle to put the grill together, their husbands arrive home, and they try to hide the unassembled grill. But as always, their husbands, Ricky and Fred, suspect something is up and start to ask questions. Lucy and Ethel end up confessing about the surprise, and the men offer to assemble the grill themselves.

However, the men face their own set of challenges when assembling the grill. They encounter problems such as misplaced screws and missing parts. The men even try to use a giant wrench to tighten a tiny screw, which ultimately leads to a broken part. Lucy and Ethel feel guilty for ruining the grill and suggest that they should pay to replace the broken parts.

The episode takes a hilarious turn when Lucy and Ethel try to get jobs to pay for the grill repairs. First, they try to sell homemade salad dressing, but this venture comes to an abrupt end when they accidentally mix up salt and sugar, resulting in a terrible tasting dressing. The women then decide to apply for a job at a candy factory, but they cannot keep up with the high-speed assembly line. They end up stuffing chocolates in their mouths, hats, and clothes instead of the boxes.

As the episode comes to an end, the men have finally assembled the barbeque grill, and all seems well. However, as they go to start the grill, they soon realize that they forgot to put charcoal in it. In the final scene, Lucy and Ethel sit around the unlit grill and eat sandwiches, contemplating how hard it is to surprise their husbands.

Overall, The Best of I Love Lucy season 5 episode 16 is a classic sitcom episode filled with laughs and mishaps. It's a reminder of the golden age of television and the silly hijinks that happened on some of the most beloved shows of the time.