As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo occupied two different apartments in the brownstone building owned by Fred and Ethel Mertz. The differences are subtle–aside, of course, from the window that the second one has overlooking the street. Above is a lovingly crafted video taking us on a dimensional tour of the apartments with meticulous explanations of the differences between the two. Needless to say, the apartment is nothing like a brownstone apartment. For one thing it’s horizontal in layout–it feels more like a ranchouse design than a narrow, front-to-back brownstone. Also, the kitchen has an odd rear terrace/porch off of it overlooking a courtyard, something that doesn’t exist in brownstones. I know, I know–this was built on the Desilu soundstage in Hollywood and was never really supposed to reflect reality. And that extended to the address of the building. Apparently the writers never could remember the address of the building so it changed over several episodes. But one thing stayed the same; it was on East 68th Street, with he building number usually in the 500s or 600s, which meant that the building was located in the East River since the addresses stop at the 400s in reality. By the way, it turns out there’s a Lucille Ball museum in her hometown of Jamestown, New York, that contains a replica of the Ricardo apartment that you can really walk through. Hm. I know that often a response to people who lavish this much attention on things like TV set designs of the past is: ‘you need to get out more’. But the hell with that. I think it’s terrific that people focus on stuff like this and applaud the meticulous effort that goes into the making of videos like the above. And on that note, another week ends….