Am I the only one who has noticed that Rob and Laura seem to leave the house a lot without mentioning where Ritchie is or who is taking care of him? I've been watching a lot of DVD again lately, and I’ve been noticing this more. Although sometimes it’s mentioned that he is over at Millie's, there are a lot of times that Rob and Laura go out, and nothing is mentioned about a babysitter. Many times it's in an episode where Ritchie is never even mentioned or seen. It seems like Rob and Laura are able to do more spontaneous things that most parents wouldn't be able to do. Has anyone else noticed this?

Christina

Originally posted by Christina E
Am I the only one who has noticed that Rob and Laura seem to leave the house a lot without mentioning where Ritchie is or who is taking care of him? I've been watching a lot of DVD again lately, and I’ve been noticing this more. Although sometimes it’s mentioned that he is over at Millie's, there are a lot of times that Rob and Laura go out, and nothing is mentioned about a babysitter. Many times it's in an episode where Ritchie is never even mentioned or seen. It seems like Rob and Laura are able to do more spontaneous things that most parents wouldn't be able to do. Has anyone else noticed this?

Christina

No, Christina, you aren't the only one who's noticed this. I thought the same thing the other night as I was watching "I'm No Henry Walden". They went to that party, and nothing was ever said about what they were going to do with Richie. Kind of reminds me of the promos TV Land used to run about "Richie the amazing-low maintenience boy!" LOL

Kristen

I noticed that Ritchie appeared in fewer and fewer episodes as the years went on for the show, and I counted his appearances by year by looking through one of my DVD books which lists which characters appear on which episodes. He went from appearing in 27 of 30 eps in the first year and only 7 of 32 eps in the last year. I think over the life of the show Mel Cooley appeared more often than Ritchie, though Ritchie was billed as a "regular" in the opening credits and Mel never was.

I think it gets difficult to have a child in the show and do different things with the character. Yes, they did seem to have a lot of time on there hands for parents. But there are some good episodes which feature Richie. One of the best is when the woodpecker is pecking Richie on the head and another fine one is when Rob goes to Richies class to talk about what he does for a living. Another reason why I think Larry Matthews disappeared in the later seasons to infrequent appearnaces is that he wasn't as cute and adorable as he was when the show started. Yes, I think by season five they should have taken Richie out of the opening credits and put Richard Deacon in.

There were times when he would come out of his room and I would think "Oh yeah, they have a kid."

BTW, I always like how on I Love Lucy, Lucy as she was starting to get ready for another scheme would always say "I'll have Mrs. Trumble look after Little Ricky."

Yes i like how they did that with I love Lucy:)

Originally posted by baronzzz
There were times when he would come out of his room and I would think "Oh yeah, they have a kid."

BTW, I always like how on I Love Lucy, Lucy as she was starting to get ready for another scheme would always say "I'll have Mrs. Trumble look after Little Ricky."

And when they went to Hollywood, they brought along Lucy's mother to take care of Little Ricky so Lucy could take off anytime she wanted. And when they went to Europe, they left Little Ricky in New York with Lucy's mother. And when they moved to Connecticut, Little Ricky always seemed to be "over at the Ramsey's" playing with little Bruce Ramsey. It was always nice to know, when Lucy was out creating havoc, that Little Ricky was being watched.

I think this was always left up to the audience to assume that Richie was always over at the Helper's. After all, Millie said once that Jerry "never took [her] anywhere", making the assumption easier to believe, since Millie was always home, Richie was friends with Freddie and they were all such great pals.;)