Removing lists from each cell in pandas dataframe

Question

I have one dataframe that contains lists in many of the individual cells. Some cells do not have lists and are just strings and some are just integers or numbers.

I would like to get rid of all lists in the dataframe (keeping the value or string that was in the list of course). How would I go about this?

Below are two dataframes, one is the "raw data" which has lists and numbers and strings throughout. The second is the clean data that I am hoping to create.

What is the simplest and most efficient way to do this?

import pandas as pd

#create two dataframes, one called raw, one called end result
#raw data
raw_data = {'Name': [['W1'], ['W3'], ['W2'], ['W1'], ['W2'],['W3'],['G1']],
            'EVENT':['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5','E6','E1'],
        'DrillDate': [['01/01/2000'], 23, '04/01/2000', ['05/15/2000'], [''],[''],'02/02/2000']}
dfRaw = pd.DataFrame(raw_data, columns = ['Name','EVENT','DrillDate'])
dfRaw


# cleaned data
clean_data = {'Name': ['W1', 'W3', 'W2', 'W1', 'W2','W3','G1'],
            'EVENT':['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5','E6','E1'],
        'DrillDate': ['01/01/2000', 23, '04/01/2000', '05/15/2000', '','','02/02/2000']}
dfEndResult = pd.DataFrame(clean_data, columns = ['Name','EVENT','DrillDate'])
dfEndResult

Answer 1

Using, applymap and check the type using isinstance on cell values.

In [666]: dfRaw.applymap(lambda x: x[0] if isinstance(x, list) else x)
Out[666]:
  Name EVENT   DrillDate
0   W1    E1  01/01/2000
1   W3    E2          23
2   W2    E3  04/01/2000
3   W1    E4  05/15/2000
4   W2    E5
5   W3    E6
6   G1    E1  02/02/2000

Update, if you've empty lists and want blank string output.

In [689]: dfRaw.applymap(lambda x: x if not isinstance(x, list) else x[0] if len(x) else '')
Out[689]:
  Name EVENT   DrillDate
0   W1    E1  01/01/2000
1   W3    E2          23
2   W2    E3  04/01/2000
3   W1    E4  05/15/2000
4   W2    E5
5   W3    E6
6   G1    E1  02/02/2000

Answer 2

I like @JohnGalt's answer better... But

dfRaw.update(dfRaw.DrillDate[dfRaw.DrillDate.apply(type) == list].str[0])
dfRaw.update(dfRaw.Name.str[0])

dfRaw

  Name EVENT   DrillDate
0   W1    E1  01/01/2000
1   W3    E2          23
2   W2    E3  04/01/2000
3   W1    E4  05/15/2000
4   W2    E5            
5   W3    E6            
6   G1    E1  02/02/2000