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I Love Lucy Season 5 Review

The fifth season of I Love Lucy is one of the best in the show’s history. It is the most ambitious in terms of locations and types of humor depicted.

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“Yeah, that hunger strike’s a good idea.

Ethel, why don’t you…“

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Lucy Visits Grauman’s is a terrific episode that is particularly memorable for the moment when Lucy gets her foot stuck in a bucket of cement. This entire season if full of fantastic physical humor and amazing slapstick. The reason why most of it worked so effortlessly lied in Lucille Ball’s effortless timing and delivery as she was really at the top of her game here. Lucy and John Wayne isn’t the funniest episode out there, but Wayne definitely proved to be one of the biggest and most memorable guest stars in the show’s run.

Lucy and the Dummy has a typical set-up with Lucy pursuing a career, but this time around she gets to choose between a career and family life, thus that ending elevated this otherwise tiresome premise. Ricky Sells the Car and The Great Train Robbery are rather forgettable and the NYC stretch of episodes really wasn’t all that great, certainly paling in comparison to their European tour.

Homecoming is memorable for the trio starting to treat Ricky with so much respect after he has the prospect of becoming a movie star. Those moments were very amusing. Face to Face features a fantastic message promoting friendship and simple life pleasures instead of luxury. Lucy Goes to a Rodeo is quite uninteresting, but Nursery School is a very funny story about Lucy worrying for her son’s safety in nursery school.

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Ricky’s European Booking starts the season’s European tour for the characters and this tour proved to be the most exciting, ambitious and hilarious part of the entire series’ run. It opened up the show in every possible direction and it was just glorious to witness. This episode itself was particularly hilarious for the ladies’ scheme that was basically a grift to earn some money illegally. It was unexpected and so wild. The Passports is interesting for giving us a backstory of Lucy’s heritage. Staten Island Ferry and Bon Voyage are both very funny in slapstick situations. The former sees Fred and Lucy getting seasick to hilarious results while the latter is iconic in that moment when Lucy is picked up by a helicopter.

Second Honeymoon is sweet and romantic while Lucy Meets the Queen is overly anti-climactic at the end of the day. The Fox Hunt is also not all that great, thus signifying that the British part of their journey was the weakest one. Lucy Goes to Scotland, on the other hand, is an utter delight. This is basically a full-on recreation of a big 50s musical that felt stagey for sure, but its charm and goofiness were undeniably effective and authentic. Paris at Last is a lot of fun and who can forget Lucy ending up in jail. Lucy Meets Charles Boyer is even better and this is my favorite guest star episode as Boyer was wonderfully incorporated into the gang’s shenanigans. It’s classic situational comedy at its finest.

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Lucy Gets a Paris Gown features an absolutely hysterical finale where the boys make fun of the girls by gifting them with ridiculous, self-made “garments”. Making fun of stupid fashion trends and women’s obsession with following them was brilliant here. This is where the season showcased one glorious episode after another as Lucy in the Swiss Alps was another winner. The Ricardos and the Mertzes being stuck in a mountain cabin produced hilarious results.

Lucy Gets Homesick in Italy is actually very endearing and the children are so cute here. Lucy’s Italian Movie features by far one of the most iconic moments of the entire show, the one where Lucy ends up stomping grapes and and fighting with another woman in a grape barrel. It’s slapstick comedy at its quirkiest and most inspired.

Lucy’s Bicycle Trip has a fun, very well executed passport mix-up scenario while Lucy Goes to Monte Carlo is a great example of a situational comedy done right with each of the four characters getting their moment to shine here. Return Home from Europe is the finale and it’s one of the greatest episodes of the entire show. Lucy tries to smuggle cheese from Italy on a plane to bring to her mother to NYC. This sounds silly, but the episode is even sillier than you’d think given that the situation quickly escalates with the other female passenger sitting next to Lucy and holding a real baby. Every single moment here was absolutely hilarious and it is easily the funniest episode in I Love Lucy history.

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Overall, the fifth season of I Love Lucy just might be the show’s best. Some of the episodes aren’t great with the NYC section being the weakest, but the European trip led to so many hilarious, adventurous episodes with the two families. The slapstick has never been better than it was in this particular season.

Worst Episodes: Lucy Goes to a Rodeo and Ricky Sells the Car.

Best Episodes: Lucy Visits Grauman’s, Ricky’s European Booking, Lucy Meets Charles Boyer, Lucy Gets a Paris Gown, Lucy in the Swiss Alps, Lucy’s Italian Movie, Lucy Goes to Monte Carlo and Return Home from Europe.