Title: Emily In Paris: Season 5
Director: Andrew Fleming
Cast: Lily Collins, Philippine Leroy Beaulieu, Ashley Park, Samuel Arnold, Bruno Couery
Where: Netflix
Rating: 3 Stars
At the very onset of Emily in Paris Season 5, a deceptively simple question lingers: what matters more, business or the life you want to live? That line becomes the season’s north star, even as the show promptly ignores it in favour of fabulous distractions. For its first four episodes, the series relocates to Rome, where Emily and company chase brand pitches with the same fervour they chase postcard moments, aimless meanderings, and improbable romances. In Rome, they do as the Romans do, or at least as Netflix imagines Romans might do, and what happens there is conveniently left behind once the plot shifts back to Paris.
Season 5 knows exactly what it is and what it is not. It is not realism, nor cultural anthropology, nor a serious meditation on labour under late capitalism. It is escapism polished to a blinding sheen. The writing leans into that self-awareness, offering a season that feels lighter, breezier, and oddly reflective beneath the froth. Like a holiday fling, the pleasure lies in the moment, not the memory. You binge, you smile, you judge, and you keep watching, fully aware that this indulgence will leave no lasting nutritional value.
Actors’ Performance
Lily Collins plays Emily with a slightly tempered exuberance this time. Her Roman avatar is calmer, warmer, and marginally more self-aware, a subtle but welcome shift from the chaos merchant of earlier seasons. Ashley Park continues to be the show’s emotional and comic backbone, her timing sharp enough to cut through even the fluffiest scenes. Mindy’s arc flirts with romance and reinvention, sometimes convincingly, sometimes not, but Park’s charisma rarely falters.
Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu once again steals scenes with elegant cynicism and authority. Sylvie remains the series’ most fully realised adult, glamorous, flawed, and refreshingly uninterested in moral approval. The men orbiting Emily are charming enough, though some feel more like lifestyle accessories than characters, designed to embody moods rather than inner lives.
Music and Aesthetics
Visually, the show remains a triumph of surface pleasures. Rome is rendered as a postcard come alive, all honeyed light and grand architecture, before Paris returns with its cooler, tailored chic. Costumes do much of the storytelling, contrasting holiday abandon with corporate polish. The music underscores this tonal shift, with occasional melancholic notes breaking through the glitter, suggesting emotions the script is often too polite to confront directly.
FPJ Verdict
Overall, Season 5 of Emily in Paris is best understood through its own metaphor: the tourist braid. You know it is not a great idea, but it is fun, and while you are in it, you surrender happily. Once it ends, you may want to wash it out of your system, but you will probably book the next appointment anyway. Flawed, frivolous, and faintly hollow, the season still succeeds at what it has always done best. It distracts, delights, and reminds us that sometimes, guilty pleasures survive precisely because they ask so little of us.
