It seems like every time I go on Netflix these days, they’ve come out with a new obscure, eight-episode original TV show. It’s always a risk to watch these shows; will they be a hidden masterpiece or a waste of time? Will they hook you in and then inexplicably get cancelled after one season? Sometimes you strike gold with shows like Stranger Things, Queen’s Gambit, and Orange Is The New Black. But sometimes… you end up with Emily In Paris.
Upon reading the description of this show, Emily In Paris sounds like it follows the plot of every Hallmark movie ever. Emily Cooper, a young upstart marketing executive from Chicago, moves to Paris to provide an “American perspective” at a new branch of her firm. From this description, you can imagine the shenanigans, romance, and life lessons that ensue throughout the course of the season. You might recognize Lily Collins, the actress who plays Emily, as Snow White from that 2012 movie Mirror, Mirror (also, notably, she is Phil Collins’s daughter). Everyone else in the cast is relatively obscure, but the casting director definitely considered attractiveness when filling the parts. Lucas Bravo, the actor who plays Emily’s main love interest Gabriel, is going to get some major heartthrob recognition from this role. He isn’t the only featured view; as the show was filmed on-location in Paris, there are some truly stunning shots, and the overall cinematography is commendable. Landlocked Americans can live vicariously through this girl from Chicago who gets to lead a life everyone dreams about: treating a foreign country as their personal playground.
Emily is a perfect example of what we all secretly wish to be: the Main Character. Even though she is a foreigner in a city where she doesn’t speak the language, everything always seems to go her way. The Parisians that she meets throughout the show are portrayed as staunch and rude, until she eventually wears them down with her “American charm”. There are several episodes where the plot follows this basic pattern:
(1) Emily is excited about a new client.
(2) Her boss tells her not to mess it up.
(3) Emily says something quirky and American that makes the client storm off because they are rude and French.
(4) Emily stalks the client all over Paris until she can corner them at the ballet or a fancy restaurant and give her motivational speech about how America is full of small-town dreamers who never give up.
(7) The client decides to let her firm represent them, the company profits, and all the silly French people realize that Emily the American was right all along.
This sequence of events bothers me because it perpetuates an idealistic view of American superiority, implying that we are the best country and everywhere else has to learn to be more like us.
Of course, the show wouldn’t be complete without some love-triangle action thrown in. There is obvious chemistry between Emily and her neighbor Gabriel in the first few episodes, so the writers stoke the flames by introducing Gabriel’s gorgeous longtime girlfriend Camille, who happens to be the extremely nice and helpful girl that Emily met on the streets of Paris an episode earlier. Camille is so painfully oblivious of the tension between Emily and Gabriel that she keeps pushing them together in a misguided attempt to kindle a friendship. She has endless trust in both of them, which is how they get away with kissing each other passionately not once, not twice, but three times. Gabriel doesn’t do anything to discourage her either—in fact, he was actively pursuing Emily from the get-go despite his relationship status. Emily tried to take the high road and cut off interaction with him, but as soon as he and Camille called it quits in the last episode, they didn’t even wait a day before jumping into bed. It is worth mentioning that literally every man Emily interacts with falls in love with her, but she only wants the one she can’t have. This is a common trope in TV because it keeps the audience hooked; no one is interested in a stable, uncomplicated romance. We viewers end up hating ourselves because we too wish that good, sweet Camille would go away and let the sexual tension be alleviated. Even worse is that neither Emily or Gabriel seemed to think they were doing anything wrong by treating Camille like disposable furniture.
As we’ve seen with Camille, every other character in the show besides Emily purely exists to drive the plot. She has two male friends who provide comic relief by following her around the office making snide remarks and dirty jokes. Her best friend is a woman from China who speaks perfect, unaccented English and only exists to give relationship advice and complain about her rich dad to make Emily seem quirky in comparison. At this point, you’ve probably guessed that Emily’s boss is a sexy, older woman with a permanent scowl that hates everything she does because it’s too “American”, but occasionally falls victim to that irresistible Emily charm. When you can switch out one side character for another and still have the dialogue make sense, all hope for variety goes out the window. If the show had a complex main character, this sloppiness could be redeemable, but Emily’s only defining personality trait is that she can’t speak French.
Now that I’ve gone through all the reasons Emily In Paris is subpar, I have to admit something; I enjoyed watching this show. I like the larger-than-life archetypal characters, the artisan French cafes, and the cobblestone streets. The fashion choices are bold and intriguing, and I even laughed out loud at some of the jokes. Yes, it has its obvious flaws, but isn’t a little cheesiness desirable sometimes? I think I speak for the majority when I say we are craving a break from the real world right now, and gritty, artistic shows like Grand Army or Black Mirror hit a little too close to home. Emily In Paris is the perfect mix of vibrance, silliness, romance, and heartwarming success that will provide you with some extra serotonin during these stressful times, and I recommend giving it a try—if not just to have something trivial to make fun of.