Emily in Paris is the cotton candy of TV shows. It’s not good for you, it offers no nutritional value, but it’s light and airy and sweet and it melts in your mouth. Eat a cone of cotton candy and it’s like you didn’t eat anything at all. Watch a season of Emily in Paris and it’s like it never happened.
(The usual disclaimers: Emily in Paris is not a good show. It’s cheesy, with wooden performances, and it’s offensive to French people and Americans alike. Also, Emily needs to take a freaking brush to her hair and loosen up those weirdly plastic-looking tight curls, because why would she spend all that money on ridiculous clothes but leave her hair looking like it was done by an Ohio beauty school student in 1992?)
But I love it.
A lot of people want quality television, things like Ozark or Yellowjackets or Euphoria. But I can’t deal with depth, not since Covid hit. Maybe not since Trump hit. There’s so much depth to the horror show of our actual reality these days that all I want is escapism. Dumb, pretty, shallow stories, give them to me!
Covid doesn’t exist in Emily in Paris. It’s not mentioned once. It simply didn’t happen, and I want to live in that world. Likewise, politics don’t exist. They’re in France, and nobody is ever even on strike! But otherwise, this is a show that pretends it exists in our current reality, and that in itself is so out of touch that I find it impressively ballsy on the part of the producers. But what do I know? Maybe some people do inhabit a version of reality in which the pandemic and politics never penetrate their bubble of self-interest. It seems lovely.
My husband, who leads a much more corporate life than I do, has had plenty of occasion to work in France, so he’s my barometer of how right or wrong they get Paris. For instance, back in season one when Emily was reeling from being fired by her bitchy boss, her French coworkers just rolled their eyes and said “You can’t be fired in France!” My husband: “That’s true.”
In this season, the running employment joke is that it’s illegal to work on the weekend in France. Emily, work-obsessed American that she is, keeps trying to push clients and co-workers to discuss business at restaurants and parties in Saint-Tropez, and they’re appalled. She keeps insisting, and they keep assuring her it’s literally against the law. My husband: “Nobody has ever told me that. But they definitely act as if it is.”
In short, my friends, we should all move to France. Wouldn’t you want to live in a place where there’s no Covid and it’s illegal to work on weekends? This show is pure wish fulfillment, and that’s why I love it.
Emily in Paris is filmed in the City of Light, by which I mean that it’s beautiful to look at. Emily’s clothes are insane (I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be, though–high fashion is bizarre, and I think it’s time we all admit that), but the outfits her co-workers wear are incredible and I would watch this show just to gawk at them. And Emily’s friends, frenemies, love interests and colleagues are uniformly beautiful and fun.
Look at neighbor/main love interest Gabriel, who’s not only dreamy but can also cook AND bake the best birthday cake Emily’s ever had.
Look at her French boss, Sylvie, an intimidating powerhouse who unapologetically sleeps with everyone, smokes like a chimney, and still oozes charm. I want to be like her when I grow up, and don’t you dare tell me how close to her age I already am.
Then there’s Emily’s best friend/roommate, Mindy, played by the incredible Ashley Park, who steals every scene she’s in and can sing like a motherfucker. For real, they should make a spin-off called Mindy in Vegas.
One of Emily’s most important clients is an over-the-hill fashion designer reinventing himself with the help of Emily’s PR firm, and he’s a hoot. His new designs are all about being as tacky as possible and he succeeds at this. I would buy a suitcase with his face on it, even if he is fictional.
Her co-workers at the company are pitch-perfect as two different French stereotypes, the affected weirdo and the fabulous gay man. And yes, they’re offensive stereotypes. But like this entire show, it doesn’t seem to matter much–the offense doesn’t land as hard as the humor does. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing bitchy or scathing in the writing or portrayals? Maybe because the actors are French themselves and so they’re “allowed” to poke fun? Maybe because you simply have to check your brain at the door when you watch Emily in Paris.
And that’s really the secret of this show–not only her co-workers, but all the characters are just caricatures of French people, populating a fantasy of Paris as imagined by a tightly wound 20something workaholic from Chicago who didn’t even bother to learn restaurant French before moving to Paris.
It’s also a fantasy of corporate PR: the set-up is that Emily’s American firm bought a boutique French marketing company and she was dispatched to represent the firm’s interests. She quickly discovers that the new agency’s interests don’t include making money or working hard. Yet everything always seems to work out in time for a sexy dinner or an amazing party. By the end of season two, Emily’s obnoxious (American, obvs) boss has so thoroughly pissed off her French employees that they all quit, only to reappear the next day to announce that they’ve started their own PR company and taken most of the clients. (My husband, outraged: “All these people would have had to sign a non-compete!”)
Is any of that realistic? Nope. Does it matter? Not even a little.
Will they ask Emily, who they’ve always been annoyed by, to join them? Mais oui! And will she say yes? Well…that’s the big cliffhanger at the end of season two. But unless season three is called Emily Back in Chicago, I think we all know the answer. Even the cliffhanger has no stakes. I’ll probably forget this show even existed until it returns for another season, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it for a little while. Like cotton candy.
