Photo Courtesy of Glamour
“Emily in Paris,” the new Netflix comedy from “90210” and “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star, follows the titular character as she makes an unexpected move to Paris for work. A soapy drama with beautiful aesthetics but incredibly low stakes, “Emily in Paris” offers audiences a much-needed sense of escapism through ten episodes of bingeable Parisian escapades.
The show’s opening scenes follow Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) living her standard and well-adjusted life in Chicago, Illinois. Almost immediately, the audience learns that Emily’s boss has offered her an unforeseen yearlong opportunity to bring an American marketing perspective to an esteemed marketing agency in Paris, France. Emily takes the role in Paris instantaneously after little to no deliberation with family, friends or even her longtime boyfriend. This is the first point in the story where the plot seems to give way to an oversimplistic life for Emily, but certainly not the last.
Throughout the rest of the series, Emily’s biggest issues are consistently disappointing her boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), being painfully unable to speak French and being generally disliked by her fellow employees at Savoir (who magically begin communicating with her in English around the second episode). As Emily struggles to navigate the culture clash and the language barrier that she brought upon herself, the stakes seem to exponentially drop as the show progresses.
The fundamental issues with this show boil down to the groundwork of Emily’s character. If it were not for Lily Collins’ tremendous job of breathing life into this role, Emily would probably become incredibly boring and insanely irritating. Instead of her flaws creating the sense of a three-dimensional character, Emily seems overly privileged and spoiled at best. She is naively surprised that her coworkers Sylvie, Luc (Bruno Gouery) and Julien (Samuel Arnold) don’t take well to her presence. However, even as an audience member it was practically unbearable to watch her parade ignorantly around another city, expecting that everyone should cater to her inability to speak French instead of the other way around.
As much as the early episodes of the show are centered on her feelings of loneliness and exclusion, she does make friends, like Mindy Chen (Ashley Park), an aspiring singer who moved to Paris to nanny and who also conveniently speaks perfect English. Emily meets her downstairs neighbor Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) after proving unable to count the floors in her building correctly. He is a charming and alluring French chef who instantly becomes attracted to Emily when they meet.
If there is one area where this show exceeded expectations, it is the aesthetics. It is difficult to look away from the sweeping shots of the Parisian lifestyle, be it the food, the fashion or the beautiful language (although it would have been more favorable if the show employed the use of subtitled French more often). The fashion in the show doesn’t necessarily scream “Paris!” but still took my breath away as an audience member.
When all is said and done, the plot of “Emily in Paris” boils down to one of privilege. Emily is able to make mistakes with little to no backlash and even when she does face repercussions, there is a sense that the troubles won’t stick. She doesn’t learn from the people around her – instead she just reiterates her points, hoping to change people’s perspectives through repetition. Don’t get me wrong, this show is incredibly entertaining, and I would be lying if I said that I did not binge the entirety of it in an embarrassingly short amount of time; however, for a show that takes on complex issues such as culture clash and feminism, I would have loved to see more delicate work put into Emily’s character and experiences.
