An Honest Review Of “Emily In Paris”
Written by Olivia Peters, Arts Staff Writer
As a lover of “Gossip Girl,” “Sex and the City” and all things Paris, I had extremely high hopes for the new Netflix series “Emily in Paris.” Lately, my roommates and I have been rewatching the same cult-classic shows such as “Vampire Diaries” and “The Office.” We’ve been starving for original content!
Released in early October, the series stars Lily Collins and can be described as a romantic comedy. The show revolves around the life of Emily Cooper, an energetic woman in her twenties who values her career in marketing and aspires to travel the world. When she’s unexpectedly asked to work at a consulting firm in Paris for a year, she says yes, leaving Chicago and her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend behind.
Emily doesn’t speak French, so she experiences a very American culture shock when the people of Paris don’t greet her with open arms. From here on, the show bounces between her glamorous career and love life while showing several of the most famous sites around Paris.
It all sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? Sadly, I think it is. Don’t get me wrong: this show is such a fun watch for first-time viewers. I binged the entire first season in three days. I think it’s super entertaining and definitely worthy of stealing your attention away from your 13th rewatch of the Pam and Jim proposal episode of “The Office.” However, this show will never warrant a rewatch — it just isn’t the next big thing, or anywhere near Emmy-worthy.
Here are my Four Major Critiques
After Emily gets to Paris, she starts posting a lot to social media. In the course of the season, she goes from 200 to 20,000 followers by posting selfies with corny hashtags around the city. When will the old people writing TV shows realize that hashtags are out? It’s a cool feature to see the show’s protagonist posting on social media as a normal person would, but the success of her posts is super unrealistic.
There are several annoyingly-stereotypical supporting characters. To name one, Emily’s best friend is an ex-singer, runaway Chinese heiress whose Dad is a prominent zipper manufacturer… I’m not sure why they had to give this friend such an absurd backstory!
I actually love that the show focuses on Emily’s career. It was very representative of the importance of work in the modern “it girl’s” life; however, Emily seems to come up with an amazing idea to save the day at her job in every episode. I found this so frustrating because the writers had the opportunity to create a great plotline, and then they went and sugar-coated it past anything that could be semi-relatable.
The writers make Emily very naive of French culture when she first arrives in Paris. She is disrespectful to several locals on a cringe-worthy level. I think they did this in an attempt to show character-development overtime but it made her seem ignorant and very dislikeable as a character right off the bat. I didn’t cheer her on as much after I noticed her insensitivity.
Following these four criticisms, I want to highlight something the show does well: romance. Emily encounters several men who grab her attention. After she and her boyfriend break up, she decides to really go for it and has a sort of sexual awakening. She goes on dates, has affairs, and falls in love with the idea of spontaneous hookups. Not only are all of these scenes tasteful and romantically-framed, but they are also portrayed in an empowering way. The writers make it seem as though sex is a part of life and adventure. Emily has clear boundaries and is always in control; there is no slut-shaming to be seen. So on this point, the writing is very well done.
At the end of the day, I would recommend “Emily in Paris” to my friends. Although it falls so very short of the very modern, career-oriented, feminist series it could be, it’s still an entertaining television show that has a sense of novelty and originality. But you don’t have to take my word for it: check it out for yourself and see if “Emily in Paris” lives up to the hype.