Emily in Paris (2020; creator Darren Star) is what you would get if Sex and the City birthed a child with Devil Wears Prada after a quickie.

When I think of popular romantic comedies that engage with female allyship, I am reminded of iconic characters carved over the years. There is Carrie Bradshaw, who uproots her Big Apple life to move to Paris to be with Aleksandr Petrovsky, which turned out to be a colossal disaster. Andy takes on Miranda Priestly and wins over most of her office at Runway to land up at Paris Fashion Week. There’s also that one woman from one show who didn’t board the flight to Paris (I don’t think I need to do any service to that).

If these and other romantic comedies are to be believed, Paris is supposedly a location that is empowering, and at the same time enslaving, to the belief that the Parisian experience commands a lover or at the very least, a clandestine one-night stand. Somehow, this notion is critical to the validation of the central characters across these and other romantic comedies.

My point being, Paris somehow finds itself in the center of romantic comedies worth their money.

This makes me angry because Emily in Paris (look at that title) does absolutely nothing for Emily or the series to make it memorable. The show features every predictable plot in the book and amplifies it to turn into a badly written show.

The protagonist Emily curates her online persona after moving to Paris by changing her old username @EmilyCooper to @EmilyInParis. Heck, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that any teenager from Mumbai would have a better curated Instagram than what is shown in the series as a plot device. The least they could have done is make her Instagram worthy of that attention she attracts during her stay in Paris.

The series is immensely binge-able. Perhaps, because there is an embargo on luxury and leisure travel for a lot of us. Watching the world in Emily in Paris without masks is oddly satisfying. It acts as a form of a comforting blanket, a reminder that we once lived in this world and occupied cafés and worked in office space and enjoyed long lunch with colleagues. Despite that, I don’t think people can criticize lazy writing or the clichéd story arcs enough.

Emily is eager to please American nag, who finds herself impeccably dressed in the middle of Paris. Serving as a replacement to her boss due to an untimely pregnancy, Emily attempts to juggle her professional and personal life in a city where she does not speak the language. With her previous work experience in pharmaceutical marketing and communication strategy projects (I should be writing CVs for a living), she sincerely believes that she is an authority on all things social media to luxury clients, get this, in France.

I mean, who is this girl’s therapist and where is she getting this unwavering confidence to bullshit from?

Stemming from this premise, we see ten episodes of Emily doing things in France. Things include taking pout-portrait selfies against the Parisian architecture; ensuring a power outage in all of Paris cause she plugs in her vibrator (no puns, I’m behaving myself) in the socket. Call this the American takeover and raise the Star-Spangled Banner high.  

The only other individual who despises Emily as much as I do is her French boss, Sylvie. She’s possibly the only likable thing about the show, other than the outfits she adorns throughout. Emily’s purpose in the entire show is to win her boss’ attention and appreciation. She attempts this by accidentally flirting with her boss’ boyfriend, Antoine.  
Well done, Emily.

Among other noteworthy things, Emily befriends a bunch of people. This list includes Luc, a colleague who has been cast to be a caricature of a good for nothing French man at her office; Mindy, a Chinese-origin reluctant heiress who secretly harbours the dreams of becoming an Asian Kelly Clarkson and supports herself by being a nanny in Paris to bratty kids; Antoine, the French perfumer client of the agency, who is better known to us as Sylvie's lover. At some point, Antoine sends Emily an inappropriate gift—sexy lingerie—to make her feel empowered (this review is writing itself). Who are these clients and why do I not know about this secret world outside of Netflix?

Another prominent friend that commands discussion about the series is a French woman named Camille. When not hooking up with Camille’s hot chef, horny boyfriend Gabriel, Emily finds herself hooking up with Camille’s 17-year-old brother at Camille’s mother’s vineyard. Camille's existence in the show is to provide Emily with client leads, men, and strategic digital marketing ideas for Hastens' social media.

May the Lord grant us all with a fabulous friend like Camille who not only allows Emily to third-wheel on their dates but also offers her wine, arm-candies, and emotional respite from time to time. Repeat after me, Emily is a social climber.

These are only the more believable plot points I’m raising. I’m not going to mull over how her American company sponsored to send a native English speaker, an associate-level employee, to France for a fully paid gig (accommodation covered) and represent the head office when she doesn’t have the necessary experience in her portfolio, at the same time, making her an authority on French social media when she has 48 odd followers on her public account, to begin with.

Through the course of the series, she uses Instagram or some utopian version of the app that allows her selfies and rants to get noticed by people more rapidly than COVID-19 transmission worldwide.

@emilyinparis – 1

COVID- 0

One such episode features Emily making a point on how the vagina should be “feminine” in the French language. Our raging feminist catches the attention of Brigitte Macron herself, who re-tweets what is shown to be an Instagram post, to begin with.

I’m pretty sure France and the French people are living in 3020 and harvesting the power of social media to use digital platforms in a cross-sectional capacity. Unlike the rest of the world, where we can only still retweet, tweets, and repost Instagram posts in the feed or share the stories, Brigitte Macron has the power vested in her to manifest social media content across platforms.

Surely, some amount of basic bitch research could have gone into correcting this faux pas at the post-production stage, but the show is so irreverent that it gives no fucks.

Unfortunately, that goof-up is not the only talking point here. As someone who’s worked towards strategizing communications and campaigns, I find the audience building plot premise a highly unreasonable arc to make peace with.

Over the first half of the series, we learn that Emily’s basic bitch selfies and dumb social media posts garner followers overnight. Maybe it’s the melatonin kink or maybe it’s Maybelline. Anyone who’s ever built a targeted or any other kind of social media audience is well aware that the follower count doesn’t increase overnight. Unless you have bought followers or have been touched by a celebrity, this is a plot problem that the creators failed to address.

However, small mercy, as the creator of the show knowingly or unknowingly captured something important here. Through Emily’s hobby and the intersection of her day job, Darren Star and the team highlighted the life and the outline of a profession known as "influencer". The creators allow a conversation lasting ten seconds on the subject of the future of influencer marketing (“agencies are overpriced and antiquated” hear, hear). In my knowledge, it is perhaps the first such mention and character representation of an influencer in the mainstream media. There’s more to come, hopefully, where they establish that this endeavour takes painful effort and not a take for granted frivolous hobby on the side.

If the title of the show hasn’t suggested otherwise, the city of Paris plays an important role in the course of the plot. Paris is evocative of an ally, a secret-keeper to all the nonsense that Emily indulges in. Consequently, Instagram, a virtual city in itself, becomes her other friend. This is as much quality and thought-provoking sentiment that the show evokes.

At no point, the creators of the show feign any concern and turn the “gaze” inwards—a critical point of discussion in the show itself—to highlight Emily’s bullshit. Her goody-two-shoes attitude is used to masquerade her blatant disregard for French culture and etiquette (sending a document titled Corporate Commandments to native French speakers in English; her American boss telling Emily that her experience in Paris can basically be summarized in “croissant and sex”).

Emily in Paris is riddled with stereotypes. While snorting Parisian clichés, the protagonist believes that she is infinitely better than everyone else. Her act of saving the day, one Instagram post at a time, is painfully cringe-worthy. At nearly all times, her solutions to the problems begin and end by posting something on her Instagram feed. You may not have any relation to Paris or Chicago, but you will still feel deep sympathies for all the stakeholders involved in the fictional world of Savoir, the agency that tolerates Emily and her crap.

This is also where I declare the demise of this genre. The fact that the show is number 2 trending media on Netflix in India confirms it.
RIP rom-com.