Why I can't Stop Watching Emily in Paris

BY KCY

If you haven’t heard about Emily in Paris, by now, you’ve probably been living under a rock. Or at least camping in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no social media, newspapers, internet, television.

Everyone is talking about this show. Some love it and some just really hate it. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s all the buzz.

Emily in Paris, Darren Star’s newest creation, follows an American girl from the Midwest who gets a chance to move to Paris and work at a fancy shmancy luxury goods French advertising firm after her boss finds herself pregnant. Think Sex and the City meets Younger except in Paris. Oh yeah, those are Darren Star shows. But, anyway, Emily finds herself leaving her boyfriend and her comfortable life for the unknown in a city where she doesn’t speak the language. That’s right, she doesn’t speak the language, something her new French coworker calls arrogant. This doesn’t seem to bother Emily.

Emily begins working for Sylvie, who immediately reminds me of Miranda Priestly from The Devil wears Prada, except she’s got what Emily calls that sexy, slouchy French thing going on. Sylvie has killer style and her sarcasm and witty comebacks have impeccable timing.

While Emily seemingly struggles to convince Sylvie that instagramming equals advertising, she manages to attract the attention of even Madame Macron when she instagrams that the vagina is not male when she is stuck with the task of advertising a vaginal suppository. She even manages to bring her amount of Instagram followers to over 20,000 within a few episodes. Impressive, but totally unrealistic.

Emily with her complete obliviousness that living in France and not speaking French is perhaps a faux pas to say the least, seems to make every French man she meets fall in love with her, including her sexy, French chef downstairs neighbor who, of course, has the nicest girlfriend who befriends Emily. With her complete deer-in-headlights look, Emily deftly leaps and jetés her way through each obstacle thrown at her while wearing an incredibly chic outfit that in reality a twenty something year old unmarried, aspiring advertising executive could not afford.

I’m not French so I can’t speak to the way in which Emily in Paris portrays Paris or French people and culture. (Please see a recent New York Times article published on October 2, 2020 on this subject: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/style/Emily-in-Paris.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap.) I’m not from the Midwest so I can’t speak to the portrayal of a millennial from the Midwest who has never been to Europe. (Please see how upset a Chicago pizzeria was about being dissed in an episode: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/emily-in-paris-lou-malnatis-pizzeria-deep-dish-1234796764/.)

The banter between Sylvie and Emily is delightful. Mindy, the daughter of “China’s zipper king,” and Emily’s new friend in Paris provides much comic relief. (Thank you Netflix for giving us another Asian character!).

Emily in Paris is whimsical, humorous and so unbelievable that it’s almost funny. But it’s so what we need right now during this time of the COVID19 pandemic: a little fantasy to lighten our days, decrease those feelings of isolation. To escape from our new reality.

I’m loving Emily in Paris. Even my forty-one-year-old Game of Thrones, Ozark loving husband is hooked. We need a good laugh, the ethereal beauty of the delicate Lily Collins who plays Emily, her over the top outfits, smart dialogue (although a little stereotypical and cliché at times), the beauty that Paris is. Just a little lighthearted fun.