‘Emily in Paris’ is the show France loves to hate
It’s like a horrific car crash: you know you shouldn’t look, but you can’t help yourself.
“Emily in Paris” is the Netflix series that France loves to hate. It premiered in October 2020, about six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, as streaming services and binge-watching were at their peak. Emily, played by Lily Collins, is a twentysomething marketing professional from Chicago. She’s transferred unexpectedly to work for her company’s subsidiary in France.
The concept is promising. There’s the chance to show cultural differences both at work and in personal life. Paris is an exciting backdrop. Of course, Emily is young and pretty and single in the City of Lights.
But the show depicts an absurd version of Paris and America—it invites ridicule. This is a world where an inexperienced young American shows up in Paris and teaches seasoned executives how to do their jobs; she never worries about money; and she is warmly accepted into the highest echelons of French luxury brands, all while speaking basically no French.
Emily wears outrageous designer outfits, a single one of which might cost a week’s pay for someone doing her job. And of course, she never wears the same outfit twice. She flits around the city in high heels. We never see her on the metro or eating at cheap restaurants. The streets are immaculate and empty; somehow, in this city of two million people, she never fights through a crowd. Emily’s Paris is never cloudy.
Emily’s friends—and their friends—are all beautiful and successful. One friend goes from singing for tips on the street to competing in Eurovision in the space of two seasons. And that’s one of the more plausible storylines.
At work, Emily regularly causes confusion and mishap, only to save the day with her unyielding optimism. You may remember your twenties as a time when you had a lot to learn, when you made mistakes, or when you realized just how much you didn’t know. Not Emily. All of her ideas are better than anything her experienced French colleagues can come up with . Everyone who is skeptical of her or dismissive of her ideas is humiliated or proven wrong in the end .
And then there are the clichés of French life. If you only watched “Emily in Paris,” you would think people in France don’t work long hours; that they have fresh-baked croissants for breakfast and an extended two-hour lunch, with wine, every day; and that every person in a relationship is having a minimum of one affair.
Everyone Emily encounters speaks perfect English; most of the main French characters happily speak English even among themselves.
In season four, which was released in August 2024, the show mercifully took a break from stereotyping France; for a brief time, it stereotyped Italy, where (in case you didn’t know) people talk with their hands and don’t pay taxes.
French critics hate “Emily in Paris.” They don’t recognize their own country and culture in the show, and they don’t appreciate the condescension and the overworn stereotypes. American critics are no more forgiving; everyone seems to know that “Emily in Paris” is a parade of exaggerated, unrealistic clichés.
The only people who like it are the viewers.
There’s no denying it: “Emily in Paris” is popular. It was Netflix’s most-watched show of 2022. And when Season 4 was released in August 2024, it jumped to number one for several weeks running—including, yes, in France itself .
But why?
I don’t think very many people are fooled into thinking that “Emily in Paris” is even close to the real world, any more than they thought “Sex in the City” was really New York. It’s simple escapism, a way for people to sit on their couches and imagine the world as it might be.
Reality is hard enough. In our real lives, we deal with political polarization, conflict at work, family drama, and the difficulty of making ends meet ; we don’t need to see that on television all the time.
Netflix announced in September 2024 that “Emily” will return for a fifth season. The fourth season ended with scenes in Rome; the show’s promoters have dropped hints that the fifth season will include both Rome and Paris.
Jeff’s take
Darren Star is the creator of “Emily in Paris;” he was also behind the HBO series “Sex in the City.” Parisians complain now of the throngs of tourists that show up to take pictures of Emily’s neighborhood, Gabriel’s restaurant, and other popular settings. That’s a familiar complaint to New Yorkers, who had to deal with a decade of Carrie Bradshaw-inspired tourism.
I just finished watching “Emily in Paris” season 3. It’s vapid. I don’t like it. I hate the Emily character: if I ever encountered someone like her in real life, I would walk the other way. JR tells me that I’m not supposed to like her. But I do like Sylvie and Julien.
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