TL,DR: it’s an ok casual show to watch while doing other things, but the very selfish and shallow plot screams at you if you try focusing and immersing yourself in it.
Let me start by saying that I’m biased and I wanted to like this show the moment I read the description. Back in January, before corona virus existed, I booked a trip to Paris in October with my mom and now that the trip has been cancelled, watching things filmed in Paris helps soothe the pain a little. I’ve also studied French on and off for the last few years enough that I can understand the basics but not enough to become fluent and love the language in general. I’ve also visited a few places in France for a month back in 2011 and it was one of my favourite trips ever. So, truly, I REALLY wanted to like this show.
Unfortunately, the overall plot is just bad. It clearly is a show written by Americans for Americans in the worst ways possible.
the (Lack of) language barrier
Yes, the show made a point of touching on the fact that she doesn’t speak French every opportunity they could, and they even put a scene or two of her in a class to make it seem like she’s learning, but there’s no progress. And there can never be, because if they progress that would mean more subtitles and that would make American audiences to stop watching immediately.
That would be a bit more acceptable if her job was in accounting and she was working with numbers and the language barrier was restricted to personal interactions, but as someone who works with marketing I can say: this is too far from reality to be acceptable.
the american saviour complex
Just like there’s a “white saviour complex” in a lot of storytelling, this one is an extremely bonkers case of the “American saviour complex”. It’s pointless to have her “failing” at something when you know that is just a plot for her to make a miraculous save after.
Plus, seeing American culture touted as “better than others” is a bit gross. “Oh, you showed up to work at 8:30am, we open at 10:30am”. Hmmmm as far as I know, most offices in France don’t open at 10:30am, however ad agencies all around the world have flexible hours, so it seems like a rather weird generalization to present as cultural difference.
The shallow activism
What was the point of the “gifting a lingerie” plot if the followthrough was vague and it made it seem like it’s acceptable?
Quick reminder: if you’re a man who only has a business relationship with a woman, you don’t gift her lingerie. If you’re a man whose position of power puts you above a woman (in a client x provider or boss x employee relationship), you don’t gift her lingerie. If you’re an older man who has a non-romantic relationship with a 20-year-something woman, you don’t gift her lingerie.
In general: unless you’re (at least) friends with someone and you know they’ll appreciate it coming from you, you don’t give anyone lingerie as a gift.*
*one exception being if you don’t know someone or are friends with them but you follow them online and they have a wish list that includes lingerie. Again, bringing back to the “you know they’ll appreciate it coming from you” part.
Another one that got me throughly confused was the “sexy / sexist” ad plot. First, because they don’t actually do anything about it. Secondly because it makes it seem like we don’t see countless variations of that happening in America.
the overt display of privilege
Oh boy, this was the worst part of it for me. Let me see if I can make through them without loosing my temper.
money
This is the easiest one: the poorest characters on the show are the chef (sorry I don’t bother retaining names when I watch shows) who’s on track to be the next up-and-coming Michelin chef but can’t afford to buy a restaurant. Her singer friend who is filthy rich but chooses to live as a babysitter in Paris but can fallback to sheer luxury at any time. And Emily, who although not qualified to do her job in Paris, moves there with a secured job and accommodations – but hey she struggles to buy luxury items, so she definitely has “money problems”.
Everyone else is filthy rich. Maybe on season 2 they’ll do the right thing and bring in the guillotines.
whiteness
I know that France is not THE most diverse or accepting country in the world. BUT, that doesn’t mean we need to fallback to the rich-asian-dishonoured-by-family and office-best-friend-black-comic-relief troupes for the sake of “inclusion”. It’s 2020. We can do better than that.
How about a rich client of the agency being a black person? Oh no, they can’t do that because that character would have to sexualize her and they can’t have a black person romantically involved with “Emily In Paris” (but they feel comfortable sexualizing both white men and women – or was that just queer baiting? Spoiler alert: yes it was).
How about her boss then being being black? I’m not sure that would’ve work either: as much as I would’ve been quite happy to have seen a black woman in a position of power in relation to the protagonist (but we know that’s not happening any time soon) I think that if she was black they would probably have leaned on the angry-black-woman trope. I would’ve preferred having someone in power but displaying a relationship of respect/growth, not disdain/more selfishness.
Well her boss could’ve been a black man? In theory, yes. But they can’t have a man displaying a Miranda Priestly attitude because that’s just “normal” (plus they wouldn’t be able to have the clients sexualizing both Emily and her boss unless they were bi, but bi people don’t exist in television world).
Beauty
We know life is easier for beautiful people, but this show has no problem relying on that for their troupes. Had her not been white, young, and skinny, she would never get away with the situations on this show and it feels just like lazy writing. Specially when that privilege is the reason why she’s able to advance at work. It wasn’t enough to have two clients attracted to her (the married perfume guy and the designer’s brother) she also had to use her neighbour’s attraction to her as a solution for a work problem. š¤®
She is just selfish (and so are most eother people)
I know that a show called “Emily In Paris” will revolve around “Emily”, but boy she’s selfish. I’m trying to think of a single moment in the series where she’s faced with a situation where she has to sacrifice something for the benefit of others and I can’t remember a single one. (Don’t even try mentioning when she gives her boss credit for the hotel perfume idea because it was quite clear she was doing that just because she wanted her boss to warm up to her and not because she actually cared about her boss).
The same can be said about other people: her boss, chef neighbour, perfume guy, designer, designer’s brother, chef neighbour’s girlfriend’s whole family, pedantic professor…
PS: As someone who loved semiotics in college and works in marketing, I’ve yet to find someone here who’s said “Oh I know semiotics because I studied communication”.
