Besides the thrill of being mean on the internet, it feels pointless to carp about harmless, utilitarian fluff that’s intended to be binge-watched while you scroll through Instagram reels. But remaining vigilant to Emily in Paris’s sedative effects has its perverse pleasures. Look past the leering shots of male actors’ tanned asses and equally erotic shots of designer handbags, and you start to realize that each new season is ultimately just a five-hour ad for luxury fashion brands and late capitalism itself. It’s invigorating, in a way, to watch ostensibly escapist TV that only winds up reminding you of everything that’s wrong with the world. I came into season five a curmudgeon. I left a communist.
After four seasons of needlessly convoluted love triangles and consequence-free faux pas, Emily (Lily Collins) has bade adieu to the City of Lights to spearhead the opening of her marketing firm’s new Rome office. The shakeup is moderately inspired, even though the sting of immigrating to a new city is diluted by the fact that nearly everyone in her life joins her there, including her best friend Mindy (Ashley Park), demanding boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), and suave new beau Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini).
The Italian setting offers, in lieu of character development, more food porn montages, the chance for characters to name-drop five-star hotels, and unrelentingly bright establishing shots of the Roman cityscape. It’s about as authentic a representation of Italian culture as Domino’s Pizza. And, unfortunately, the question of whether Emily will stick it out with Marcello in Rome or return to Paris would be more suspenseful if the series weren’t titled, well, Emily in Paris.
The series centers Emily’s professional struggles as the main narrative thrust, letting what she learns through her relationships serve as the inspiration behind a new marketing scheme for whichever high-end client she’s booked that week. This is treated as something to be celebrated and envied: How wonderful would it be if your millionaire boyfriend, pop-star bestie, adorkable co-workers, and even the lady whose boulangerie you frequent could all be a part of the events and social media campaigns that are integral to your job? The ultimate aspiration in Emily’s world isn’t a balance between work and life—it’s a complete dissolution of the borders of each.
At the start of the season, every employee at Agence Grateau is sleeping with a different client or contractor. When asked during a meeting about his relationship with a representative of the coffee brand Bavazza (with whom he’s cheating on his girlfriend), Luc (Bruno Gouery) saucily replies, “She certainly gives me the business.” It’s what constitutes a joke but is in fact a chilling admission of the show’s ethos. No one in Emily in Paris is allowed to be a human being, only a business opportunity.
It’s distressingly bleak, made more so by the fact that, despite what the creators want you to believe, Emily is indisputably the villain of this story. Because she has no ambitions other than to increase her clients’ revenue streams, land a hunky boyfriend, and live a carefree life of extravagance, she comes across as an unironic embodiment of Amy’s “cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl. She’s eternally bubbly yet determined, sexual yet chaste, stick-thin but can pound back hot dogs, and will break things off with a man who’s horribly wronged her but get back together with him a few episodes later once he tells her he’s “changed.”
At one point, the CEO (Anna Galiena) of an Italian cashmere empire admits, “Gucci, Prada, they’re like chain stores in every wealthy town. If people want Muratori, they have to come to Rome. It keeps us special.” That’s a reasonable stance, and yet her reluctance to expand is presented as adversarial to Emily’s mission to infect the globe with her plucky American corporate perspective. Wide-eyed and always smiling, Emily is Nosferatu in Jimmy Choos.
Frustratingly, the writers seem aware of exactly what they’re doing, giving supporting characters genuinely funny meta asides about Emily’s ludicrous lifestyle. A much-welcome Minnie Driver joins the cast of Emily in Paris this season as a daffy heiress-cum-influencer and appears to be the only one on set who knows the caliber of series she’s in. These glimpses of sentience almost make watching the series feel joyful, but the way its money-hungry motives are baked into the very fabric of its plot and character motivations robs it of any potential value as comfort TV, or even camp. My advice? Don’t buy what they’re selling.
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