Emily in Paris offers flat characters against a dazzling backdrop
Emily in Paris is a new Netflix original series created by Darren Star, best known for creating Sex and the City. It follows protagonist Emily Cooper, played by Lily Collins, as she moves to Paris for work after her American marketing firm acquires a smaller French firm. The subsequent nine episodes adhere to a problem-of-the-week type format, where Emily is presented with a problem at work and must solve it over the course of the episode. Additionally, much of the connective tissue of the show comes from Emily’s relationships with her friends, coworkers, and clients, as well as her budding romance with several different men.
The show is mostly a drama, but a low-stakes one. There is no murder, supernatural shenanigans, or police procedurals here. It’s fairly easy to watch — the characters are likable enough, even though none of them are particularly dimensional or interesting. The actors perform well, though there are no stand-out moments. Paris, as always, is a stunning backdrop. The concept and setup for the show are effective, if a little conventional. The idea to incorporate social media as an element is also particularly interesting, as that is still a new way people interact with marketing, but it could have been further incorporated into the overarching story to better explore marketing in the social media age.
Many of the problems that Emily in Paris suffers from stem from its writing, particularly the character writing. As previously noted, the characters are likable; they are not horrible people who do terrible things, but they are one-dimensional and static. This problem is most evident in the side characters who have maybe one defining character trait and a loose backstory, but do not feel like functional people outside of their interactions with Emily.
Even Emily, as a character, doesn’t have a particularly defined personality. To make matters worse, the characterization she does have undergoes a loose metamorphosis throughout the series, but not as a result of the development she has taken from her experiences. Episode one has her referencing movies like Moulin Rouge and Ratatouille as a way to relate to the audience, but episodes two to eight have little characterization outside of her job and her growing social media presence. Emily has no real hobbies, especially none that would indicate that she’s someone who would reference movies in casual conversation. From episode eight on, she expresses her dissatisfaction with her life in Chicago due to its predictability without proper setup during the few scenes that take place in Chicago.
This lack of a dynamic development from her experiences is made all the worse due to the framing of Emily as the protagonist. The show takes a rather biased view of Emily’s experiences, showing that she is always right and justified in any decision she makes. The best example of this comes with Emily’s disinterest in learning the French language. Everyone at her work, as well as random people she meets, knows enough English to carry out a conversation with her, but she never makes an extended effort to learn French for them. It would have been nice to see her make that effort or struggle to learn the language. What makes this particular point even more disappointing is that in episode two they had the perfect setup to carry out this beat, and it would require a very minimal script rewrite.
For this rewrite, a scene starts with Emily in French class practising phrases related to party invitations. Her practice phrase is to say she has not been invited when asked if she is going to the party. The next scene has Emily’s friend, Mindy, commit to throwing our protagonist a party to cheer her up. Emily then takes it upon herself to invite her boss, Sylvie, to the party in English. If the final scene had Emily ask Sylvie to the party in French, it would have shown Emily making an effort, whether or not the invitation was accepted.
Emily in Paris is not terrible, but it is also not revolutionary. It plays with some interesting ideas, but ultimately comes off as background noise. If you like the Parisian setting or are particularly invested by this type of story, it’s not a bad watch, but pretty much any movie referenced by Emily in episode one will be more compelling and take up less of your time.
