“Emily in Paris” is a project by Darren Star, who is responsible for, among other things, the success of “Sex and the City”. Star has created or contributed to the production of the most important American series for young people and women. Just mention “Beverly Hills 90210”, “Melrose Place” or “Younger”. He seems to have great intuition and knows how to tell modern fairy tales. The commercial success of his series proves that he is right. So why is “Emily in Paris” so unbearably repetitive and poorly interpreted?
Does Darren Star understand women?
Everything seems to be in the right place at the right time – playing with social networks, humor, the heroine thrown into a European context, love stories, dilemmas, friends, challenging work. But this cliché, repeated over and over again since the early 1990s, is very annoying. Listen to how the characters talk and how strange their conversations sound.
Emily (played by Lily Collins) is arguing with her friend Mindy in the opening scene of the fourth season, and they are waiting for each other to deliver their bon mot and vice versa. This is not a criticism of the actresses, but rather of the conventions and aesthetics of the series, which is nothing more than a high-budget soap opera. The characters’ statements ring in our ears as loudly as Krzysztof Ibisz’s words during “Awantura o kasę” telling the audience gathered in the studio: “I take 200 PLN from each team’s account and listen to you.” And apparently it is only on the theater stage that they need to be heard by the last rows…
“Emily in Paris” – por or pornography?
“Sex and the City” also has two famous episodes in its history titled “An American in Paris” and they also followed well-known patterns about Paris. Carrie was wearing a beret, buying baguettes, sitting in a cafe, thinking about her life, but at one point she stepped in horse manure and “sobered up”. It’s funny how Americans fail to show Paris in a realistic way, but “Emily in Paris” is another level of this “failure to deal with the situation”. The episodes are not connected by a coherent narrative, just “gags”, which at times resemble pretext scenes from pornographic films.
When Emily finds Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) in front of her apartment door and sees that he has a bandage on his hand, she immediately runs to help, because a grown man can’t handle a task like turning a key in a lock with a bandage on his hand. He should be applying for disability benefits, considering how hard he struggles to unpack his groceries of potatoes and leeks (leeks are Gabriel’s favorite vegetable, he always carries them with pride in his shopping bag). The pretextual nature of the plot (it’s also worth mentioning the comedy of errors in the shower scene in episode three) of the series is surprising, but also amusing, because this series is funny, but I suppose for some viewers, for a different reason than its creator assumed.
Emily is an example of a savior, she has to save each man from his problems. Gabriel, after getting burned at work, needs help, as does Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) at the gym. The heroine runs from one man to another, trying to save them from their own destructive power; in the end, he breaks their hearts while smiling charmingly.
Through the wardrobe to the heart?
The second heroine, Mindy Chen (Ashley Park), is facing her own problems. She needs to raise money to perform at Eurovision (it is worth noting that the actress has vocal talent and sings all the songs we hear in the series). She and Emily talk about this during their next meeting, wondering why their lives are such a nightmare. One gets the impression that the actresses themselves cannot believe that they constantly have to make dramatically sad faces and get excited about a topic that does not deserve their attention.
Collins and the actors who accompany her are not masters of their craft (this can be seen in one of the first scenes of the second episode, when the heroine tries to scream that she is fed up with everything, which seems bizarre). Note that the heroines and heroes – just like in a soap opera – walk and talk, everything happens through conversation, plotting, discovering secrets. Emily runs aimlessly and without meaning, she is in constant movement, from one meeting to another. The meetings are completely irrelevant, but the heroine convinces us that the fate of the world is at stake.
Emily exposes another woman, although it is none of her business to interfere in other people’s relationships, but it is clear that she feels like a victim of all this. In turn, Mindy, insulted by her partner’s father and by himself, forgives him everything, gaining access to a spacious wardrobe (the scene in which the heroine walks through the wardrobe and talks to the dresses is quite… unbearable). It is difficult to treat the emotions of heroines and heroes as psychologically probable; if we did, we would end up putting ourselves as a species in a negative light.
“Emily in Paris” – is it worth watching?
“Emily in Paris” is not a series that reveals any emotional truth. It portrays men and women in a very stereotypical and often harmful way. It is not a “feminine” series at all, nor does it exude female empowerment. Unfortunately, this is the idea of a man who stubbornly explores a narrative straight out of the 90s, which he has already proven with the series “Younger.” That production was half of what “Emily in Paris” is today – nonsense about relationships and emotions, disconnected from what people feel and want, regardless of gender.
Emily’s work is yet another thread that aims to prove the heroine’s creativity and passion. The problem is that we don’t know exactly what it is and when it is carried out? The heroine has a moment where she shines when proposing an advertising strategy, but – as often happens in soap operas – her ingenuity is based on a catchy slogan, and there is no well-thought-out campaign supported by audience research behind it.
In the five episodes of the fourth season of “Emily in Paris” (the second part of the season premieres on September 12), not much happens and it is the tedium that is most frustrating, as well as the lack of ideas for the development of the heroines and heroes and the constant rearranging of the same puzzles and the attempt to fit them somewhere else. The plot patterns known from other sitcoms, such as “Ugly Betty” and series like “Younger”, are already clichés and are not funny or charming in any way. You watch at your own risk.
Series “Emilia in Paris” is available on Netflix.
