You’ve heard it all before. A perky American moves to Paris, charms the locals and lives her best life, all while wearing an immaculate designer wardrobe.
Welcome to Emily in Paris. Now back for a third season, the show has managed to sustain a loyal audience that accepts its glaring flaws which, now we’ve hit a third season, are honestly not worth holding against it anymore.
Yes, it’s still patronising of French culture, and Emily’s social media stardom remains laughably inexplicable, and its drawn out will-they-won’t-they relationships continue to won’t-they. If you’ve made it this far, you know what you’re in for.
But even with all of this in mind, Emily’s latest Parisian escapades may underwhelm even the most forgiving of fans.
Lily Collins returns as Emily Cooper, sporting a new hairstyle. This time around she’s facing a great dilemma: stay at her current job as a (presumably exceptionally well-paid) marketing executive at Savoir and eventually return to Chicago with Madeline (Kate Walsh), or commit to her life in Paris with her newfound friends at Sylvie’s (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) rival firm. Emily is torn by her allegiance to both and, inevitably, her indecision comes back to bite her.
Split loyalties are not unique to her professional life, either. Emily is still caught between two men – long-term, spoken-for crush Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) and cheeky-chappy boyfriend Alfie (Lucien Laviscount). Indeed, romantic turbulence is a theme for all of the characters this season: Mindy (Ashley Park) is the object of adoration of two men, Camille (Camille Razat) grapples with her loyalty to Gabriel, and Sylvie wrangles with a jealous partner.
This show is admirable for owning a lot of its fundamental clumsiness, and its undeniable fluff-factor has managed to keep us all on side despite the meagre plotlines. These are not entirely devoid of interest (we all love a bit of romantic tension, and Mindy’s slightly unrealistic but inevitable journey to music stardom has a certain bizarre charm), but the pacing barely allows any of these stories to build into something meaningful.
Some feel clunky and rushed; others are laboured and unnecessary. Interesting tensions – like professional jealousy between Emily and Julien – seem to bubble up out of nowhere before expiring for lack of oxygen. The strongest shift in this season, compared to the show’s debut, is the attention afforded to secondary characters like Sylvie and Camille, who have become more independent and take their turn in the limelight. Unfortunately Leroy-Beaulieu and Razat put in lacklustre performances that sap the show’s momentum and leave us desperate to get back to the vacuous Emily’s ridiculous life.
The problem is that having thrived up til now on being easy-going and familiar, Emily in Paris is now trying a bit too desperately to prove itself something more scandalous and complex, tackling fluid sexuality (though in a relationship with Gabriel, Camille is exploring her feelings for another woman) and toxic relationships – between Mindy and her new flame. Half of the ten-episode runtime is wasted undoing the damage of last season’s scandals to bring everything back to square one, which feels like a betrayal of the audience – do plot twists and cliffhangers matter if they back out of them as quickly as they jumped in? Why rock the boat if it’s just going to make you seasick?
Even the show’s beacon of hope – Emily’s once undeniable chemistry with Gabriel – barely makes an appearance. Gone are the longing glances, lingering touches, and excessive sexual tension, and instead we are met with what looks like a genuine friendship. Yet even with this tension dialled down to a minimum, it’s as if someone forgot to tell the showrunners that. We’re constantly reminded of a flame that seems to have fizzled out.
Emily in Paris will always have an amiable watchability, but that seems to be all it has going for it. You can continue to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the charm is starting to fade.
