Is Emily Really in Paris?

Ah, Emily in Paris. Netflix’s newest installment to the rom-com TV dramedy series. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s definitely worth hopping onto. The show consists of 10, 20-minute episodes, making it perfectly binge-able. Although the acting is pretty shoddy and the plot leaves something to be desired, it somehow manages to draw you in. However, several questions were raised in my mind as I watched the show, and I began to wonder, was Emily, in fact, in Paris? For instance, is Paris really just known as “the city of love”? What are the odds of meeting a sweet, kind-hearted, hot chef next door? What was reality, and what was pure stereotype? 

To get the answers, I talked to my friend Oriane Maincent who resides in Reims, France, and had lived in Paris for 6 months. 

 

Emily in Paris follows Emily, a 20 something-year-old woman who works for a large marketing firm in Chicago. Emily’s boss is supposed to go to Paris. But that all changes when she finds out she’s pregnant, so she decides to send Emily in her place. Now, I found this a little weird. After all, it is presumed Emily is only a lowly assistant, and who sends an assistant on an important work mission? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!

So Emily goes to Paris. Or does she? 

According to Oriane, the show is, “very aimed toward the American views. There are so many stereotypes and it’s not even accurate to what the French are really like”. This is evident in the very first episode when we see the spacious apartment that Emily is put in by her company. It’s located in the snazzy 5th Arrondissement, which Oriane says is “an expensive neighborhood. It depends on the company [but they would rarely put you up there]”. Even though Emily’s boss is a senior brand manager at the company, and it was meant for her, it still seems extremely unlikely they would give her a huge apartment. 

The next thing Emily does is she immediately goes to work…and embarrasses herself. Emily does not speak a shred of French. In fact, she tells her boyfriend, “fake it till’ you make it”. Unluckily for Emily, that’s not the case, as her new coworkers and boss immediately take offense at her cocky attitude (who can blame them? She’s already acting like the victim of the “mean French”, even though she’s the one who didn’t even bother to learn the language). In her first business meeting there, she does apologize for speaking English and proudly declares she “did Rosetta Stone on the plane, but it hasn’t kicked in yet”. For someone who has a master’s degree, this seems like pretty poor planning. Upon hearing that she doesn’t speak French, one woman gets up and leaves. Oriane says this is not the case. Just like in America, it would be extremely rude. Yet another dig at the French for being “cold” and “unwelcoming”.

However, the show takes this stereotype too far. They immediately start throwing around the all too common comments about Americans-you know the ones. That we eat too much and are too fat. Oriane counters that “American food is quite good and popular here”, though she asserts with a laugh, “French food is better”! So was the point of these jokes supposed to make us laugh? Doesn’t Darren Star (the producer) know those have been overused to a point?

Almost right off the bat, we are introduced to Emily’s love interest, a young man named Gabriel who lives in the apartment underneath her. Since the French do not number their floors like we do in America (they count the ground floor as G, not the 1st floor), Emily consistently mixes up the 4th and 5th floor (I mean, the first time was forgivable, but you’d think she’d learn). On multiple occasions, she tries to break into his apartment, thinking it’s hers. Of course, like a sane person, he opens the door the first time it happens to see who it is and-

He’s incredibly hot. 

Almost immediately, he takes to Emily. We see him flirt subtly with her, but he is never too forward. According to Oriane, “you rarely find two cute, single men in your building or if there are, they are not “ready to mingle”.”

As for the show’s portrayal of French men as the suave Casanova’s who gladly cheat on their wives/girlfriends, well, you can add that to the growing list of insane stereotypes. Oriane says that “the men mostly do not cheat. You can be creepy anywhere, so it’s not just the French. They are less flirty than Italians and they have very diverse personalities”. So both Antoine (the creepy, rich guy who works with Emily’s company. He very openly flirts with her in front of his wife, as well as his mistress) and Gabriel are very poor representations of French men. 

Also, we have to talk about Emily’s social media account for a minute. It plays a central role in the show, and from the very beginning, Emily began posting mediocre pictures on it. They somehow garner thousands of likes, boosting her from only 48 followers to over 20,000 in only a few weeks. I may not be a social media influencer, but I know that’s not how that works. Seriously, you’d think she’s taking pictures like this:

When in reality it’s this: 

Thank God she has the help of Mindy Chen, a trilingual nanny working in the city, who is nothing but nice to Emily. She also has the help of Camille, an insanely sweet French girl. Together, the two women help Emily with the ropes of navigating Paris. Good riddance, too, else she would crash and burn.

Although the overwhelming consensus on Emily in Paris might be negative, it’s definitely worth the watch. If you find yourself sucked into the drama, so be it. If you find yourself watching solely to see scenes of Gabriel, no judgment here (so am I, tbh). Overall, Oriane wants people to remember that [Paris has] nice places to go out and [it’s full of] nice places to live. [It’s] a place to relax and you get to walk places more than over [in America]. [It has] good food, too, so it’s [much] more than just “love.” 

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