Emily in Paris: Netflix’s Journey from Ridiculousness to Acceptance

Rmocked by the French and ridiculed by the critics, Emily in Paris was written off by most before the first episodes even aired on Netflix. It was 2020, when Emily — the relentlessly positive, social media-savvy marketing executive played by Lily Collins — paraded through the streets of Paris, and our screens, iPhone in hand and a workaholic who made her European colleagues feel sick. Her command of French? Zero.

Emily’s co-workers at Savoir didn’t think she’d last in Paris, and in the real world, critics predicted the show wouldn’t last long. Yet Emily still spends her days in the Fifth Arrondissement, with a fourth season coming soon. It has tens of millions of viewers (according to Netflix) and two Golden Globe nominations under its belt—albeit in the midst of a corruption scandal. How did we get to this point when it was scrapped before it even started?

The reviews for the first series were, well, Merde. Writing for IndependentEd Cumming said Emily in Paris as “nonsense” and “terrible,” then made a detailed list of people who would dislike it, ending with the words, “Anyone who ate a croissant.”

And yet, we devoured it. A second season was quickly confirmed, and when it began filming, Netflix said that 58 million households worldwide had “chosen to watch” the first season within 28 days of its debut. (It’s worth noting that the methodology behind the streaming service’s numbers has been questioned—and later changed—because it believed that watching just a few minutes of a series was enough for the company to count you as a viewer.)

The timing of the first season undoubtedly contributed to its popularity, which has been bugging reviewers. It debuted in October 2020, just as we were on the cusp of a truly bleak, pandemic-ridden winter. In the UK, Eat Out to Help Out was a distant memory, and we were paying the price for cheap Nando’s in the sun – rising Covid-19 diagnoses and deaths, the highest rate of redundancies since 2009, and the return of the Brexit deal to the news. Then Emily came along. A smiling, twentysomething American who had moved to Paris, completely unaware of French culture, but who was nonetheless achingly cheerful and always admirably dressed.

Most importantly, Emily’s Paris was not about Covid, or advertising budget cuts, or politics. As with other flagship Netflix originals Sex education AND Orange is the new blackThe show’s universe is a recognizable setting (and in this case, a real place), but it’s deliberately timeless, with almost no reference to broader, real-world issues. (I counted only one time in three seasons when Emily’s British banker love interest Alfie, played by Lucien Laviscount, says he’s working on some kind of banking deal tied to Brexit.)

Emily would never wear sweatpants and a stained hoodie to slouch in front of the TV, but in the privacy of our living rooms, and with very few other activities, that’s exactly what viewers (including me) did. It wasn’t as sharp as a razor Inheritance or in any way eye-catching like Lena Dunham GirlsBut Emily in Paris Season one did what it was supposed to do – it attracted numbers.

The program soon became synonymous with the new term “ambient television.” Like in “The New Yorker” briefly explained: “The purpose Emily in Paris is meant to provide a nice backdrop for staring at your phone, refreshing your own feeds.” Its plots, they noted, were “too thin to ever be misleading.” Netflix also has a lot of ambient offerings in other genres — think Tidying Up with Marie Kondo or hundreds Below deck episodes she acquired.

Emily in Paris is also a prime example of another key area for Netflix: content created for the algorithm. With 277 million subscribers worldwide, the service has access to an unparalleled trove of audience data and uses it to inform commissioning decisions, supporting projects that its data suggests will do well. In large part, that means creating and getting viewers to watch more of the same. We recently revisited Emily in Paris ahead of series four, my own website now promotes other mood-boosting and low-intensity offerings. Among them are Firefly Belt“a heart-warming drama about a friendship that spans decades” and Find me fallinga romantic comedy about a rock star who moves to the Mediterranean to find herself but ends up “rekindling an old flame.” Neither of those sounds particularly inspiring.

In France, viewers were dissatisfied and wonderfully cut when the first season Emily in Paris was released. French Twitter largely tagged the series “mockery” (funny) while national radio station RTL wrote on its website that Parisians had difficulty recognizing their daily lives because of the “berets, cocktail dresses and impeccable streets.” Indeed, none of the city’s 4 million rats appear in Emily’s pristine Paris, and tourists are also noticeably absent.

The question is whether Netflix and its creator Darren Star, who was also behind Sex and the City, soon came up with the joke. French viewers – who are probably in the best position to respond – decided they definitely had to. One of the French marketing directors, Florence Coupry, said New York Times: “This is a series about extreme clichés, cliché upon cliché. Whoever created this is clearly having fun with clichés. As viewers, we are being deceived here.”

No one watches Emily in Paris for its thought-provoking stories or complex characters. It’s not ‘“House of Cards” – and that’s why it’s so popular

In the second and third season Emily in Paris improved, although stereotypes remained – confirming Coupry’s claim. Our cheerful expat – now an influencer – finally decided to expand her French beyond “bewitched.” And she met attractive, beer-loving Londoner Alfie in her language class, providing us with a brief respite from the tiresome will-they-or-won’t-they storyline with neighbor and chef Gabriel (Lucas Bravo).

Meanwhile, Emily’s best friend Mindy (Ashley Park) has blossomed over several musical eras, going from a self-conscious Chinese pop star self-exiled contestant to Eurovision hopeful, via stints as a jazz club singer and struggling busker. Emily’s French colleagues got what they deserved all along: more well-rounded stories away from the obsessive director they’d openly hated for so long. They also started speaking more French, which was just as long overdue, although the subtitles made it harder for us non-French speakers to look at our phones while we “watched.”

There was also an expansion of Emily’s boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), who had always been the most intriguing character, with all the best lines, but she was still given clichéd backstories: taking a younger lover, fighting (and defeating) American corporate overlords with her French ways, and smoking as many cigarettes as TV regulators would allow.

And Emily’s US boss, Madeline (Kate Walsh) – the reason she’s in Paris in the first place – flew in from Chicago, heavily pregnant, declared war on Sylvie and Savoir, gave birth, then furtively returned to the States after effectively destroying the company. An unexpected benefit of her time in France was that she made Collins’ character seem genuinely Continental.

Seeing it for what it was (rather than expecting high-stakes drama or even a coherent plot), critics were more favorable. With his tail between his legs, our reviewer gave the second season five stars, calling it “harmless escapism” and acknowledging that “on its own terms, it’s a huge success.” A whopping 117.6 million hours of the third season were watched in seven days, Netflix reported, and the series entered the streamer’s top 10 at No. 2, beaten only by Wednesday.

For the upcoming episodes, Netflix is ​​sticking with a release method it’s tried and tested in recent years—cutting the season in half and delivering it in two batches. This way, it hopes to create buzz that will last longer than if the entire season were available on the same day. It’s a clever marketing move that would certainly impress Emily herself.

From what I’ve seen, there’s going to be even more OTT costumes this season, including a Beetlejuice-themed bodysuit, musings about whether Gabriel might be the one, and a healthy dose of wisdom or withering words from Sylvie (depending on her mood). In essence, it’s more of the same. But perhaps most importantly, none of that really matters. No one tunes in to Emily in Paris for thought-provoking plots or complex characters. This is not House of Cards – and that’s why it’s so popular.

A survey of my friends revealed – to my honest surprise, since we had never talked about it before – that almost every one of them had seen Emily in Paris and planned to watch the new episodes. One of them, a clinical psychologist with a PhD from Oxford, summed up the show’s appeal best.Emily in Paris is great because everything is always OK in the end,” she said. “And that’s what I need in the world.” Who can argue with that?

The fourth part of the first season of “Emily in Paris” will appear on Netflix on August 15