Emily in Paris is the last guilty pleasure: "It indulges in escapism for its own sake, and it continually picks apart the definitions of quality"

The Atlantic

"The blend of love and loathing" for Season 1 of Darren Star's Netflix comedy "was, in a way, strange," says Spencer Kornhaber. "In the past decade, many commentators have argued against calling anything a 'guilty pleasure,' citing the way that the concept can disguise classism, prejudice, and the American delusion that all free time should be used productively," he says. "High-minded reconsiderations of Star’s Sex and the City—an ambitious blend of satire and drama that some critics wrote off as girlish frivolity—helped bring about a world in which comic books, erotica, and committee-written pop music can be called cool. So why all the shame about carefree Emily? Season 2, newly released on Netflix, helps clarify how exactly Star short-circuited the audience. Emily in Paris is not just a tourist fantasy that flouts wisdom and good taste—it is a show about the tyranny of taste, the joy of tackiness, and the bendiness of culture. In our era, when morality and politics are overtly swirled into the entertainment discourse—when TV shows and fashion lines get dissected not only for their artistic merit but also for their messages—Emily in Paris does two provocative things. It indulges in escapism for its own sake, and it continually picks apart the definitions of quality. After all, the plot’s big questions—whether Emily will get with the hunky neighbor, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), or avoid the wrath of her fabulously jaded boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu)—are hardly high-stakes enough to rivet. What really gives every scene its can’t-look-away vibrancy is the clash between Emily’s can-do American cheer and the refinement of her French acquaintances. Her workaholism, provincialism, and affinity for Starbucks strike them as trashy—or, in the one piece of foreign vocab the show drills into its English-speaking viewers, ringarde! In the French sensibility as it’s portrayed on the show, the pursuit of beauty and pleasure—nice food, nice wine—has hardened into the dogma called taste.

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• Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu's Sylvie Grateau is key to Emily in Paris' improvement in Season 2 -- and its superiority to And Just Like That: "The treatment of older women in Emily in Paris marks one clear way the Netflix show pulls ahead of And Just Like That," says Alison Stine. "The women of HBO Max seem surprised to find themselves the age they are. Charlotte talks about Miranda's fully gray hair as though it just happened overnight. The three women all act as confused about this modern land with its pronouns and its privilege as Dorothy coming out of her ruined, black and white house into a world of color and munchkins. Their seeming inability to understand the world they've been presumably living in all this time, 'reduces the original characters to a baffled trio,' according to The Guardian. The women all behave much older than they are, feigning technological ignorance incongruous with characters only supposed to be in their 50s. And while Sex and the City clothes were always flamboyant, in And Just Like That they look desperate, not in pace with what women of substantiable means would wear. Costume designers for the show said they 'didn't think about age at all.' But maybe they should have. 'Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's luxury,' as Sylvie says. Leroy-Beaulieu, who is 58, wears a bikini in Emily in Paris, coming out of the sea like Venus, or Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The sight stuns Emily, a beat long enough to give the viewer pause; it certainly wouldn't be Emily's worst romantic choice. But, like all of the French actors in the show who both act better and look better than the Americans in every scene, Sylvie captures attention whether in an evening dress with a gold arm band or high-necked sweater dress. Compared to Emily in her clownish outfits (and the general buffoonery of the women Sylvie's age in And Just Like That), Sylvie looks radiant and acts like an understated queen. She slips from French to English to Italian as effortlessly as flicking a long white shawl over her shoulder. She's married, though only on paper (still, she makes out with her estranged husband sometimes). She's been the mistress of a perhaps older, definitely married man, and now she's the girlfriend of a younger, unmarried, and devoted one. She's the head of Emily's marketing firm, and is soon to run her own business. But she's not the French Samantha Jones; Sylvie is more competent than the bumbling women of And Just Like That, even the one who got away."
• What's with all the singing in Season 2?: "The latest season has raised fresh complaints from viewers, and not just over Emily’s questionable wardrobe choices; rather, for the near-constant scenes of Emily’s best friend Mindy Chen (played by actress and Broadway star Ashley Park) belting out random ballads and pop songs in a bid to launch a music career—and perhaps one off-screen as well," says Cheyenne Roundtree. "Before Emily in Paris, Park carved out an impressive career in the theater world, starring in The King and I, Mamma Mia!, and even earned a coveted Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 2018 for her portrayal of Toaster Strudel heiress Gretchen Wieners in the production of Mean Girls. She also featured in Tina Fey’s NBC comedy series about a girl group, Girls5Eva." Roundtree adds: "After some positive responses to Mindy’s singing, Star decided to make it a much larger part of the storyline for season 2. Unfortunately, the result is cringe-inducing and feels as though it’s being forced down viewers’ throats, as Park’s character breaks into song at every possible turn, performing six times in the season’s 10 episodes. The performances are couched in the plotline that Mindy has ditched nannying to focus on making it big in France."
• An American in Paris admires Emily's shamelessness and pluckiness and in the City of Light: "As a proud watcher of the series, not to mention an American living in Paris, I admire Emily’s shamelessness, as she unself-consciously snaps selfies and slaughters the French language," says Caitlin Raux Gunther. "Don’t get me wrong, my French is pas mal du tout but things get tricky when even a single word eludes me. Recently, I sat in the back of a Montmartre pharmacy waiting to get my Covid-19 booster shot. I resorted to a charades-style gesture, causing a chuckle. While the jab went in I took a deep breath and made a mental note: look up the word for 'faint' As a foreigner in France, Emily shows a certain pluckiness, resilience even, that I sometimes wish I possessed. If, for example, my hypothetical new French colleagues were to call me a hick, as happens to Emily, I’d barricade myself in a broom closet and call my sister or mom to sob about it. Emily instead tells her colleague (via phone translator): 'Go f*ck yourself!' She quickly learns that the French respond better when you fight fire with fire. My West Virginia-born grandma used to say: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. In France, you better learn how to summon the vinegar. Emily’s difficulty at mastering the language resonates deeply. I prepared plenty – one semester of grad school French followed by a semester abroad in Paris before first moving here – and the language still enters my brain like spaghetti against a wall: a good deal refuses to stick. I even enrolled in an adult French course for foreigners, just like Emily in season two, but alas, had to quit halfway. At eight months pregnant, I was too tired and sweaty to waddle up the hill to Pigalle two nights a week. Sometimes the messiness of life – job changes, pregnancies, menages a trois – gets in the way of best intentions."