Our new season opens with a dream sequence, perhaps to psychologically prepare us for the fever-dream-logic quality of the series from which we’ve been away for a year. Remember: Nothing anyone says, does, or believes in this alternate reality will ever really make sense or hold up to close inspection; the outfits will be mostly psychotic. It is best to think of the entire exercise of Emily in Paris as a sort of collective hallucination that we are all having together. On y va!
So here she is: Emily, wearing a lot of Pepto-Bismol pink. We have marabou feathers. We have a long-sleeve crop top with cutouts that is pink with hearts all over. We have a velvet headband, which actually I’m not opposed to. We have absolutely enormous platform heels. I’m not sure when they shot this but I feel like this particular Barbiecore pink (it’s not actually Valentino, right? I can’t tell for sure but that’s the vibe I assume they’re aiming for) peaked with Anne Hathaway at Cannes back in July. At first I thought, You can tell this is a dream sequence because Emily’s sartorial subconscious is running amuck, but then (spoiler) she is wearing this exact outfit in her real life later in the episode so, scratch that, LOL.
In the dream, Madeline — who, because this is a dream, is just one side of Emily talking to herself — insists to Emily that “your whole life is in Chicago” which is hilarious because as far as we know Emily has exactly zero friends in the city where she once lived, not to mention she broke up with Human Plot Device: the Chicago Boyfriend fully two seasons ago. Which, in the timeline of this show, was about nine months ago … Madeline’s pregnancy doing the Lord’s work (helping me track the passage of time in a world where nothing makes sense).
When Emily wakes up, her curls are as stiff as if she shellacked them with hairspray in her sleep. Her morning routine is intriguing to me — she starts with filing her nails? — though I wonder if we are to believe this sort of frenetic, scrambled ritual is not her standard practice but instead is a manifestation of her frenetic, scrambled mind. Very Cassie from Euphoria of her. In the grand tradition of emotionally unraveling women the world over, Emily cuts her own bangs. Because this show is committed to Emily’s mistakes having no real consequences for even, like, ten minutes, the bangs are barely crooked and look professionally done by the time she and Mindy go out for coffee. (Remember that time we found out she’d been using dog shampoo? Or that time in season one when there was a whole plot point about her not being able to wash her hair? Emily’s plastic locks defy the laws of physics, of nature, of space-time, etc.)
Camille pops over to coffee in an outfit that I like even though the thick-rimmed glasses are a little extra to me. She is very into being loyal to Emily, get it?!?!? And for some reason Camille is obsessed with keeping her family’s business with Emily, no matter which company Emily works for. Again, I feel completely insane when I try to follow the through-lines of any of these characters, but did we not spend a significant chunk of season two watching Camille hate Emily’s guts and only pretend to be nice to her to neutralize her as an obstacle on Camille’s (also inexplicable) quest to regain Gabriel’s heart? So now that she’s won back her boyfriend, why is she being nice to Emily? Am I to believe she genuinely likes Emily? Or is this still faux friendship with some ulterior motive we don’t know about yet? The latter possibility feels way too chess-not-checkers for them; the first one also makes no sense, but in a more likely manner. Emily insists to Mindy that she is focusing on Alfie and has sooo much to figure out. Mindy, correctly, says there is nothing to figure out “except your rail pass and your birth control.” Why does no one on this show think it’s possible to keep dating someone a short train ride away from where you live?
Emily goes back to the Savoir offices so we can get a full-body shot of her outfit: a fuzzy sweater in a Care Bear color palette, a metallic miniskirt, and just-over-the-knee shiny green boots. Like, very green. Maybe I’m just getting soft, but I would support any of these pieces separately in a different context … unfortunately all of them together is giving Portia from The White Lotus. Madeline’s outfit is significantly worse (bright magenta and orange, very tight), I assume because her role in this world is “terribly not-chic American,” and I know I said this last season but I am very not into the way this show treats her pregnancy as beyond comical, like practically grotesque.
They have a meeting with Maison Lavaux, which is news to Emily! (How exactly does it benefit Madeline for Emily to have no idea who the meetings are with and what she needs to prep for … you have literally one employee, it shouldn’t be hard to keep her in the loop!) Madeline wants to franchise Gabriel’s restaurant which I think has been open for … three months? I know she is here to represent all things Tacky and Bad and American whereas Sylvie et al are Exclusive and Boutique and Restrained but it just seems like a very dumb business plan? Maybe see if the restaurant survives the winter before you start expanding? Of course Emily fails to tell Madeline that she is quitting because Madeline gets emotional and talks about how she believes Emily can “empower a future generation of women.” Incredible. Empower them to do what? Be incompetent?!
Emily gets a call from Doug. I had no idea who “Doug” was without Madeline’s context clues because of course I only refer to him as the Human Plot Device: the Chicago Boyfriend. We have not heard from Doug since his and Emily’s breakup wayyyy back in season one so I find it hard to believe they are on good enough terms to have such a friendly phone call, and even harder to believe he thinks it would be wise to hang his professional reputation on his ex’s ability to deliver for a client. But whatever! Doug reports that McDonald’s is looking for a French marketing agency for their McBaguette. McDonald’s gets such glowing treatment in this episode I have to believe this is all product placement, right? I mean, they shoot an entire lunch scene at the McDonald’s in Paris complete with lingering shots of macarons in glass cases.
Emily goes to her other job (how she explains being MIA for half the day with both her bosses is left unclear). Sylvie’s little upstart agency is operating out of her apartment. Big “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” energy. Sylvie is wearing a great pair of high-waisted pants and a tangerine top. As you might expect, Sylvie is on the prowl for a luxury client and has no interest in McDonald’s. (“The only baguettes I’m interested in are diamonds.”) And then, what do you know: Antoine and Gabriel show up. Emily’s not the only one shopping around, I see. Antoine doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Emily weighing her options — this from a man who was giving his wife the runaround for ages, so not a shocking take from him — and says she is “very talented.” I have to wonder if anyone on this show has ever spent any time with her?? Through mysterious forces (the wind?) her hair does seem to be improving. The best part is that Gabriel asks her what she did to her hair and she blurts out, “They’re just bangs! Sometimes people cut bangs when everything is fine!”
Gabriel takes Emily to lunch at McDonald’s because somehow she is the only American in Paris who has never heard that the McDonald’s is, like, different there. As usual, there is no emotion, no electric charge, no vibes, nothing to suggest these two have ever been in love, or are still in love, or that Emily is feeling betrayed because, after all but telling her he did not care about Camille and yearned only for Emily, Gabriel has now, unceremoniously, returned to his ex-girlfriend. Frankly they talk like people who not only have never had sex but have never even met. For whatever reason, Emily is waiting until the day Alfie leaves town to throw him a going-away party, and of course the only place to do this is at Gabriel’s restaurant. (Not to nitpick but: Wouldn’t it make more sense for Alfie to be leaving the day after tomorrow? Like why would the going-away party be at 8 p.m. on the night of his departure?)
In French class, Emily learns about existentialism and Sarte. (I love when her teacher tells her, “No one said existentialism was helpful.”) Alfie crashes, mostly to look very hot in his banker suit. I appreciate your service, Alfie. Emily is constitutionally incapable of talking about anything except for work. Her boyfriend keeps reminding her that he is leaving tomorrow and they should talk about how they want to see each other next once he moves. A perfectly reasonable request! Again it is hard to believe that these two people are an item given that Emily is such a bad girlfriend (never pays attention to him; is obviously hung up on someone else) but the show needs us to believe that Emily is being torn asunder in both her professional and personal lives, so here we are. (Fortunately the one couple I do believe in and care for deeply — Sylvie and the sexy, young photographer — are still together, and still have the correct priorities: no work talk when it’s time to make out).
As ever, the most irritating thing about Emily (and, by extension, Emily in Paris) is that our heroine’s big conflicts are always crises that she has brought on herself — and they are the most avertable of disasters! They wouldn’t even be problems if she just acted the age that, last season, we confirmed she definitely is (29!!!). Everything that went down with Gabriel and Camille was made 10,000 times worse through Emily’s stupidity; the same goes with her issues with Alfie. And is it hard to tell your mentor that you’re moving on to another workplace? Yes, but Emily is hardly the first person to find herself in this conundrum and in fact it’s much easier to tell your boss you want to leave your job when you can couch it in a bunch of lifestyle choices — “I’m so happy in Paris, I have a boyfriend here” — rather than the naked truth of “I have outgrown this job, and you, and no longer with to be in your employ.” (Obviously making that whole matter worse is the inexplicable and frustrating decision to make Madeline this embarrassing caricature of a pregnant woman who is constantly crying, fretting, and behaving erratically.)
At the still-unnamed splinter agency in Sylvie’s apartment, Luc confesses to Julien that he left his laptop at Savoir. This sends him back to the old office where he just spills all of Emily’s secrets to Madeline, including the McBaguette campaign. The gaffe about Emily is dumb but understandable, but why would you ever tell a competitor about a new client meeting before you’ve secured their business? Is anyone on this show not an idiot? Please help — Sylvie deserves better!
We are meant to believe that Emily was practical before she came to Paris, but based on everything we’ve ever seen her do this makes absolutely no sense. As is required by television law, the McDonald’s meeting is a dinner at the Eiffel Tower at the exact same time as Alfie’s going-away dinner. Instead of just telling Alfie about this and making a different plan — go to a happy hour, it’s not rocket science! — Emily just pretends she can do two things that are literally occurring at the exact same time in two different places. So she just sets herself up to be inexcusably late to the party she planned for her boyfriend? (See above re: Emily creating all of her own problems and botching them so badly it is impossible to sympathize with her.)
Emily is dressed in her dream-sequence pink-feather situation. Sylvie is in a little glitter cape. She wants Emily to see her as a mentor. It’s an uncharacteristically tender thing for Sylvie to say so we know it’s all about to come tumbling down, and it does, in extremely TV-sitcom fashion: Madeline crashes the dinner and outs Emily in front of everyone and then her water breaks all over Sylvie’s shoes.
Back at Alfie’s party, no one is in attendance except for Emily’s friends (did Alfie seriously meet no one else? Wasn’t he here for, like, a year?) and, for some reason, Antoine. Antoine and Alfie have a little sidebar about how Alfie’s banking know-how could help Antoine’s business get a bigger international footprint. Good for these gents, I guess. Mindy is in attendance, wearing bedazzled jean shorts.
About Mindy: I would love for the show to find a way to consistently integrate whatever Mindy has going on with the main plot. Every time we leave to go hang out with her, it just … makes no sense. We aren’t with her and her bandmates enough to be all that invested in what happens to them, and nothing she’s doing has any effect on Emily or the core goings-on of the show. And lovely as it is to hear Ashley Park sing, I’m not sure that a 30-minute show can spare so much screen time for something that has nothing to do with anything else. (Though I do appreciate that they finally have her performing thematically appropriate songs; this episode’s was “I Have Two Loves.”) Anyway, Mindy kills it at this jazz club but the guy who works there only wants her to have a regular gig, not her bandmates. Will she repeat Emily’s extremely avoidable mistakes and try to lead some weird double life where her boyfriend and bandmate never find out about this?
Over at the Eiffel Tower, Emily is using the passive voice to absolve herself of all responsibility for the mess she’s made of her own life (“It all just got so complicated”). Sylvie is having none of it, as is correct, and fires her. So Emily went from having two jobs to no job; when she finally makes a pathetic last-minute appearance at Alfie’s party, she winds up with no boyfriend, too. (It is very funny to me that he is stunned that she cares more about her job than their relationship when I’m pretty sure they only met a few months ago and have been exclusive for … the summer? If that? But okay!) This is all potentially quite juicy stuff for the start of the season, but given this show’s track record for letting Emily actually live with the consequences of her actions, I am not sure how hopeful to be.
