Let’s be clear. Emily in Paris is not the first show to sugar-coat the realities of surviving adult life inside a metropolis.
Sex and the City saw weekly newspaper advice columnist Carrie Bradshaw residing in a spacious apartment in New York’s Upper East Side. It overlooked Central Park and was encircled by designer shops and high-end restaurants she often frequented.
From the 90s and into today, viewers accepted that maintaining this lifestyle stretched well beyond the capacity of Carrie’s estimated salary, yet we ignore these details for the sake of enjoying the story. Because humans like – and arguably need – an outlet of escapism.
Another example is House, a programme about a mentally ill, pharmaceutical-addicted medical doctor. In reality, House would’ve terrified his New Jersey patients and been fired for malpractice in every single episode. Yet the show went on to win 17 awards including a Golden Globe, numerous Emmys, and at least one Peabody.
Along with these examples, countless other series have depicted various levels of absurdity while maintaining their popularity and cult-like followings over the last two decades.
Judging by the reactions to the newly arrived Emily In Paris though, audiences have changed massively since then. Along with these changes, it seems the bar for consistency and realism in entertainment has been raised too.
Modern audiences are far quicker to sound the bullshit alarm on the things they witness on screen.
Whether it’s badly rendered CGI or inaccurately depicted cultural and financial realities, production companies can no longer gloss over crucial details with as much ease.
As Gen Z grows older and makes increasingly refined demands for the content available to them, it will be interesting to see whether TV shows sharing a genre with Emily In Paris will survive. Especially given that this generation is the most politically, financially, and culturally aware yet.
It’s anybody’s guess, considering the substantially dramatised depiction of high school life in Euphoria had young audiences in a chokehold since 2019. The fact that its cast members were dripped in designer clothing despite being aged sixteen didn’t seem to harm its success.
Granted, it’s possible that stretching the truth is more widely accepted when it doesn’t involve blending cultures and geographical locations. With globalisation only growing further, this is something producers and directors will have to come to grips with.
Wrapping this up, I’m willing to admit that perhaps Emily’s character profile is just too cringe-worthy for some to enjoy.
Doubling as a social media influencer while very obviously winging it at a French marketing agency with a toddler-level understanding of the national language can come across a little jarring at times.
But after breezing through the first season of Emily in Paris in 2020, I was surprised to feel my scepticism towards the show dwindling. As for many others, it was a breath of fresh air during yet another winter lockdown.
For a long time, my ideal evening of binge-watching Netflix involved documentaries about murder mysteries, espionage, and political scandals. But through cheesy shows like Emily In Paris, I’m learning that a plotline doesn’t have to be complex, twisted, or dark for it to be worth following.
Minor details don’t have to mirror real life with 100 percent accuracy for a show to be enjoyable. Seriously, how drab would that be? And how many fiction shows are written that way, anyway?
Sometimes all you need is a little escapism. And after the last couple of years we’ve all had, why the hell not?
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