Emily In Paris takes place in an alternate universe

In the first episode of Emily in Paris, the incumbent Emily (post-move to the incumbent from Paris) receives a video call from her boyfriend, who still lives in Chicago. The boyfriend, who is so generically bland that I refuse to keep his name, has the exact level of attractiveness and charisma typically seen in a guy who arrives in week two The bachelorette.

He called Emily at 7 p.m. in the Midwest, which is the middle of the night in Paris, because even though his girlfriend has been traveling the world for a few days, that empty Cubs jersey of a man forgot that jetlags exist . Regardless within moments, Boyfriend took off his shirt. Emily, performed by Lily Collins, arches her signature eyebrows. Do we have cybersex? she purrs, proceeding to remove her top before tucking the quilt under her armpits to keep her longtime boyfriend from seeing more than 2 inches of bare flesh.

This scene is the first of many Emily in Paris I feel like it was written by a team of 50 virgins something as promotional material to teach North Korean deserters American customs. Does anyone other than a late night reporter on a mission to terrify parents call it cybersex?

Social media is Emily’s job even though Emily is actively embarrassing on social networks.

In fact, I refuse to believe that a single 35-year-old took a look at this script before it went into production. The whole show has the joyful but non-threatening energy of a CosmoGirl magazine from 2005, the televised equivalent of an article that teaches you how to ROCK the bold print on the first day of school. Nothing is specific. No one has a personality trait with courage or purpose. Every character floats, every actor tries their best to make lines like Id bon-appet-EAT him slightly less ridiculous than them.

Our protagonist is sent to Paris in place of her pregnant boss, apparently the French cannot cope with pregnancy even though they don’t speak the language and are incredibly grating as a person. Social media is Emily’s job even though Emily is actively embarrassing on social networks. She arrives in Paris with 48 followers (to repeat, it was already his work) but goes over 20k because people are so enamored with selfies with unique hashtag captions and basic Boomerangs.

Lily Collins is a beautiful girl and I have no doubt that someone who looks exactly like her can become a very successful Instagram model. But, contrary to what cranky baby boomers like to think about kids and their Insta-tweets, building a sequel like this requires a lot of work. If they wanted her experience to relate to the real world, even at a basic level, they would show that she takes at least more than one photo before deciding on a good one. And at a minimum, anyone vaguely online would know that you can’t use a hashtag with an apostrophe (really, Emily?).

Emily would not have gone viral because she photographed herself eating a croissant in Paris.

Also, these hashtag captions can not cut it. Emily would not have gone viral because she photographed herself eating a croissant in Paris. Thousands of girls study abroad every year! It’s a post-Caroline Calloway world Building a brand like the American Abroad takes storytelling and writing, allowing people to peek into the experience just enough to make them feel both left and bitterly jealous. .

Gender and city also created by Darren Star often gets flack for her New York Vaseline Fictionalization, but at least the characters had challenges that felt like heightened versions of things humans might experience on planet Earth. Yes Carrie spent too much money on shoes but we saw where she got the money. We saw the closet where she kept them. We saw that she went bankrupt because she bought too many shoes. Her love of shoes was part of Carrie being a full, weird person who had an existence compatible with cause and effect.

Compare that to Emily, who tells us over and over again is a ruthlessly organized and knowledgeable businesswoman, but also seems to have brought several berets with her on her travels around the world. Does Emily even like clothes? Why does she dress like this if she never once mentions an interest in fashion or, even more blatantly, if she never mentions once chooses to highlight her outfits on her inexplicably successful Instagram?

The whole show has the joyful but non-threatening energy of a CosmoGirl magazine from 2005.

The whole show has a resounding adult-written quality. When Emilys becomes embroiled in a major fashion scandal that ends up in international news, she wakes up 27 phone calls but only four (4!) SMS. During an office conversation, she refers to the increase in subscriber notifications, whatever they are. Were through the Looking Glass, a parallel universe where the Berenstain Bears are spelled Berenstein, and Marty McFly actually had sex with his mother.

I’m not the type to shame on TV for being shiny fluff. I believe TV shows serve as a brain rinse that allows viewers to distance themselves and become unresponsive to the outside world. In this way, Emily in Paris is as easy to consume as a pint of buttery pecans and if it wasn’t obvious, I watched the whole season in one day. But it’s also a missed opportunity to have a show about a young girl going out into the world alone and not tie her up to all reality that a 20 year old girl would recognize today.

It’s structured properly, shiny, and filmed well enough, but it’s also like one of those mesh Facebook posts where scientists show you that you can still read things when the frsit and lsat one-word letters saty in palce. If you squint your eyes and let your eyes get blurry, you can suspend disbelief just long enough to fill in the gaps.

In Just Why, Dana Schwartz examines the weird and sublime pop culture moments discussed on the internet this week.