Emily in Paris season five

Considering that Darren Starr created Emily in Paris, it was bound to happen, sooner or later, that the show he’ll always remain most known for, Sex and the City (sorry Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place), would creep into it sooner or later. And honestly, that might be part of why the fifth season of the series has become, inexplicably, its most critically well-received. While this “phenomenon” of SATC plotlines and highly specific references (whether intentional or not) seeping into various shows is nothing new (with Nobody Wants This being one of the more glaring recent examples in both season one and two), it would have been more expected to happen sooner in Emily in Paris. Not just because Starr is its creator (and still often continues to write episodes for it), but because the premise is primed to be emulative: a single girl in the city portraying that life in a totally unrealistic-to-the-point-of-wanting-to-bash-your-screen-in manner. Except, miraculously, Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) managed to quickly outshine Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) in the category of most annoying/whiny main character in a half-hour series.

With season five, during which Emily in Paris quite literally becomes Emily in Rome (in location and name, via the opening titles), “Cooper” is meant to be experiencing a kind of “personal growth” that Paris was no longer allowing. Besides that, it seemed the writers were keen on destroying another city—nay, another country—through cringeworthy representation. Though, like the French actors that participate in Emily in Paris (including Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Bruno Gouery and Samuel Arnold), the Italian ones in “Emily in Rome” are game to let this reductive series speak for their nation’s image, presented, as usual, in a stereotypical fashion. Though at least no one is putting in an “a” in between every English word they say (e.g., “It’s-a me, Mario”). Among those willing Italian participants are Eugenio Franceschini, who plays Emily’s latest love interest, Marcello Muratori, and Anna Galiena, who plays Marcello’s mother. More than that, the overprotective capo of Muratori, a luxury brand specializing in cashmere clothing (it’s a wonder that someone [read: Emily] didn’t reuse the phrase, “It’s a cashmere-acle” à la Carrie in the SATC season two episode, “The Awful Truth”—written by Starr).

As episode one, written by Starr himself and titled, oof, “La Dolce Emily,” kicks off, it isn’t Emily’s sudden hairstyle change (a freshly-cut bob that no one seems to acknowledge is a fairly dramatic shift away from the long locks that she had at the end of season four, with season five taking place seemingly days later) that’s the most out of left field, but rather, the idea that Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) would feel obliged to open up a Rome office “just like that” to appeal to just one client (Muratori). It’s the type of “disconnect” seen often in Sex and the City, where career-oriented aspects of the show rarely seem to line up even slightly with real life. And when it comes to Emily’s visa situation, well, it’s been the topic of much discussion, considering the visa she’s supposed to be on in France would have expired after three years and she would then have to go back to the U.S. for six months while waiting for the approval of a new one. Conveniently, her visa setup isn’t addressed when Sylvie initially asks her to head up the Rome office before swooping in herself and taking over everything.

The SATC connection flares up more prominently in episode two, “Got To Be Real,” which, of course, echoes the SATC season four title “The Real Me.” And yes, in both episodes, Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real” is wielded shamelessly in the final moments. But it isn’t “The Real Me” that “Got to Be Real” channels, so much as season six’s “The Perfect Present,” when Carrie attends a “purse party” for Victoria (yet another character of Jennifer Coolidge’s who walks in on people having sex) and tells her her usual trio of friends, “Last night, Berger [Ron Livingston] started opening the ‘ex file.’” In a similar fashion, Mindy (Ashley Park) tells Emily, “About Marcello, don’t open the ‘ex files.’ The truth is not out there.” To be sure, this dialogue very closely resembles the moment in “The Perfect Present” when Carrie says, “Damn it, just when you thought you didn’t have to open up the ex file.”

In Emily’s situation, it’s not just an ex, but various exes of Marcello’s that keep cropping up. The first being a woman named Lucia (Denise Tantucci) she sees him talking to from afar while they’re all out dancing spontaneously in a random piazza, including Mindy, who seems to, like everyone else, magically be able to follow Emily wherever she goes. It’s Lucia who plants the seeds of doubt in Emily’s mind about Marcello’s devotion, cautioning her, “He’s so sweet. Just don’t get too… I don’t know how you say it in English. Attached?” Her words seem to flash before Emily’s eyes later in the episode when Marcello introduces her to another ex named Celia (Elda Scarnecchia). This one even more serious in that their relationship seemed to be that of the “affianced” variety, with Celia confessing to Emily, “[Our parents] tried very hard to push us down the aisle, and they almost succeeded.” So here, again, there is a major SATC element at play in that it repeats the anger and insecurity that Carrie experienced with Big (Chris Noth) during the season one episode, “The Monogamists” (again, written by Starr). Indeed, the way that Emily keeps encountering all these exes of Marcello while with him is exactly what happens to Carrie after thinking that she and Big had something very special and, therefore, presumably exclusive. But when she sees him out on a date with another woman, that illusion is quickly shattered. As it is when she attends a party with Big later in the episode and watches as a woman named Melissa (Deborah Zoe) kisses him on the lips and says, “Hey there, stranger. I’ve been trying to call you… You still have my passport.” Big’s blatant aura of having his tail between his legs as Carrie observes all of this is only heightened when he approaches one of the hosts of the party, Max (James McCaffrey), to whom Big tries to introduce Carrie as “someone very special,” but before he can say her name, Max presumes this must be “Julia” with a big smile on his face.

Another signature storyline from the SATC oeuvre that gets shoehorned into this episode is the whole Fendi thing. For, as any devoted SATC viewer will recall, it’s in the season three episode, “Sex and Another City” that Samantha (Kim Cattrall) introduces the plotline of pursuing a fake Fendi while the quartet is in Los Angeles as she shows them her new “Fendi” bag while adding, “You’d never know it wasn’t a real Fendi unless you looked inside at the lining.” Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) chimes in, “I don’t like fakes.” To which Samantha replies, “Oh who cares? All that matters is what it looks like.” Carrie seems to initially be of the same mind, later accompanying Samantha all the way to the Valley to check out the wares being sold by the man she bought her first bag from. Alas, when Carrie approaches the car trunk they’re being “displayed” in, all she can think is, “I should have liked them, but staring into that trunk, they no longer looked like elegant Fendi bags. They just looked cheap. And even if everyone else thought it was real, I’d always know my bag came from a cardboard box in a trunk deep in the Valley.”

As she describes this feeling to the others at dinner that night, Charlotte (Kristin Davis) begins to feel so spotlighted by her description that she bursts out with, “My marriage is a fake Fendi. Trey and I look like the perfect couple from the outside, but on the inside, it’s all fake.” The notion of a fake Fendi serving as a “deeper” metaphor for a fake relationship also applies to Emily’s situation with Marcello, with Emily even going so far as to heavy-handedly tell him, “And I’m just worried that you’re a fake Fendi.” This revelation arriving after Emily has an embarrassing meeting with the head of marketing at Fendi, who points out that Emily’s “1997 original release” from her grandmother is actually a fake, citing the uneven stitching, the poor-quality clasp and the logo’s lack of sharpness. “It’s very easy to trick the untrained eye,” she adds.

Emily’s humiliation is matched only by Sylvie’s, who can’t believe how incompetent and unsophisticated she’s made them all look. But, of course, the “higher purpose” of this plot point is for her to liken her fake Fendi to her relationship with Marcello, which, by the end of the episode, prompts him to confirm his devotion by taking her to one of the brand’s stores and offering to buy her any bag(uette) she wants, saying, “I want you to know you have the real thing.” So it is that Emily in Paris does Sex and the City one better on emphasizing a message that loudly declares capitalism and “love” are intertwined.

As for the simultaneously vexing and pointless presence of Geneviève (Thalia Besson—yes, Luc Besson’s daughter), in this episode, it continues to carry over from season four and insert itself here as well, with the incompetent “nepo baby” assistant (because apparently nepo babies can only play nepo babies) managing to fuck up Emily and co.’s life even from afar as she blows the lid off Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) and Mindy’s illicit romance to Julien (Samuel Arnold) over the phone. So it is that, apart from being a two-dimensional “villain” with no real cause for said villainy (apart from being from New York), Geneviève continues to stick out more as a “character” on the show for being randomly thrown in to wreak nonsensical havoc. But one supposes that a two-dimensional “heroine” deserves a two-dimensional villain. Indeed, while Carrie Bradshaw might have her fair share of irritating tendencies, she’s still a more complex lead than Emily, who can miraculously “charm” anyone and everyone she encounters—even in the midst of being as grating (and gratingly bland) as possible.

The same goes in episode three, “Intimissimi Issues,” which bears a tinge of SATC’s “Bay of Married Pigs” episode when Peter (David Healy) walks down the hall with no pants on. The “Peter” in this scenario is Marcello, who, instead of walking around an abode where he knows Emily’s friend is, decides to go full nude down the stairs where Mindy is sleeping on the couch. While it might have been a bonus for him to, er, flex his muscle around her, the real intent becomes clear at the end of the episode, when he walks around with his underwear on now that she’s gone. For all along, it seemed he just wanted to get Mindy out of their love nest. And, ultimately, that’s probably a wise move considering that Mindy now appears to have a yen for men that Emily has fallen for. Hence, Mindy telling Marcello, “No big ‘D’” about seeing his cazzo and then assuring him that she meant “deal,” and also that his “D” is “perfect.”

Of course, Emily’s reaction to Mindy seeing her boyfriend’s “special appendage” and complimenting it in such a way isn’t unhinged like Patience’s (Jennifer Guthrie) in “Bay of Married Pigs,” as she suddenly treats Carrie like a Jezebel who forced her husband to “show it to her” when, as Samantha puts it, all he really wanted to do was “show it off, like a monkey.” But all Marcello ostensibly wants is his alone time with Emily. Something that’s readable as a bad stereotype about Italian men being possessive, along with Marcello’s predilection for flirting and “peacocking.” Alas, as mentioned, it’s as if Emily in Paris won’t consider its job done until it detrimentally “represents” every country in the EU (and, from the looks of the finale, Greece is next).

In the backdrop of it all is a major plug for Intimissimi, now likely infiltrating minds it otherwise wouldn’t have thanks to being introduced to the average Emily in Paris viewer: gits who get their “knowledge” of Europe from this show. Complete with the “Rome porn” scenes peppered throughout each scene break, allowing for the architecture to be shown as though it’s being featured on a travel show rather than a “sitcom” (or at least, the Netflix version of a sitcom). In this sense, Sex and the City also has Emily in Paris slightly more beat on the “authenticity” front in that “the character” of New York isn’t wielded in the Friends type of way, where it’s just showing a lot of cliché exterior shots of the city to remind the viewer, repeatedly, of where it’s taking place.

And, speaking of Friends, by episode six, Emily in Paris is so scraping the bottom of the barrel for inspiration that it feels obliged to cull from Friends in lieu of Sex and the City. Even going so far as to have the episode named in the “Friends style” by being titled “The One Where Emily Goes to the Embassy.” That is, the American embassy. And how she ends up there is a result of wandering into an American pub (given the fake name of Mayday Inns Brass & Bourbon American Pub) where a Friends trivia night is taking place (though it would have been much more meta if it had been a Sex and the City trivia night). Which should send any rational person running for the hills, but this is plucky, “go with the flow” Emily. So when she’s approached by a guy named Jake (Bryan Greenberg)—who is a “consular officer” at the embassy—and he invites her to join his trivia team, she accepts. Of course, most expatriates with any sense would avoid commingling with other Americans at all costs. But, as it’s been made clear over and over again, Emily doesn’t have much sense. Yet she can still manage to make friends wherever she goes (this in spite having the personality appeal of a gecko). Something even Carrie couldn’t do during her brief stint in Paris for the two-part finale of SATC, titled, obviously, “An American Girl in Paris (Part Une)” and “An American Girl in Paris (Part Deux).” These episodes offering a much more honest depiction of how difficult it can be to meet people as a non-French-speaking American in living in Paris. Even now, with the pervasiveness of the internet that wasn’t quite so pervasive when the SATC finale aired in 2004. And yes, looking back on that finale, it’s plain to see this iteration of Carrie was like a blueprint for Emily.

Though, to be fair, even Carrie wouldn’t deign to do what Emily does during “The One Where Emily Goes to the Embassy.” In fact, upon setting foot in Paris at the Plaza Athénée, Carrie is quick to distinguish herself as a “New Yorker” when asked by the concierge if she’s American. Emily certainly isn’t making such a distinction about being from Chicago when she joins Jake in the cultish Fourth of July celebrations at the embassy. Celebrations that totally ignore who the current president is while also having the audacity to play Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” at one point. But considering how “in its own bubble of delusion” Emily in Paris is, why should it be expected that featuring the Fourth of July in this manner at a political moment in history such as this would do anything but ignore the elephant (that animal unjustly being paraded as the Republican “mascot” or symbol) in the room about the U.S. right now?

Then, as fireworks go off to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Emily has the audacity to tell Jake, “Living abroad can be hard sometimes. You’re here, but back in the States everything is just going on without you.” Including fascism. What a drag to miss that, eh? But because Emily in Paris prides itself on being “apolitical” (even as it featured a vomit-inducing cameo from Brigitte Macron in the season four episode, “Lost in Translation,” that all but screams “tax incentive”)—another term for conservative/supportive of the status quo—it cannot “go there.” Though even Sex and the City had its dalliance with politics in the season three episodes, “Where There’s Smoke…” and “Politically Erect” (another one written by Starr), thanks to Carrie dating Bill Kelley (John Slattery), who is running for New York City Comptroller (as Lisa Todd Wexley’s [Nicole Ari Parker] husband, Herbert [Christopher Jackson], will try and fail to do on And Just Like That…).

And while it was all very “superfluous” and “surface” conversation that Bill Kelley spurred, hearing Samantha say such things as, “I always vote for candidates according to their looks… The country runs better with a good-looking man in the White House. Look what happened with Nixon. No one wanted to fuck him, so he fucked everyone” and “I always thought there was something homoerotic about Quayle’s relationship with Bush, very Batman and Robin” is still far more of a “political stance” than anything Emily in Paris dares to offer.  

As for another unexpected tie-in to the SATC universe (aside from Emily wearing what looks like different couture-pulled outfits every day in spite of her theoretically “modest” salary), Jonathan Cake, who plays Duncan Reeves on season three of And Just Like That… reanimates in the Emily in Paris universe as Thomas Heatherton, a billionaire businessman who hires Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) to be his personal chef as he travels the world on his yacht. And, talking of Gabriel, his relationship is still being dangled “on the hook” to viewers who presumably view him as Emily’s version of Mr. Big in that he’s “the ultimate one” for her. Despite all roadblocks and personality issues that have thus far indicated the contrary.

Whoever Emily ends up with if this show ever ends, it seems likely that more nods (however “subtle”) to Sex and the City—in addition to more cultural affronts and stereotypes—will arise. Including the fact that, if it does end with six seasons, it will match that other, far more tolerable Darren Starr-created series. So, going by that pattern, let’s just hope there’s not a pair of Emily in Paris movies and a “sequel series” many years later.