And Just Like That…‘Emily in Paris’ is so Much Better Than ‘And Just Like That’
[Written in January 2022]
It might not seem like high praise to say that Emily in Paris is better than And Just Like That. But even without the comparison, the Lily Collins Netflix series is a fun, charming show.
Guess what happens on Emily in Paris? Emily has a diverse group of colleagues and friends without constantly mentioning said diversity or giving preachy lessons to viewers. Sylvie, Emily’s boss, is in her 50s and does not constantly talk about her age. Sylvie does not make jokes about her creaky joints. She does not talk about her hair — whether it is dyed or highlighted or anything else. Also, sometimes this 50-something boss has sex and does not talk about being an old person having sex; nor do her colleagues, though they appreciate that she brings them pastries in her state of morning-after bliss.
Her romantic life is part of her life, but there is no nattering on about how “fierce” or attractive she ought to be despite (for that is sous-entendu) her age. Nor does Sylvie mention the other half of the mixed message older women receive about sexual viability: our “invisibility.”
Oh dear, I so hate it when women bemoan this allegedly ubiquitous phenomenon. I prefer Andrea King Collier’s take on it: “The invisibility thing that I hear older women talking about…I just refused to own it…It is giving away your power as a thinking, creative person. People don’t take your power or make you invisible. You do that.”
If you have been watching And Just Like That (and if you have, I offer you my condolences) you get where I am going here. Each new episode of the Sex and the City reboot feels like it ought to be called — to use the parlance of a popular series of the nineties — “The One Where They Make an African-American, Indian, Gender Fluid (insert label here) Friend and Proceed to Make a Fool of Themselves/Make a Morally Objectionable Choice.” It is ham-handed and self-conscious. As the kids say, it’s cringe. It feels like a never-ending undergrad lecture given by Professor Post Modernist Blather in Tedium 101Y.
So why am I watching it? For the same reason I went to see the second Sex and the City movie: it is my sacred duty as a woman. Still, I was honestly hopeful about the reboot. I watched the original series and liked it. As a viewer the age of Carrie and crew, navigating relationships and career, it — forgive this phrase — spoke to me. The characters talked about what my friends and I talked about; they went through similar struggles, though with more polish and better apartments. The show dealt with the “shoulds” we all felt and our ambivalence about so many of those shoulds.
But one feels the let-down of And Just Like That almost immediately. If the attempts to out-woke the woke were removed from the script, it would still be weak. One thing is clear: how much panache Kim Cattrall brought to the quartet. Imagine The Golden Girls without the late and beloved Betty White. No matter how talented the others, it would not fly. Only the characters of Seema and Anthony carry some of the old series’ brio.
So while I do not hope for a second season, I would love to see a third season of Emily in Paris — like Sex and the City, a Darren Star creation. I do not hate-watch it, as others say they do.
I know that Emily’s Paris is not the real Paris. I lived in the French capital for nearly five years when I was in my 20s and have returned many times since. (Fun fact: one of my university classmates in Paris was an American who happened to be friends with Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Sylvie on the show.)
In Emily’s Paris, the streets are too clean and not crowded enough; her forays about the city are surprisingly free of pervs and pickpockets; every neighbourhood looks like a postcard; the tourists are too attractive. And don’t get me started on Emily’s chambre de bonne, or maid’s room. I lived in one of those for a time. Emily’s has a bathroom and a kitchen. Mine had barely enough space for myself and my cockroach roommates, a hot plate and a wee fridge. A bathroom? That was down the hall and shared with everyone else relegated to the sixth floor — assorted students and guest workers. Like Emily, though, I did have an inspiring view. Not as spectacular as hers, but there is nothing shabby about looking out at Sainte-Chapelle.
And yes, Emily’s colleagues are predictably rude and anti-American. I have never found French people to be significantly ruder than others, though perhaps my language skills help. They do appreciate it when you speak French. As for anti-Americanism, it is an unfortunate and endemic feature of Western European culture, something of a bedrock.
But Emily in Paris is not a documentary. I have been known to watch The Sorrow and the Pity and get massively depressed, but sometimes one wants a light-hearted romp in a storied locale, a vision of France at its most improbably delightful. Does anyone think Roman Holiday is an authentic portrayal of Rome? Or that what happens in Midnight in Paris will happen if they visit the Left Bank? (Wouldn’t that be a joy?) Emily in Paris is fantasy, with an element of the over-the-top about it, especially where fashion and comedic turns are concerned. There is something Amelie-esque in the optimistic heroine, offset nicely by the less sanguine attitudes of her colleagues.
Which brings us back to Sylvie, who, at one point reminds Emily that she should make mistakes, create some chaos. “You’ve got the rest of your life to be as dull as you wish.” Indeed. Especially if, twenty years from now, Emily gets a reboot.