Review of Season 1 of Emily in Paris

For many people I’ve talked to, the time when we were in the peak stage of a global pandemic seems to be one of a brain fog. A lot of people don’t remember much about what they did during this time outside of baking banana bread, or watching Squid Game, which means there’s a lot of brain fog I’ve noticed around me.

I spent the pandemic building this blog and my online career as a writer, which was a weird, unconventional way to deal with the pain and suffering happening all around us. While I can clearly remember grinding out blog posts and social media content for the companies I was working for, a lot of people measured their time in television shows.

Emily in Paris was one of them. It feels like a weird flashback to me to return to this show after so long, as I only watched the first season when it first came out and then promptly dipped from Emily’s world.

But with all of this hype at the time of writing this around a new season, and the fact I had nothing to do while I waited for my Indian student visa to come through, I decided to revisit Emily and her strange little world.

Here’s my review of the first season of Emily in Paris.

Emily Cooper is ready to take on Paris and all that it has to offer her.

Our main character in this show is the titular Emily, who is going to Paris. She lived in Chicago throughout the course of the beginning of the show’s origin story segment, but now she’s ready to take a leap of faith and go to the other side of the world.

This is despite her knowing no French or probably anything really about France. That’s going to be one of her biggest problems when she arrives in the country, especially as she’s the walking stereotype of an American in another country.

Best of all, she’s transitioning from pharmaceuticals into fashion, as her pregnant boss can’t really go to France and wants Emily to take the job instead. She decides to change her Instagram handle too to @emilyinparis and live out this new lifestyle as an influencer while she struggles at the fashion marketing firm.

Not only do her coworkers not like her because she is American, and quite literally too American for this French office setting, but she’s got a lot going on in her personal life too. Not only did she leave a boyfriend behind in America, but she wanders into her male neighbor’s apartment. Is he attractive? You bet. Does he have a girlfriend? Her name’s Camille.

So as Emily barely gets by day to day, she befriends a Chinese-Korean nanny named Mindy who becomes Emily’s closest confidant throughout the seasons to come.

As the episodes go on, Emily has to learn to deal with the fact her boyfriend is on the other side of the world, putting a strain on her relationship. She also needs to come up with a plan to better her status at work because if things don’t change, she’s out to have a very miserable experience here in France.

Things get even more complicated when she kisses Gabriel one day, and sparks continue flying between the two of them. We meet his girlfriend not long after, and Emily’s going to do that weird little dance of trying to avoid her feelings and causing more hurt between people.

Lots of drama to come, especially as Emily finds herself in hot water in other ways. But none of this is too serious—after all, it would break the show’s fantasy if she had some serious problems going on.

Overall Thoughts

This show was kind of created to be mindless television, something you watch and don’t seriously think too hard about while you’re consuming it. I kind of was watching this in a not passive way, so that made me pretty frustrated considering the usual content I consume.

I mean it works for what it does. I didn’t absolutely hate it, but I also learned to not take the show too seriously. That’s what you have to do with these kinds of shows—just take everything in stride.

That said, I will probably continue watching (stay tuned for those reviews in the near future) just so I have something to do until this visa arrives (it has not at the time of writing this unfortunately).

Go watch or rewatch this if you want something to have on the screen and do not have to be seriously watching!

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