I began watching this show out of the grossest form of identitarian allegiance, as I harbor an unflinching sympathy for any young woman (even fictional; even if she wears bucket hats) whose occupation (like mine) involves the use of the word “social.” required as a noun with a straight face. Far be it from me to demand inwardness from rom-com genues experiencing character development for the first time, but seeing Emily make marketing arguments like “corporate imperatives” and lightheartedly brush off any cruel joke about her stupidity made me wonder: Does this show? me to make fun of Emily for the particular brand of sincere, millennial smart she represents? Or should I applaud her (very American) refusal to change, no matter what her trials in Paris put her through?
To say that Emily is pursuing something would imply too much agency that even her creators have not made her worthy of.
In both literature and cinema, Paris has long been the milieu in which a certain class of caustic, restless, cosmopolitan and upward-moving white American women find themselves in the city (often in vain) seeking things that their homeland has denied them: a newfound sense of even after heartbreak; liberation (both sexual and intellectual); sometimes adventure; occasional adultery. Paris hosted Edith Wharton’s Countess Olenska when the tawdry society gentleman she fell in love with didn’t have the backbone or the stomach to claim their life together. In her memoir, “My Life in France,” Julia Child recalls arriving in Paris, still a “rather boisterous and unserious Californian,” and how it was the city, along with her beloved husband, Paul, who formed her until the woman of the world got to know her. Paris was where Carrie Bradshaw, always enamored with the idea of love, finally realized it might just make her more miserable. However, Emily Cooper is not one of these women. To say she’s chasing anything (other than perhaps a steady stream of approval from her bosses) would imply too much agency that even her creators haven’t made her worthy of.
When Wharton, herself an expatriate in Paris, wrote in 1919 that “compared to the women of France the average American woman is still in kindergarten,” she might as well have been referring to Emily, whose stock is a unique brand of empty infantilism. . Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way millennial Emily Cooper seems to have emerged from a boomer’s nightmare about how young people are today: lazy, addicted to their phones, and obsessed with being rewarded for doing the bare minimum. The show’s architects endowed her with what’s known as the worst trait of her generation: a compulsive commitment to online oversharing and the cult of fabricated relatability. But what sets Emily apart is that beneath the Bambi-esque face and sweet exuberance lies a stark emptiness of nothingness.
The Chekhov’s Bangs incident later turns out to have just the tiniest payoff, when for once Emily makes a life-changing choice that naturally promotes zero introspection. For a show that managed to make even the complexities and anguish of infidelity as bland as the chocolate roll posting Emily on Instagram with the caption “butter+chocolate = 💓”, watching her give herself what her friend calls “trauma bangs” was about as abrupt a rise in stakes in the Emilyverse as it gets. But for those of us who kept watching, we do it despite our bewilderment — like Emily butchering her hair — even though we know it’s a mess.
Iva Dixit is a staff editor for the magazine. She last wrote a letter of recommendation about raw onions.
Photo source: Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix