The first half of Emily in Paris’s fourth season ends with a surprise—Emily Cooper, it turns out, will no longer be in Paris. Instead, she will go to Rome: Her boss, Sylvie (played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), needs Emily to open her marketing agency’s new Italian office.
It’s not a move that makes any logical sense; Emily does not speak Italian, while two of her coworkers do. Also, wouldn’t there be visa issues? But to the viewer, it eventually makes all the sense in the world. A hot guy is there.
His name is Marcello, which I had to google. (Excepting Emily’s own, I forget most of the character names in the Emily in Paris universe, preferring to call them “hot” plus their job. Some examples: hot chef, hot finance bro, and so on.) In addition to being hot, he’s also rich. He’s the heir apparent to a Loro Piana–type cashmere company, plays polo, and skis in Megève. And in addition to being hot and rich, he’s also emotionally available. He invites Emily to meet his family (they’ve kissed, like, twice) and to leave her phone at home. In short: I love Marcello.
And so, as it turns out, does the entire internet. After his character arc aired this weekend, social media was awash in pro-Marcello posts. Most of them are too, er, colorful to quote here, but I’ll put forth the following as an example. When Netflix posted a TikTok announcing that the show had been renewed for a fifth season—“There’s no place like Rome!” trills Lily Collins, the show’s star, sipping from an Emily in Paris–branded espresso cup with the number 5 on its underside—the top comment was this: “You better stay there, girl.”
When Emily in Paris debuted in October 2020, the reviews were mixed. There were too many clichés; the plot points were predictable; and Emily, with her nonexistent French and plucky attitude, was a little too cringe. Still, something remarkable happened. In the era of prestige TV—filled with complicated antiheroes and multiseason plot points that required Reddit threads to untangle—we were all eager to watch something that, well, simply wasn’t that serious. And Emily in Paris, with its silly, fashion-forward outfits by Patricia Field; its cast of conventionally attractive people; and the kind of story arcs a third-grader could follow, was exactly that. (“When I watch Emily in Paris i feel like a dog who’s [sic] owners left the tv on for them while they go run errands,” reads one recent tweet. Says another: “Beyond excited my girl Emily in Paris is back. I’ve watched every episode and have not a single memory of last season, the names or any characters or anything else aside from the fact she has a job in Paris. It’s perfect TV. May it run for 1,000 seasons.”)
It fits neatly into the genre of “ambient television,” defined by Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker as programming that “aims to erase thought entirely, smoothing any disruptive texture or dissonance.” Emily in Paris has undoubtedly found immense success in that lane, becoming Netflix’s most-streamed show in 2022. That isn’t to say that everything has worked. For several seasons, the writers labored away on a slow-burn romance between Emily and another character, Gabriel (aka hot chef), that simply…did not stick. Emily in Paris fans simply didn’t have the attention span for it. We can only focus on whatever is directly in front of us—and what’s in front of us now? Rome, where Emily wears vintage Alaïa and does a little Audrey Hepburn cosplay.
Really, it’s about time. Beyond Gabriel—whom I wish I could describe in greater detail, but alas, I simply do not recall any of his personality traits—her shtick in Paris was feeling a little…tired. There were only so many she-doesn’t-speak-French, fish-out-of-water storylines to be explored; only so many tourist traps instantly recognizable to large swaths of the American public that she could visit. (I don’t think she ventured to the Left Bank once?) The Eternal City, however? We haven’t even seen the Colosseum yet. (Then again, we might have. I can’t remember.) So: I hereby hope that Emily in Paris is dead. Long live Emily in Rome.
