Writer, director, and producer Darren Star—the same fellow who brought us such gems as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Sex and the City—is back with Emily In Paris. The show centers a young and brilliant marketing director who is sent to work at her company’s newly acquired French division in Paris. It’s basically “An American Girl In Paris” (parts une and deux) when Carrie runs after Petrovsky in Season Six of SATC but, you know, a lot younger, and with Instagram.
Reviews are mixed at best, but the general consensus is that here in Day 218 of Our Quar it’s a fine, forgettable distraction. Easily digestible tripe for our tired pudding brains. A quick binge. An immediate purge. However, there’s one major flaw in this series and it’s found in almost every single dining and soiree scene (and that covers about 70% of the show)—no one, not fish out of water Emily nor her prickly Parisian partners, can hold a wine glass to save their god damn life.
Every single scene—no matter the stemware or wines—are all handled with the grace of a stagecoach tilter. Emily finds her one and only friend in Ashley Park. Together they dine and drink—for Ashley, Sancerre is a breakfast wine—but no matter the time or occasion, the grip is firmly around the bowl of the glass. How déclassé!
I know what you’re thinking. It’s Emily! She’s never been to Paris not once! She’s learning the ropes—she’s not world-wise, she’s barely fashionable—her snooty French colleagues practically wince at her Kenzo couture. Of course she wraps her big American mitts around the bowl of the wine glass, takes a big slug, and then cracks open lobster with her bare hands to the horreur of her French stereotype coworkers. BUT NO! They all do it. Firm meaty grips, all of them. Great big ham hands gripping those goblets, warming the chilled wine, smudging every last glass to hell and back. It’s obscene.
Will Netflix order another season? Only time will tell. Hopefully by then they’ll have figured out that you can keep a glass of wine fresh and smudge free by gripping it by the stem, ideally with the thumb and forefinger, in a move we like to call The Brumaire Pinch. This is how you exhibit Eurosensibilities as a thoughtful American absorbing the culture, Emily, not with that gorilla grip.
Emily In Paris is now streaming on Netflix.
Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.
