When the 2024 Summer Olympics wrapped up last Sunday, it was like saying goodbye to a vicarious luxury vacation in the City of Light.
It’s not just the elite athletic competition, the parade of celebrities, the postcard-perfect tourist sites and the coverage of bread and pastry that made those two weeks seem magical. (If only Al Roker’s daughter’s “Today” report on the best croissants in town had come with a DoorDash option.)
As club kid Stefon from the classic “Saturday Night Live” bit might say, the Paris Games had everything: a semi-naked blue guy, an Olympic flame suspended by a hot air balloon, a nerdy Clark Kent champion of the pommel horse, a French pole vaulter who went viral for a crotch mishap, an Aussie breakdancer whose, er, distinctive moves launched a thousand memes, a stadium rappelling-motorcycling-skydiving Tom Cruise, and the emergence of Snoop Dogg as the most lovable booster for Team USA on the planet.
“We will always have Paris,” legendary British actor Michael Caine posted on social media the day of the closing ceremonies, borrowing a line from “Casablanca” that captured the bittersweet end to one of the freshest, quirkiest, most inspiring Olympics in memory. The fun is over. It’s back to watching prime-time game shows or the impending “Bachelorette” finale. Remember when gymnastics icon Simone Biles was defying gravity every night? Now that’s entertainment.
Recuperating from Olympic viewing fever is a process that requires slow decompression in order to avoid facing the pressures of real life too rapidly. Might I suggest remaining in a state of bliss a while longer by keeping your screens locked on Paris? The first half of the fourth season of “Emily in Paris” arrived Thursday on Netflix. Its five episodes will lull you into feeling as if a bonus binge has been added to your post-Olympics, all-expenses-paid Parisian getaway (besides the Netflix subscriber fee).
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“Emily in Paris” was featured in a pre-Olympics promo that had Lily Collins, in character as Emily Cooper, trying to sell a roomful of executives on a uniform for U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles that came with a yards-long cape capable of tripping up the other runners. When asked whether it was safe, Emily diverted attention by spraying the room with champagne, an inside joke on her ability to turn marketing disasters into triumphs with her enthusiasm.
That’s Emily in a nutshell, the plucky, overly naive, yet always resourceful marketing agency heroine who has spent three previous seasons overcoming French snobbery toward her ideas and enchanting all nearby men in the 20 to 50 age range. Nothing can discourage her for long because bad times in “Emily in Paris” are merely a prelude to a return to good times — and how bad can things be when Emily has an unlimited stash of insanely cute skirts and tops stashed somehow in her oversized closet of an apartment?
In the five episodes now available (five more are coming Sept. 12), the story picks up after last season’s finale — spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it yet — about the catastrophic collapse of the wedding of Emily’s on-and-off friend, Camille (Camille Razal), and her off-and-on love interest, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo). As the big day approached, Camille was hiding her affair with a woman from him, and Gabriel was still crazy about Emily, who was involved with her new British boyfriend, Alfie. During the wedding vows, Camille announced to everyone that Gabriel was in love with Emily and had been since he met her. Alfie, understandably, stormed out after the revelation.
Oh, and just as Gabriel and Emily seemed to have clear a runway ahead for romantic liftoff, he informed her in the final moments that Camille was pregnant.
Emily’s conflicted feelings for Gabriel and Alfie dominate the new season, which kicks off with an episode that revives the 1978 disco hit “Love Is in the Air” and plunges Emily into a minor TikTok scandal and a quandary over an ad campaign starring her and the formerly enamored Alfie. In a lucky break for fans, there also is an improbable secondary plot about Emily’s bestie Mindy and her street-busking group being chosen as France’s selection in the next Eurovision contest. And Emily introduces the European nation to the kiss-cam concept at a tennis match.
Creator Darren Star, the producer behind “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Sex in the City,” “City” follow-up “And Just Like That …” and “Younger” understands the assignment here. Juicy new twists give the story some new life. Emily’s cougar-iffic boss, Sylvie, must confront the legacy of a #MeToo situation. Gabriel pursues a Michelin star for his restaurant. A racy fashion line emerges that, let’s just say, might appeal to that French pole vaulter. There even is time for a “Dynasty”-worthy, waterlogged fight between frenemies Emily and Camille at impressionist artist Claude Monet’s famous gardens at Giverny. Pro tourist tip: You’re not supposed to swim in the lily ponds he immortalized on canvas.
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But for all of the story’s new plot points, the show itself never changes. “Emily in Paris” is a dependable guilty pleasure. There is a certain comfort to reentering the bubble of Emily’s glamorous, essentially unreal world. As with the Olympics, the show exists to be enjoyed by the folks at home. The pomp, youth and heightened drama center on characters who essentially are living out their dreams in cool locations, even if they don’t take home the gold.
That’s the medal Emily deserves for her wardrobe alone, which tops the Paris Games chic. Like the sequin-dripping leotards of the women gymnasts, the old-money tailoring of the equestrian athletes and the Ralph Lauren preppy flair of Team USA’s jeans and blazers from the opening ceremony, Emily ups the ante this season with a black-and-white masquerade ball ensemble that seems lifted from a 1960s Audrey Hepburn movie and a red-and-white striped suit that Michael Keaton could borrow for the upcoming “Beetlejuice” sequel. Just when you think you’re getting over your addiction to “Emily,” the clothes alone will pull you back in.
And let’s hear it for Collins, who carries the weight of the series on her small, designer-clad shoulders. For three seasons prior to this, Collins has convincingly maintained Emily’s cheery stick-to-it-iveness without making her seem insufferable. Her innate charm as an actor overcomes the fact that the stakes of Emily’s journey are fairly low. The specifics may change, but her character’s routine of love, work and fixing the misunderstandings that plague her in both arenas remains unvarying.
In fact, you could argue — not me, of course, because I don’t need the outraged emails — that Emily is the GOAT of Star’s female characters. She combines the spunky determination of Shannen Doherty’s Brenda Walsh in “Beverly Hills, 90210,” the liberated freedom of Sarah Jessica Harper’s Carrie in “SATC” and the wholesomeness (coupled with an ability to keep major secrets) of Sutton Foster’s Liza Miller in “Younger.”
You even might call Collins’ Emily the Katie Ledecky (U.S. swimmer with 14 Olympic medals total) of streaming soaps. God, I miss the Olympics.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [email protected].
‘Emily in Paris’
Five episodes of Season 4 now streaming on Netflix. Five additional episodes arrive Sept. 12.
Rated TV-MA
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