Bon Anniversaire!
Episode 3 of Emily In Paris Season 2 begins with a massive breakthrough. Emily actually speaks one word of French, “merci”, when she receives a package. Back from St Tropez, Mindy and Emily organize a dinner party, given Emily’s birthday is coming up. Gabriel shows midway through preparations and questions what happened with Mathieu. Emily deflects, lying again and claiming it’s all business and she shouldn’t have gone with a client. However, this is a minor point as the attention turns to the Rimowa account. There are still tensions between Julien and Emily over what’s transpired, but it’s nothing compared to the simmering tensions between Camille and Emily. When they head out to a steam room, Camille brings up Gabriel again and believes that he’s been seeing someone else. Emily squirms a little but manages to hold her nerve for now. She also makes a big impression with Camille’s friends, as she attempts to get involved in the culture. After, Emily tells Camille that she’s invited Gabriel along to her dinner party and it’ll be a great chance for the two of them to talk. When Emily leaves, Camille runs into Mathieu outside. She confronts him about the dropped contract and what’s going on with Emily. There, he outright admits that she’s been having an affair and he didn’t want to get involved. But get involved she does. Gabriel clearly has feelings for Emily and when he and Emily head out shopping for groceries, it begins to rain. However, as they stand with one another, Emily decides to run away, unwilling to give in to her feelings. Given there are several establishing shots her of Paris with the rain lashing down, it’s an absolute miracle that the next scene the rain has stopped and it’s all sunshine and dry pavements. (It’s literally 2 minutes in run-time this ep, right after the Julien and Pierre chat). The dinner table is set up outside as everyone shows to enjoy the meal, minus Julien who’s busy. Camille and Gabriel appear to be patching things up again, although when Camille heads inside Emily’s apartment, she realizes that her frying pan is actually Gabriel’s. If that wasn’t enough, heading outside with the champagne bottle, she notices Gabriel touching Emily’s chin tenderly. Finally she calls out Emily’s lies and walks away, smashing the glass on the floor.
The Episode Review
Good. Finally Emily faces the music and hopefully now she’ll actually buck her ideas up and be knocked down a few pegs. To be fair though, this episode actually sees Emily attempting to integrate into the culture, questioning the two kiss greeting and speaking fragmented bits of French. The real stand-out here though is the awful editing. There’s a scene here that shows off the rain pouring down and soaking the Parisian streets. 2 minutes later (on the exact same day) its all bright sunshine and dry pavements. The only other movie I’ve watched this year that was this careless was COVID-21, a very thin budget indie flick (and a horrible film I may add). The fact that Emily In Paris, a Netflix original with a lavish budget, makes these sloppy, careless mistakes is very disappointing. I know that sounds nitpicky but it breaks the immersion completely. Beyond that though, the characters are okay and the drama is enticing enough for people to binge-watch without thinking too much of the above concerns. Now that the secret is out, how will Emily react?
