Bonjour, B*tch!
The Emily in Paris Season Five Recap
Happy New Year and welcome back to Agence Grateau for the fifth season of Emily in Paris, the world’s fizziest, most relaxing binge watch; I watched this season over two days and it went down so easy. There is no stress involved in Emily in Paris; no one is going to die; or get sucked down into an underworld hellscape between our world and the abyss; or have to choose between the you that lives outside the office and the person you send into work. Nothing particularly alarming hangs over anyone’s heads; even when someone is heartbroken or in financially dire straits, the viewer knows they don’t have to worry that much because, on Emily in Paris, everything eventually works out just fine. Given the state of the real world, there will always be a place for some of that on my TV. Let’s dig into the newest season — one in which, if nothing else, we get to see a sexy animated rat version of Ashley Park as Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge.
If you want to read last season’s recaps, they live here. But if you just need a quick reminder of where we left everyone last time we saw them, read this. I’m going to recap this roughly episode-by-episode — but if there’s something I can wrap up quickly when it starts, I’ll do so, so we won’t be here all day.
Episode one: "La Dolce Emily"
Before we get too deeply into anything, I’d like to thank this show for the surely insane amount of money it has spent on b-roll, both of Paris and now of Rome, and later of Venice, and also of Tuscany. There are so many shows that pretend Vancouver is New York, or Bulgaria is Paris, and it’s delightful to watch one that clearly films on location as much as possible. (No offense to Vancouver or Bulgaria.) This massive outlay of cash makes Emily in Paris, if nothing else, a pleasure to view. (Netflix even published a piece running down all the filming locations, in case you — like me — think, “oh my god, I need to go to that rooftop bar!”) In this case Rome is, naturally, gorgeous and perfect and Sylvie has decided to stay and make a real go of a Roman office of Agence Grateau. Which means (a) they need more clients, and (b) despite her promises, Emily never really gets to be in charge of anything, and indeed is never is 100% in charge of anything this entire season.
This also means that Agence Grateau’s Parisian clients start feeling progressively more abandoned, since all their meetings are on Zoom and facilitated by Genevieve, who is (amusingly) more fixated on gossiping and also getting her brand of “Bonjour, Bitch!” merch off the ground than she is on actually doing her job. Antoine is particularly irked that his entire PR firm is in Italy, given that his misguided baby perfume was such a bust and he’s having creative issues with Gabriel, whose restaurant, you may recall, Antoine actually owns. (Gabriel’s hair, I’m pleased to report, is mostly normal again although it may also have slightly frosted tips. I’ll take that over last season’s deranged bowl cut.)
And Gabriel, for his part, does follow Emily to Rome — where all he does is sadly lurk behind a (beautiful) fountain and watch Emily go off to lunch with Marcello, and then run into Sylvie, who takes pity on him and takes him for lunch at a transportive Italian vegetarian restaurant, a scene that is so beautifully lit and filmed in such loving almost slow-motion that I thought they were going to have sex at the end of it. They (unfortunately) do not: Gabriel goes back to Paris and announces, to Antoine’s dismay, that he wants L’Esprit de Gigi to be a vegan joint. This is HILARIOUS to me because Lucas Bravo has been trying to get the writers to let Gabriel be a vegan chef for literally years; I suspect they finally gave in to him to convince him to stay for another season. He is only briefly in this one, so they also gave him plenty of time off. (Don’t worry, it seems he isn’t leaving entirely.)
But Emily solves one of Antoine’s problems: She’s repurposing all the dead stock of that cursed Hey, Bebe perfume as a Muratori-branded fragrance. This will bring extra revenue into the Muratori coffers without the brand having to increase cashmere production. Antonia Muratori is pleased. Antonia also develops a crush on Antoine — I just realized how similar their names are — when he comes to Rome to flirt with her and convince her to do the perfume. No one ever tells her that this is just repurposed baby fragrance, and that news never comes out. Antonia’s really just trying to wait for JVMA (the fake LVMH that Mindy’s ex, Nico’s, family owns) to lose interest in acquiring them; meanwhile Marcello (unbeknownst to Emily) continues negotiating with them because he DOES want to sell. I DO NOT care about Marcello’s business issues at all, which is a shame because this season is totally preoccupied with them.
Instead of worrying about the cashflow dramas of a cashmere label, I would much rather hang out with Sylvie’s friend Jane — played by Minnie Driver — who is a house-poor Roman principessa,1 and a real social media star who knows everyone in Rome and offers to make introductions to various brands in town, for a cut of business, of course, because she needs the money. Minnie Driver looks great and she is a total hoot in this part; half of her lines sound like she’s doing a AbFab imitation and I mean that as a complete compliment. She also clearly thinks Emily is a bit of an idiot, which is always fun. (This show absolutely knows Emily can be a dingdong, and it’s smart to include characters who think so, too. But, as I will say to my dying breath, at least Emily means well, works really hard, and is unfailingly enthusiastic. I am sort of protective of Emily! She is a dingdong but she’s our dingdong.) The party Jane throws for them looks like a blast and is also primarily Perroni spon-con.
As far as our other players go, Mindy is back from China in short order because she decided she didn’t want a full time job on Chinese Pop Star, for reasons you don’t need to know because they are essentially “Ashley Park is not leaving Emily in Paris.” And conveniently, Alfie has broken up with his serious girlfriend who we never even met, which frees him up to tell Mindy that Nico was never good enough for her and then flirt with her brazenly in public — so publicly, in fact, that Genevieve sees them canoodling outside of L’Esprit De Gigi and makes a face that says, “I can use this.”
Other Bits: I was into Marcello last season, but I almost immediately decided he sucks now. First, he has a scene where he’s seated and he is manspreading to an INSANE degree. Next, he takes Emily truffle-hunting with his mother and sisters but doesn’t tell her where they’re going and she has to do it in very cute velvet platform sandals. She is, as she always is, a good sport about it, but this was shitty. Why would you do this, if not to put the person on the back foot — in this case literally? Lame.
Also: Camille is mentioned once or twice this entire season but is by and large totally in the rearview mirror, which is for the best. I didn’t miss her at all. I assume she’s lightly plotting to kidnap someone’s baby in Giverny right now.
Episode two: "Got to be Real"
As you probably don’t remember, because who cares, the (fake) Italian coffee company Bavazza is an Agence Grateau client in Paris, and they team up again in Rome to launch a “Bavazzatini,” which is vodka and espresso in a bottle.2 This is facilitated by the fact that Luc is still sleeping with Bianca, the Bavazza contact. You might think to yourself, “whatever happened with Marianne, Luc’s former girlfriend who lied about working for Michelin and actually works for the phone company? Did I forget that they broke up?” You did not: She shows up later and it’s a real romantic palaver for Luc, who at one point has two girlfriends but ends up with none in fairly short order — although he does at least get his spot blown up at a fabulous rooftop restaurant. This two-girlfriend thing also complicates his housing situation: He’s staying at a (gorgeous) hotel convent in Rome3 and the nuns, as delightful as they find him, are a bit exasperated by all the comings and goings after curfew. 4
The Bavazza event is a professional success — Mindy is booked as a performer and literally arrives at the party in a speedboat singing “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter. This is VERY silly, but also we are not watching this show for hard-hitting realism. In fact, for some reason, Sylvie and Giancarlo (her film director lover who I called Caesar in previous recaps because I didn’t feel like learning his real name, and who has been hired to direct the commercial for the Muratori fragrance) are, like, grinding to this performance in front of everyone in the middle of a work event in broad daylight. Mindy finishes the performance in a giant martini glass, and then promptly gets an offer from an enthusiastic Italian in an ascot to appear on Ballando Ballando Ballando, the country’s most successful celebrity dance-off program. I feel like none of the words in this paragraph are meant to be so close to one another.
Things are a bit hairier on the personal front: Sylvie’s husband Laurent shows up to surprise her, since they’ve been (allegedly) missing each other while she’s been in Rome, and he somehow tracks her and Giancarlo to the beach at the hotel where the party is being held and they all fight. Laurent is big mad because Giancarlo is “the one man who was off limits,” and Sylvie is big mad because “since when does [their] marriage have limits!” and the men are fighting because, you know, jealousy. Once the dudes start getting after each other, Sylvie runs aways and STEALS THE SPEEDBOAT MINDY ARRIVED IN and just SPEEDS AWAY. (Laurent at least confirms that she knows how to drive a speedboat, which is not a surprise.) Listen, Sylvie and her amazing bracelets cannot be contained by your bourgeous conventions and I also respect her refusal to listen to either of those two dudes talk any longer.
Additionally, earlier, Genevieve had told Julien her suspicions that Mindy and Alfie were dating, and although he yelled at her to focus on work and stop spreading rumors, he does eyeball them at this party — Alfie is there for contrived Antoine-related reasons — and grabs Mindy and basically asks her what the hell is going on. Mindy denies that there is anything happening, but she and Alfie are flirting and making Heart Eyes at each other the entire time; they’re playing this very well, but I’m not sure Ashley Park and Lucien Laviscount have a ton of chemistry, as hard as that is to believe given how extremely hot he is.
And Emily has a bit of a breakdown because Marcello spends the entire party chatting to and flirting with an ex, whose family owns the hotel at which said launch party is hosted. Emily’s already in a bad place because she accidentally brought a fake Fendi bag to a meeting at real Fendi, which she promptly kinda whiffed in general. Jane — who got them the speedboat, and who also made me laugh when she said the words, “do either of you like SPEEDBOATS” in a meeting — siddles up to her and notes that she’s known the Muratoris a long time, and that Marcello is a known player, “always speeding around on his Vespa with another leggy beauty….then I look at…YOU [waves at Emily’s face]…and I wonder…what is it about you. Is your family rich?”
This whole thing leads to an emotional conversation between Emily and Marcello — everyone on this show is always having an emotional conversation at a work event — where she confesses that she is worried he’s the relationship version of “a Fake Fendi.” This entire thing felt very Sex and the City to me, and not just because Carrie Bradshaw loved a Fendi baguette.5 I mean that as a compliment; when SatC was good, it was so good. (When it was bad, it was And Just Like That.) Marcello, instead of comforting her in the moment, just asks if he can take her somewhere the next morning. This is manipulative and performative and she’s clearly annoyed when he picks her up, as she should be. I would have said, “NO. I’m mad at you right now.”
Anyway, the next day, he assures her that all those women in his past are “ancient history,” and Emily makes the salient point that that’s the problem with Rome: “Ancient history is everywhere.” Nevertheless, he promises her that they’re the future and he’ll never lie to her. Then he takes her to Fendi to buy her a real one. “This isn’t about a bag,” he says in front of a wall full of them. “I want you to know you have the real thing.” DOES SHE?
Other bits: At one point Mindy was dressed like a DERANGED saloon girl. (I’m going to cover this season’s outfits under separate cover.) It’s also important to note that she does (very awkwardly) confirm with Emily that Emily is over Alfie, but never says the words, “because I might kind of like him.” Frankly, I did not think the show had the stones to go there with Alfie and Mindy, and I’m kind of impressed.
Episode three: “Intimissimi Issues”
You should know that at one point in a meeting about the lingerie brand Intimissimi, Luc says the words, “we could explore themes of fascism and submission. That would be a hot take for lingerie.” (Jane, naturally, is into it.) (They do not ultimately go in this direction. They go in an equally dumb but less problematic direction that Emily figures out while wearing a cute dress covered in sunglasses.) Luc also has a great bit where he gets very passionate talking about Emily’s “intimacy issues” including her “bold outfits stealing focus” and “the very curated online presence,” before being corrected that everyone is talking about Intimissimi, not intimacy.
But she and Mindy actually also tackle the same topic while Emily is — naturally — spraying Mindy’s butt with fabric glue before her Ballando Ballando Ballando performance. Emily is wearing an AMAZING dress as Mindy makes some salient points that basically add up to agreeing with Luc that Emily isn’t very personally forthcoming with people. This all leads to Emily eventually having a “vulnerable” conversation with Marcello about her own perfectionism issues that is, unfortunately, kind of boring — if also set at a totally gorgeous Roman ruin that I was paying more attention to than I was her lines. (This is not Lily Collins’s fault; her relationship with Marcello is just ultimately kind of boring, which is a real problem for this season given that it’s the centerpiece.)
Speaking of Ballando Ballando Ballando: Mindy is assigned a tango and she cannot seem to nail a Dirty Dancing-style lift while rehearsing with her hot but mean Italian dance professional. So she enlists Alfie’s help — is Alfie secretly a known great dancer? Who knows! He DOES help her nail that lift — and of course, their practice session is “sexy” and eventually they kiss but Mindy breaks it off and breathes that they can’t. But! They DO. They fully do it! Just a few days later, after Mindy’s Ballando Ballando Ballando performance, which is a total fiasco because she doesn’t understand her partner telling her they’re not going to do that blasted lift after all, because he hurt his back, and so she goes for it and they end up in a terrible disasterous pile. (I have no idea why this man would not make EXTRA SURE she understood this bit of direction, but whatever.) Everyone in the audience and the judging panel is horrified by how badly this goes, except for Julien. “That was AMAZING,” he said, and I laughed.