Emily in Paris Season 3 review: Lily Collins' guilty pleasure Netflix series has simply become vexing

2/5

An important turning point has occurred in Emily's (Lily Collins') life one year after she relocated from Chicago to Paris in pursuit of her dream job. Emily will have to decide where her loyalties lie at work and in her love life, and what those choices will mean for her future in France, as she continues to enjoy the adventures and unexpected turns that life in Paris has to offer.

The seventh episode of Emily in Paris Season 3 is titled "How to Lose a Designer in 10 Days," and ironically, Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) and Gabrielle (Lucas Bravo) watch the iconic 2003 film, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in the lead roles. Well, the series is somewhat of a metaphor for how to make someone lose their mind by the end of the 10th episode. It's a show that we love to hate, and the streak continues with the third time being no charm.

Emily was previously perplexed about how to handle her love life now that Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is involved. Gabrielle, the "hot chef," is still present and much stronger with Camille (Camille Razat), or are they? However, their paths are intertwined now and then, with Alfie and Camille still feeling they are not the priorities in Emily and Gabriel's lives. Well, it's either work or each other.

The second season showed a better arc for the supporting characters, but this time they could talk about their relationships in every second scene. What happened to work-life balance, people? The work has only gotten obnoxious, and Emily saves the day like a knight in shining armor. She behaves like a teacher's pet and is such a know-it-all that it even starts getting on the nerves of Julien (Samuel Arnold).

Problems were bound to follow Emily wherever she went. Alas, the lady refuses to understand and is doused in denial and fashion. This time she is stuck at the crossroads of her professional and personal lives, and infidelity kicks into the former too.

Madeline Wheeler (Kate Walsh) is left alone as everyone at Savoir in Paris leaves the company and joins Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu). This leads to Emily getting fired twice, but it doesn't work everywhere, and as she imagines herself falling from the Eiffel Tower, she falls into this dark pit of getting fired from one of the companies.

But Darren Star likes to make Netflix spend lavishly, so we are once again stuck in a loop at the crossroads, and episodes are just wasted exorbitantly in the entire season. There's literally an entire episode of Madeline and Emily trying to shoo away a pigeon in their office and the former being stuck in a cat filter the whole time. What are we supposed to make of public relations firms?

What they could have shown in the five-episode series gets extended to 10 only to add more characters while still making it all about Emily. A character like Mindy Chen (Ashley Park), who chased her dreams and stood by them, somehow ended up in a triangle with her new beau and Emily. Well, as I said earlier, Emily is the problem, and it's always about her.

Even her work colleagues laud her for being some kind of genius, but it just shows how the writers have dumbed down the French to make an American look way smarter than everyone.

There's one person who even makes the series tolerable this season when Emily is around. Yes, we are talking about Alfie, who you just can't stop watching given his good looks and cockiness, which even astonishes Emily to an extent. But the makers still have to make it to the ancestral ways of Sex and the City. We didn't need yet another Carrie, Big, and Aidan kind of love triangle after these many years.

In the episode where Emily and Gabriel go to watch a movie, he tells her that everyone likes watching a story about two people trying to fight their natural attraction to each other. Yes, we all know he is talking about them, but after all this time, we can only expect honesty and not a conversation filled with puzzles.

Unfortunately, Collins is not even entertaining to watch this time because Emily shows no remorse for her actions. When she smiles and smirks in serious situations, it's just annoying. It makes even the most intense scenes seem silly.

Even the supporting characters played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Ashley Park, Lucas Bravo, Camille Razat, and Lucien Laviscount are wasted in the series with storylines that just don't do them any favours.

There's a lesbian angle also given to Camille this time, which could have been an interesting arc, but the cliffhanger in the season finale says otherwise, and you might end up pitying her character more.

Emily in Paris takes melodrama up a notch, and it doesn't help at all. We know a lot can happen in a year, but even her sadness is short-lived, and I wish I could have the courage to go on a sabbatical and turn into an unemployed blogger.

Where's Darren Star planning to take this story? Well,  only he knows. How much longer will Netflix pay for it? Tudum, I hope we find out soon.