Why I Wished Emily in Paris Was Ghosted
This article contains spoilers on Emily in Paris, Season 2.
Many of us devoured the first season of Emily in Paris in October 2020 in isolation and with some guilt. After months of quarantine, we were ready to consume any superficial show that could take us out of reality for a while. So when Netflix suggested watching a love story and traveling around Paris, I said, “Yes, please!” as so did many other singles who could binge this content without giving explanations.
By the second season, the social embarrassment dissipated, and Emily in Paris was a trending topic again, but no guilt was involved this time.
The stereotypes in the show made the French furious. I will confess that many of them did not bother me, although the baguettes and the berets were perhaps a little too much.
Of all the show’s unrealities, perhaps the most annoying is the fact that Emily never fails. And if she does, problems turn 180 degrees, making her the heroine again.
This is especially true about her love life. Episode after episode, we see how different men fall at Emily’s feet. She conquers every hot guy in the show, even Alfie, the handsome British guy who plays hard to get.
When Alfie stopped texting Emily for a day in season 2, episode 7, I thought that writers were finally giving us a reality check: Emily was being ghosted.
Ghosting is the act of disappearing while dating someone. If you’re single and use dating apps, there’s a good chance you’ve been ghosted. Likely, you have ghosted someone. Right or wrong, ghosting has become a part of the dating culture. People ghost for thousands of reasons, mainly not wanting to face the consequences of rejecting a person. However, just because it’s common doesn’t mean ghosting hurts any less. It’s hard not to take it personally and even harder to prevent it from affecting our self-esteem.
It is frustrating when singles’ friends and family do not understand the new dynamics of dating games, as many have exited the market long before dating apps became the rage.
Also, singles suffer a very particular stigma. Society tends to see them as incomplete people. A single person’s life is often considered life in waiting, a life that will begin when he meets his better half.
So what could help us fight against that stigma? Seeing the current dating dynamics in romantic sitcoms’ scripts. We want to see how Emily reacts to being ghosted. Or how Carrie Bradshaw manages a love bombing situation. We want romantic comedies to finally present us with a landscape we can identify with. Yes, we still want to see how Emily and Carrie lead luxurious lives, even if we don’t know how they can afford it. But we also want to know that not everything is la vie en rose. That many people can fail us. That in today’s dating, disappointment is commonplace.
For decades, audiovisual productions have set impossible standards for us to fall in love with. To enjoy relationships. Even to meet people. We want to see more failures. After so long, Hollywood, you owe us this one.
