An Englishman In Paris
Episode 5 of Emily In Paris Season 2 begins with Gabriel excited for his new menu. Emily shows up and sees him and Antoine outside, prepping for their big opening. As it turns out, Savoir are actually covering the event. Emily is surprised at being the last person to know, but when she questions Sylvie about this, she deflects it back to Emily and asks if there are going to be any problems. After all, Emily was the one who mixed business with pleasure. Emily shrugs it off though, promising that there’s nothing to worry about. An issue with music though brings Emily and Julien out to see Mindy perform with the buskers. Interestingly, Julien has the hots for one of the guitarists, Benoit, so it all seems like a good fit. At French class, Emily meets her season 1 counterpart in bored classmate, Alfie. He doesn’t want to try, seeing this language lesson as the equivalent of traffic school. He also reveals that he’s working within relations involving Brexit. Given Emily and Alfie’s task is to interview one another and work on their language skills, Alfie has a better idea and leaves Emily high and dry. Emily does eventually catch up with him in a coffee shop, where he points out the differences between Paris and London, and how London isn’t pretending to be anything it’s not. Apparently. Back at the office, Gabriel shows up at Savoir. While Emily does her presentation, Gabriel can’t take his eyes off her. I mean you can practically see the love hearts in his eyes. This whole work incident takes another awkward turn when Camille and her family show up. They’re, of course, still clients as well. It’s incredibly awkward and Emily is stuck smack bang in the middle of all this. That is, until she heads over to the restaurant and ends up kissing Gabriel again. Luc takes over the Champere account in the meantime, much to the disappointment of Camille’s parents. In fact, they decide they want Emily back on the account again. As news of this reaches Emily, Camille messages and asks to meet for lunch. Camille believes that the Gabriel and Emily thing was one big misunderstanding, deciding they should make a fresh start. In fact, they even toast and promise never to be with Gabriel. In order to make things right, Emily heads over that night and tells Gabriel that they’re both just going to get hurt if they continue down this path. Hurt and disappointed, Gabriel heads back inside while Emily is left to head home alone.
The Episode Review
Emily In Paris marks its midway point with a big shift in emotion. With Emily and Gabriel kissing again, it leaves massive question marks over what’s going to happen with Camille, who has just decided to forgive Emily and put the whole situation to bed. The series itself has been a bit of a mixed bag so far and this episode goes through the motions too, setting up the obvious romance between Alfie and Emily. It’s ironic that Emily is now so passionate about learning French when she was in the exact position Alfie was last year, which is a nice turn of events, albeit one that’s been a bit manufactured given the 180 Emily has taken from episode 3 to 4. I’m not sure what the point of the Brexit gag was either, as it’s not exactly a funny joke, but Emily’s ties with Alfie set up a slightly different angle for the series to go with; a new love triangle with Gabriel instead. This second season has been a slight improvement over the first but we’ll have to wait and see if this one can actually step it up a gear.
