Welcome to our Emily in Paris Season 1, Episode 2 recap. (Here’s our recap of the first episode!) Well! Here we are again, only instead of running through Chicago, Emily’s running through the Jardin du Luxembourg — and this time, she’s running while listening to language instruction tapes for tips on how to say such things as “I do not speak French” and “Please slow down a little bit.” We discussed this last week but I think it’s worth repeating: This show seems to portray Emily as both very sharp and very stupid, but I do not think her failing to learn a language spoken in a country where she was not anticipating moving to (and only did move to because her boss, with her master’s degree in French became incapacitated/pregnant) is a personal failing. If someone told me tomorrow that I was moving to Tokyo, I would be extremely happy but also in terrible trouble, language-wise. Justice for this non-francophone version of Emily! Current Instagram follower count: 230. If you like Emily in Paris, …

If you like Emily in Paris, I guarantee you will love my newsletter about living there. Sign up here!  Welcome to our first Emily in Paris recap: Season 1, Episode 1. Oh là là. I remember how stressed I was when the show first debuted, in 2020. It was like watching your infinitely more glamorous and better dressed neighbor go on the same vacation as you — only their clothes were better, their hotel was nicer, the beaches that they went to had better sand and prettier views. It was your experience, only better, in every possible way. Mon dieu, I say. Mon dieu. Moving to Paris feels like a unique experience, but it is not. In fact, the silver lining is that it is infinitely variable, and depending on your experience, talent, ambition, and worldview, it is infinitely possible to make new, vital, and canonical work about it, like Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, and a million more. (Two of my favorites include dyed-in-the-wool Midwesterners: Iowa painter Grant Wood, most famous for “American …