The One Where Emily Goes to the Embassy
Season 5
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Emily fights with Mindy about Alfie, only to realize that their friendship and marketing are the only true loves in her life.
Photo: CAROLINE DUBOIS/NETFLIX
I will be honest with you: I spent much of this episode just trying to figure out how much time had passed since the end of the last episode, because everyone’s behavior is all over the place and impossible to evaluate without that basic piece of information. As someone who just wrote a novel all about time travel (that you can preorder now!!!), I am all too familiar with the complexities and complications of timelines, but even that did not fully prepare me for the confusion of this half-hour of streaming content. Let’s get into it!
So Emily finds out about Alfie and Mindy at night, right? The next day, she talks to Gabriel, and he tells her he’s going away on the billionaire’s yacht. This episode commences in a “first thing in the morning” place, which means we are, at minimum, a full day out from the blow-up. Yet Mindy’s energy would suggest that she has been pleading with Emily to get back in her good graces for far more than 24 hours. Maybe a week was my best guess? Emily is going on a run and insists they do not need to talk because they are totally fine!
Mindy chases Emily down in massive platforms to confront her over this behavior. Again, Mindy’s exhaustion suggests a significant amount of time has passed since the Heatherton Hotel event. “JUST BE MAD AT ME,” she yells, owning completely that hiding the relationship with Alfie was stupid. Pushed to the brink here, Emily snaps that she shares everything with Mindy, even her apartment. “How can I ever trust you again?” she wails, which feels a little dramatic for the circumstances, and Mindy (correctly!) calls her out on being “slightly juvenile,” and says she’ll give Emily some space. To this end, she crashes with Julien and leaves Emily flowers and a note. Very mature, I think!
Okay, but THEN: Emily gets to work, and the energy at the office is that this is the literal next day. See Luc saying to Emily, “I’m amazed you had the strength to show up today.” But of course that is impossible because the actual day after was in the last episode, when Emily talked to Gabriel about the yacht! And then Emily runs a tense meeting with Antoine and Alfie about contender replacement chefs for Gabriel, who is already gone on the yacht.
Which would suggest it’s been even longer than a week, because am I really supposed to believe Gabriel would just pack up his bags and bail on his Michelin-starred restaurant without giving at least two weeks’ notice, and presumably more? He must have a contract stipulating those terms!! And it’s not like he and Antoine are in such a friendly place as to have a more lax interpretation of whatever document Gabriel signed. Not to mention how much work would be involved in subletting/terminating his lease or whatever around his apartment in Paris, etc. etc. etc.?! Plus Alfie laments that “everything’s been such a mess since Gabiel left.” So he’s been gone long enough for everything to go to shit, which has to be a meaningful length of time; we know he has a sous chef who has been able to oversee the restaurant when Gabriel gets called away for last-minute Emily favors.
But then Emily confronts Alfie about his relationship with Mindy, and it is quite clear that this is the first time Alfie is hearing that Emily knows!!!! HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? Would Mindy not have texted Alfie immediately to let him know they’d been busted?? For what it’s worth, Alfie does look genuinely remorseful. And Emily says that, for the record, she would have been happy for both of them if they had just been straight with her. I have been saying this!! Alfie insists it was just a vacation fling. I would say now is not the time to double-down on lying to yourself or to others.
The other important takeaway from this meeting is that Antoine is very married to the “Le Chef Hot” branding and wants Gabriel’s replacement to be attractive. What’s weird is that Antoine is not a typical money guy — he’s the perfumier, so he is also an artist/creative — but here I am to believe he would behave like some ice-cold CEO who thinks everyone is replaceable and that the Michelin star belongs to him as much as to the chef whose menu actually won it. We are beyond between-scene lobotomies here and in the most annoying territory, which is: “making characters say and do whatever so the story can go in some new direction.” As if we, the audience, haven’t been watching this series for YEARS and aren’t well-versed in who these characters are!
Sylvie is finally behaving like the boss: She has a big meeting with L’Oréal coming up and is going to handle it herself because it’s a major account. Her idea for this lipstick is to feature “a young American woman living in Paris.” To this end, Sylvie needs to make an Instagram account and follow Emily. (Wow, “SylvieG” was available as a handle?) Emily somehow has 203,000 followers. I love Sylvie’s dry review of Emily’s latest Instastory: “Riveting.” We are treated to an honestly boring backstory about one of Sylvie’s ex-friends so that Emily can reflect on the value of her friendship with Mindy. Also, Emily does not explain to Sylvie that people can tell when you watch their Instastories. I would say that’s probably in the top three things you need to tell someone before they join the platform, no? This whole thing makes Sylvie seem so petulant and childish … really not like herself at all! See above re: this is the most annoying thing a television show can do.
Emily has on a great night-out outfit (I like that velvet-lace crop-top situation) and stumbles into an American pub to order a “Pabst Blue Ribbon” (Why wouldn’t she say PBR? Has anyone ever ordered this beer by its Christian name?) and meet a cute American man because what did I tell you about allowing Emily to go even one episode without being involved with a man. It’s Friends trivia night and I am not at all surprised that Emily is fluent in Friends, as is her new boy, Jake. Emily ruins her stylish outfit with a giant Central Perk t-shirt, the spoils of war. Jake, a consular officer at the American Embassy, invites Emily to a Fourth of July party tomorrow. Unfortunately, this data point does not help me figure out how long ago the last episode was! But it does make Emily’s chic going-out outfit look ridiculous. Who wears velvet in July? Also I can’t believe Emily did not realize, given the context of his job, that he meant “Sofia” the city and not the person. Embarrassing for us all.
Speaking of embarrassing for us all: Mindy spends the night dressed sort of like an evil Rockette — silver fringe epaulettes and silver beaded fringe across the hem of the crop top … WHY? Nico, who spent about 70 percent of the time he dated Mindy arguing with her, sabotaging her, criticizing her for how she dressed and performed, being an asshole to her best friend and lying to her about it, and just generally being a scumbag, tells Mindy that he’s in love with her. “As long as I have you, I have everything.” What?!? HOW. WHY. NO. Also he is “broke” now? I’ve never been the heir to a fashion empire but I’m pretty sure the options aren’t only “becoming CEO of JVMA” and “being broke.” Like … does he not still have a trust fund? This is extra-annoying because there’s already plenty of obstacles that are actually interesting and believable re: Alfie and Mindy!!
The morning of the 4th, Emily finds Alfie’s underwear in her laundry. Ah, so much for just a vacation fling. Emily handles this by wearing the most enormous sleeves I’ve ever seen. Luc reports to Emily that Julien took Mindy in “like a street urchin.” Emily explains that she feels even more double-crossed than before, because Mindy and Alfie “lied about their lie.” Sylvie shows up for the L’Oréal meeting in a white dress that looks sensational from the waist up but has a too-tricky hem for my tastes. Sylvie’s pitch is basically Emily’s love life, but with fake names for all the boyfriends. “We’ll see our spirited American kiss her way through Paris and never leave a mark” is SUCH a burn and it’s very funny to me that she doesn’t hear it that way. “Emily is a slut and no one even cares about her! She is forgettable!”
Emily is deeply offended, even though Sylvie claims the ad is “aspirational and fun for the demographic.” After all, Sylvie adds, those pictures are all from Emily’s real Instagram. If Emily is worried about seeming boy-crazy, maybe she should be worried about being boy-crazy. Emily responds to this by taking the rest of the day off to chase a boy she just met.
God, imagine trying to wear those heels all day, especially to run around at an outdoor party on the grass. Wouldn’t she at least be wearing espadrilles? I, for one, would have been completely unprepared for the dress code here; my standard 4th of July attire is jorts and a Bruce tee. Over a scene of American delights — cornhole, hot dogs — the real national anthem plays, even though Miley herself has stated she will not be performing this song for the foreseeable future because “it’s not a party in the USA right now.”
Jake gives Emily the Embassy tour, which includes a trip to the basement canteen. It’s full of American junk food you can’t buy abroad. Pop-tarts! Easy-mac! This is cute, even though it also feels like product placement for Reese’s Puffs. I would love to know what you would all be supermarket-sweeping from the canteen. They are interrupted by Ambassador Jennings (JENNINGS?!?), who summons them upstairs for fireworks. Emily has an epiphany: She is homesick. I would believe this more if we ever heard her talk, even once, about any friends from home, but except for The Human Plot Device: Doug, The Chicago Boyfriend (RIP), I’m pretty sure we never have. Emily realizes she has finally found a genuine connection, which Jake naturally interprets as a line about him, but when he goes in for the kiss she explains (badly) that she meant someone else and that she is “kiss-proof” right now. He looks deeply irritated by this, and honestly, I do not blame him.
Back at Julien’s, Mindy is trying and failing to engage him in gossip over her Nico situation. I love how indifferent he is to her romantic conundrum. Emily comes by to do a grand gesture: throwing croissants at the window and apologizing from the street. Mindy yells that she and Nico are getting back together. WHY!? Literally just BE SINGLE. Emily shouts that she “met a really cute American guy and I didn’t have anyone to tell!” I hope one day these women will have a friendship that passes the Bechdel test. In the meantime, I would say “at least they aren’t fighting anymore” but it’s hard to know how much to invest in that because WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG THEY WERE FIGHTING. But we do know that Julien can have Mindy packed in 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, Sylvie has a dopey B-plot where she reconnects with Yvette, the backgammon backstabber who wasn’t actually a backstabber because Sylvie was actually the one who had sex with Yvette’s husband three months before their wedding. Incredible that Sylvie just memory-holed that! Anyway, Yvette is very understanding about the whole thing: “We all do stupid things on our twenties.”
Sylvie tells Emily that L’Oréal passed on their idea because it “wasn’t female-empowering enough.” Gosh, I hate when my lipstick advertisement isn’t “female-empowering enough” 🙁 Emily agrees with this assessment. “Friendships are the relationships that last!” Thus inspired, Sylvie calls L’Oréal to pitch the new idea: A lipstick as long-lasting as your friendship. Cut to the commercial shoot, starring a knockoff Emily and Mindy, the former doing the least-expressive line-reading this side of Sydney Sweeney. The important thing is Emily is back together with the two great loves of her life: Mindy and marketing.
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