Warning: This post contains spoilers for Emily in Paris Season 4, Part 2.
A major central conceit of Emily in Paris, Darren Star‘s Sex and the City-lite Netflix series starring Lily Collins as an American fish-out-of-water social media manager working and living in the French capital, is that she just can’t get things right.
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In the years Emily has iconically been in Paris, she’s made a few faux pas. There was the time she got the European date convention wrong and fumbled a luxury dinner reservation for her clients, and the time she accidentally slept with her love rival’s underage brother. There’s also the egregious fact that she still can’t speak any French which, four seasons in, finally comes up as a sticking point in her relationship to the city.
But despite her many gaffes, Emily’s frustrating charm is that she always manages to turn it around so that no one remains an antagonist for long. Her icy French boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) who wanted her extradited from the country? Emily is now her most valued employee. The bored French class partner Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) who’s wholly disinterested in taking Paris seriously? She woos him into a relationship.
All this to say, Emily Cooper doesn’t make enemies—until now!
With the launch of part 2 of Emily in Paris’ fourth season, comprising five new episodes, a new foe is introduced. And rather than another cold French person she has to try and thaw with a slick social media strategy, this one is one of her own.
Read more: Emily in Paris Is Ridiculous, But It’s Not Stupid
Enter Genevieve, played by Thalia Besson (yes, Luc Besson’s daughter), the newly-discovered 20-something daughter of Sylvie’s husband. Genevieve starts working for Agence Grateau as Sylvie’s assistant and immediately gets taken under Emily’s wing as a protégé. However, all this happens just as Emily has freshly broken up with Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), the hot chef she’s been pining after since she stepped foot in the City of Light, because of his lingering relationship with his ex-girlfriend Camille (Camille Razat). Despite their split, Gabriel is Emily’s client, and if we know one thing, it’s that Emily will never fumble a client relationship.
At a shoot for Gabriel’s restaurant, tensions run high between the pair and he finally explodes at her, explaining that the reason their communication suffered as a couple was because they only ever talked in English (finally, Emily’s inability to retain a single French word is an issue). He rants at her in French before storming away, leaving Emily confused.
That’s when Genevieve steps in because, as luck would have it, she does speak French and she can translate Gabriel’s speech. She tells Emily that Gabriel doesn’t want to see her again and, Emily being Emily, she takes it at face value and leaves.
But the thing is, Gabriel never actually said that. Genevieve just made that part up to get Emily out of the picture. She wants Gabriel to herself, and will do anything she can to get him (it should be pointed out she’s spent all of one hour in the kitchen with him at this point, but Emily in Paris has never won any prizes for taking its drama slow).
This act of mean girl-ism sets off a domino effect for the latter episodes that sees Emily try and push aside any lingering feelings for Gabriel, pretending not to be pining for him, as Genevieve puts on the moves. By the end of the series, Emily is cozying up to a new Italian love interest, which makes the show’s shock twist that she’s being moved to Rome—yes, Emily in Paris is now going to be Emily in Rome!—an easier pill for her to swallow.
Read more: Ranking Emily’s Most Outrageous Outfits on Emily in Paris
Now, let’s be real: in the grand scheme of villainy, Genevieve’s little translation lie sits well below, say, the misdeeds of Cersei Lannister or Hannibal Lecter. She’s just a girl in Paris trying to bag a hottie! But for Emily in Paris, her entry marks a startling moment of character development for a series that has all but used that concept as a vague guideline rather than a rule. For the first time, Emily is presented with an adversary that she can’t win over by getting them a thousand likes on Instagram. Emily’s office try-hard is no match for Genevieve’s freshly graduated college student having a European summer.
In typical Emily in Paris fashion, Genevieve doesn’t actually get to win. By the end, Gabriel has kindly rebuked her advances and is ready to jump on a plane to Rome to win Emily back—although Emily doesn’t know that yet. She’s already busy having her Lizzie McGuire moment on the back of a Vespa with her new hunk Marcello.
But, Genevieve’s grit added something spicy into the mix that cut through the show’s usual offering of fine French cuisine. It’s easy to rag on Emily in Paris for being, well, what it is. If anything, that’s always been kind of the point! It’s a show that is knowingly vapid but not entirely stupid, the kind of series made for YouTube’s autoplay function. But with Sealson 4, it feels like the series is ready to be taken a bit more seriously and approached with a little more sense of urgency. It may not be prestige TV, but Emily hovering over the Instagram handle edit button questioning whether to change her name from @EmilyInParis to @EmilyInRome is a cliffhanger we are eagerly waiting to see play out.
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