Photo: Stephanie Branchu/Netflix
Emily goes for a run — you may recall this is how the series began! — and discovers something thrilling: Paris is full of hot men. DO NOT LET THIS FILL YOU WITH HOPE. I know what you’re thinking: Will this show finally actually do something fun and zany, like allow its heroine to be a single girl living it up in the City of Lights?! The answer is no. Emily is determined to be boring and obvious. I think it was QUITE misleading to use this clip in the trailer for this season, promising us that Emily would be dating around and living it up when she is doing nothing of the sort.
Also, her horrid sartorial influence is oozing everywhere; this is the only explanation I can find for whatever Camille is wearing: some unholy combination of office attire and lingerie, a lace-lined miniskirt with a hem that goes up in the middle? What is that SHAPE? Emily is bumping into Camille because Camille and Sofia are living with Gabriel. Emily, hysterically, asks about their sleeping arrangements. The audacity of this girl!! Let people LIVE. She learns that Gabriel has been exiled to his own couch while the girlfriends share his bed. You all know how I feel about Gabriel, so I’m not mad that he is made to suffer; I’m only annoyed that all these French people are so committed to leading dull, unfun lives while they’re all so young and beautiful.
Gabriel is actually over at Emily and Mindy’s place because he can’t secure a spot in his own shower. So when Emily arrives to blab on and on about how scandalized she is by the “polygamy” downstairs (WAKE UP, EMILY, people can be poly, get OVER yourself, my God) and how turned on she is by the gorgeous men of Paris she saw on her run, he is the one to whom she is blabbing. Gabriel pokes his head out of the shower to confirm that Emily is no longer with Alfie.
The big event of the episode is a launch party for the Heartbreak perfume, whose bottle comes pre-cracked like the Liberty Bell. For the meeting to discuss the evening’s plans, Emily is wearing this half-finished exploding-fabric flower-harness thing over her regular outfit. It’s very Blake Lively–It Ends With Us press tour (derogatory). The Heartbreak Ball is a masquerade. Alfie shows up to the meeting basically to be a dick at work, but Emily, miraculously, stays professional and explains the theme, which he willfully does not comprehend. It’s pretty much what you’d expect re: Masks free you up to be someone you’re not.
Camille runs into Alfie outside the office, and she apologizes for breaking up his and Emily’s relationship, but Alfie assures her they were doomed anyway, seeing as Gabriel and Emily have feelings for each other. “But they’ve been free to get together for a while now, and they haven’t,” Camille says. “What does that tell you?” I write, “That Gabriel is a fuckboy and Emily is an idiot. Nothing we don’t already know!!” Alfie, of course, sees things differently and is already getting his hopes up. This is because he did not read the first paragraph of this recap. If he did, he would know that we are in the business of managing expectations around here.
Emily is on a mission to ruin every part of French culture that she can touch. Her latest target: the happy, steady consumption of alcohol. What if Kir Royale had a nonalcoholic option? Sylvie says, “Sobriety is the antithesis of French culture,” and Emily uses this opportunity to out Camille’s pregnancy AGAIN. Later, over dinner with Mindy, Emily announces her plans to … not date anyone? Didn’t she literally JUST SAY she was inspired by all the hot guys on her run?! Which would suggest she’s interested in casually dating some of these men she’s been overlooking all this time. IS ANYONE WRITING THIS SHOW ALSO WATCHING THIS SHOW? Mindy warns her that a “dick embargo” will have the opposite effect; it will be “raining dicks.” Would that this series were so fun, but somehow, I doubt that’s where we’re headed!
That Le Monde reporter is being very persistent with Sylvie, who decides to tell Laurent why she doesn’t trust Louis. She believes his investment in Laurent’s yacht club is intended to buy her silence. She tells Laurent she doesn’t think Le Monde has a story without her.
Elsewhere on the ranch, Gabriel’s big, booming “WOW, thanks for having your MICHELIN STAR CONNECTION help my restaurant!” causes problems for Luc, who wants his relationship with Marianne, the distributor of said stars, to work. “My anonymity is paramount,” she shouts while wearing a bright-red coat over a bright-red dress in broad daylight. “I can’t be seen with you anymore.” Later, she shows up at the ball in a mask that is basically just glasses and does nothing to obscure her face. Luc invites her to live with him. Assured by this commitment, she tells Gabriel that he really needs a top-tier pastry chef if he wants that Michelin star.
So, the masquerade ball is also a black-and-white ball. (The reason for this, or the fact that this is the dress code, is never made clear, yet somehow everyone knows what to wear. Sure!) Emily is wearing the largest hat I have ever seen and also a cape that is tied with a gigantic “Merry Christmas From Toyota”–size bow. Gabriel finally just says what we are all supposed to know he’s been thinking: He still has feelings for Emily. Because he is a fuckboy, he has not actually come up with any thoughtful plan for how to approach their relationship, such as whether he and Camille will be sharing custody and/or living together when the baby is born or what kind of relationship does he actually want with Emily. You know, basic adult shit, but he’s not about it and only can say that, well, he likes her. Emily says this situation could only work if they were two different people.
So Emily takes her complicated emotions to the Heartbreak Ball, where she is wearing a black-and-white striped bodysuit that is … certainly striking! That hat still feels excessive. We see that the woman from Baccarat is wearing the same exact outfit as Emily, and I write in my notes that “I’m sure that won’t lead to any complications at all.” I regret to inform you that the matching-outfit situation plays out in the most played-out way imaginable. But more on that in a minute.
Alfie is here to be handsome in a tux — thank you for your service, Alfie! — and claim to be a great dancer. But, like … are they great at dancing together? If you’re going to make that a plot point, I feel like the dancing should look smooth and swoony, not whatever this is. Ideally, we’d get something more in the vein of Midge and Lenny’s dance in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, no? Before I can get too caught up in that, Gabriel arrives, also wearing a mask. Given the opportunity to choose literally any fake name he wanted (and he had the whole ride to the ball to decide!), he goes with … David Guetta. Right. What a timely and relevant pop-culture reference. Emily decides to be Anna, the math teacher. God. Maybe they deserve each other?
Mindy arrives, and she and Emily chat about the same thing they are always discussing: Emily has to choose between Gabriel and Alfie. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like much of a choice to me because Emily has already dated Alfie, and it didn’t work because she liked Gabriel. But she will need to agonize some more, as is her standard practice.
Sylvie gets the preview link to the Le Monde story about Louis, one in which Sylvie is the lead image and is quoted describing Louis’s “long history of promising promotions in exchange for sexual favors.” She steps out for a cigarette break and bumps into Mindy, whom she thanks for telling Emily about the JVMA closet. Mindy gets a text from Nicolas and, knowing the shit that’s about to hit the fan, bails on the party to take her boyfriend’s temperature. When she gets there, as you’d expect, Nicolas’s line is that it’s all a lie from opportunistic people attacking his family. But Mindy holds firm: The story is true, and, hey, “sometimes our dads disappoint us.” She promises to be on his side “as long as you’re on the side that’s right,” which is … not the most graceful phrasing in the world, but I appreciate the sentiment.
Sans mask, Emily strides up to Gabriel so they can slow-dance and imagine they are alone in the room. Do we buy their chemistry? It feels like a lot of camera trickery to get me to believe in a thing that just doesn’t feel very real. Sorry!
But this brings us to the most offensive part of the episode: Alfie confesses his true feelings for Emily … to the Baccarat girl, even kissing her, before realizing he told the wrong person and storming out in a rage. This is literally the exact same plot as Gossip Girl, down to the kiss! Except on Gossip Girl, the characters who got mixed up (Serena, Jenny) were both central to the story, and therefore, the stakes of this mistake were more interesting. AND the kisser (Nate) didn’t realize that he’d kissed the wrong person until later, which also made the story more interesting! So this is basically just a copy-paste-and-barely-paraphrase version of events, made worse and less compelling. Why am I watching the Shein version of a CW show? Did they think we wouldn’t notice? Or that we just wouldn’t care? I feel so insulted by this! I know they think we’re all on our phones with the show on in the background, but do they really think we aren’t watching at all?
Anyway, back to the party: Julien and Sylvie make up. She assures him that he’s family and can always come back, warning him about the article that’s about to drop. She also sends the story to Laurent, asking his forgiveness. Antoine tells her that he saw it, and he thinks she did the right thing. Sylvie leaves the party with her mask up as the gossip swirls around her.
Gabriel and Emily leave in a carriage. I need to know if any of you are rooting for them because I find them both so annoying, but maybe you’re shipping these two? Gabriel’s pitch is “Let’s forget about reality for one night,” which, if I remember correctly, was sort of what he said the last (only?) other time they had sex.