Was it only four years ago that my pandemic pod and I gathered on an expansive, well-worn L-shaped couch with our many dogs and 14 mis-matched pillows to eat weed, drink beer and hate-watch Emily in Paris? It was, but so much has changed for me and for those friends since then. Some of them don’t even drink beer anymore! On the other hand, as I’ve recently learned from catching up on Emily in Paris — not a lot has changed with Emily, who remains in Paris, and still cannot speak French. Emily loves Paris and let’s be honest, Paris loves her!!!! Specifically the men of Paris. All the men of Paris love Emily, who is in Paris.

I remembered a few things from that Season One watch of Emily in Paris: I remembered all the men of Paris loving Emily of Paris. I remembered Ashley Park being in the show, because I love her. I remembered that there was at least one gay male character. I remembered that Emily’s outfits were audacious, and that Emily herself was kind of grating, and that she reminded me of Nicole, the girl who beat Kim Stolz and many other models in Season Five of America’s Next Top Model for a coveted Cover Girl contract. (I didn’t know that in fact the girl who plays Emily, Lilly Collins, is the daughter of Phil Collins. I know that now. Knowledge is power!) 

But that was all I remembered from the series when I sat down to half-watch the subsequent 2.5 seasons of Emily in Paris, which I did because a few weeks ago, we learned that in Season Three of Emily in Paris, Emily in Paris did the only thing that could ever get me to watch another minute of Emily in Paris: they made it lesbian. And yesterday, Season 4A landed on Netflix, and the queer relationship is part of that package. And thus, I am here to recap the entire lesbian storyline for you.

A disclaimer that I again, barely watched the show, and thus could be, at any moment, relaying false information to you, and I apologize in advance.

So, Emily’s from Chicago. She moves to Paris temporarily to represent the coveted social-media-centric “American point of view” for French marketing agency Savior. Emily’s boss, Madeline, was originally intended to be this representative, but was unable to, because she got pregnant and didn’t want to get on an airplane. So she sent Emily in her stead. To Paris! So now Emily is in Paris. Sylvie is Emily’s French boss. She is fantastic. She smokes indoors.

Then there is Camille.

She’s hot and she’s gonna be bisexual, eventually. Camille’s family is rich because they make champagne. Emily and Camille become friends but Emily has an eye on Camille’s terrible chef boyfriend, Gabriel.

Near the end of Season One, Gabriel decides to move to Normandy without informing his girlfriend of three years, Camille, so they have a big fight/breakup. Then he has sexual intercourse with Emily and gives her his favorite pan. Literally who in the world would decide to move to another city without talking to their girlfriend about it? A sociopath who deserves to spend the rest of his life with a similarly-minded person: Emily in Paris.

It seems as though the enchanted amulet on my blazer is not having the intended effect

Emily and her best friend Mindy (Ashley Park) treat Emily’s betrayal of Camille (sleeping with Camille’s boyfriend) like it’s just another wacky chapter in the life of a horny, horribly dressed gal-about-town in the City of Love. Anyhow, Gabriel decides to stay in Paris for Emily, basically, and open his little restaurant in Paris. Savior’s handling the PR for the restaurant, but also for Camille’s Family Champagne, which people aren’t supposed to drink, they’re supposed to spray it on each other.

Emily tries to get Camille and Gabriel back together even though she likes Gabriel. I don’t know why she does this but I don’t know why she does anything.

Look I know it sounds weird but I know at least three gay men who’ve ridden Big Thunder Mountain with a butt plug in

Then it’s Emily’s birthday, and Camille goes upstairs to get champagne to spray on everybody’s strange hats, and finds Gabriel’s pan in Emily’s kitchen, which makes her suspicious that the person Emily’s ex-something (irrelevant to our purposes) told Camille she was having an “affair” with was her very own Gabriel. Then she takes the pan downstairs and hits Emily over the head with it. LOL just kidding. Then she makes a toast to Emily in which she outs Emily as having fucked her boyfriend.

To Emily, I hope someone pees in your hat

Gabriel begs Camille to forgive Emily? Emily writes Camille a letter in French asking for forgiveness? Camille invites Emily to lunch and they make a pact to never date Gabriel? That’s fine ’cause now Emily has a new love interest, Alfie. Eventually Madeline (Emily’s Chicago boss) shows up many months pregnant and clomps around Paris in tight mini-dresses and high heels with a gasoline tank-sized water bottle, as extremely pregnant women are wont to do.

Unfortunately, Camille’s parents also think Camille should get back together with Gabriel, so she does, an then they move in together.

Gabriel describing the cemetery where Camille is going to bury him

That brings us, FINALLY, to Season Three, which’s when the gay girl stuff starts happening. Gabriel and Camille’s relationship is bad because Gabriel is bad. Camille’s curating a show at an art gallery, like Bette Porter, and at the center of it all is a confessional booth designed by avant garde multi-media artist and certified hottie Sofia from Athens.

The first time we see Camille and Sofia together, Camille’s wearing a beret with a tiny veil on it, like a shower curtain for a chipmunk, as well as an oversized white button-up and suspenders, like a sexy French waiter in a play about hell. This is how you know she’s gonna be bisexual.

Yeah! Then she just put $50,000 into a shoebox! And she’s a financial advice columnist!

Sofia pulls Camille into the confessional booth but Camille lacks the arsenal of secrets that Sofia was possibly hoping to uncover. She should’ve asked Emily’s doppleganger, Nicole from America’s Next Top Model Season 5. That bitch has secrets for days!

Meanwhile, Emily is briefly unemployed because she’s an idiot, and is waiting tables at Gabriel’s restaurant for fun, despite still not speaking French. Camille’s parents warn Camille that Emily will steal her boyfriend, but Camille is busy shellacking her hair into a style I can only describe as “lesbian.”

I was worried you might think it was weird I bought a vintage Hillary Clinton blazer from ebay and then made golden molds of your ears and attached them to the top with a little chain in the middle

At the opening for Sofia’s art show, Sofia and Camille escape to a romantic rooftop where they finally have a French Kiss. Emily is also approaching the rooftop with her little boyfriend Alfie, but instead, Emily spots the lesbian makeout session and immediately decides they’ll have to hang out somewhere else instead.

IT’S ME, EMILY FROM PARIS

Wow it’s like they don’t even care that I’m Emily and I’m here, in Paris

When Emily tells Mindy what she saw, Mindy blows it off: “You saw two girls kissing at a party. You need to get out more.” All Emily ever does is go out! She should stay in more.

Camille and Sofia’s affair continues apace. Eventually we find them in a hotel, recovering from finger-banging, and me and Camille are both distraught that Sofia’s returning to Greece now that the gallery show is over.

You know, it’s not too late to try that thing you talked about last night where we use a dill pickle as a dildo

Sofia invites Camille to join her in Athens, and Camille reminds her that she can’t just flee for Athens ’cause she’s got a terrible boyfriend, Gabriel, right here in Paris. Sofia reminds Camille that Gabriel hasn’t even noticed that Camille has been flitting about town, doing cunnilingus with her, for several days or weeks. “Are we really here to just love one person?” asks Sofia. I do think that’s the expectation of Camille’s monogamous relationship, but that never stopped Bette Porter!

Thus, Camille dashes off to Greece with hot artist Sofia. Once again, the way this show handles cheating is so weird??? Like as though it’s not really a big deal?

Time passes, as it so often does, and somehow Camille and Gabriel are engaged? We’re all at the big engagement party! Emily’s having a crisis about whether or not she should inform Gabriel that his fiancee is going to tuna town with an extremely hot artist. She finally confronts Camille, lol.

“I don’t want this secret,” Emily tells Camille from her high horse. “You need to tell Gabriel, okay? He deserves to know.”

“Why?’ Camille says. “It was just a fling. It was nothing. And now it’s over. Just like you and Gabriel, right?”

You can’t just go around an engagement party stealing tiny cakes and hiding them in a curtain and wrapping that curtain around your torso

How DARE you

On some kind of emotional bender, Camille suggests to Gabriel that they get married right there at the engagement party. Everybody’s thrilled!

You did *what* with a dill pickle?

At the altar, however, Camille’s unable to go through with it. She begins her vows but then goes off-script, declaring:

“Gabriel, the only reason we’re together is because I knew you were in love with Emily, so I made a pact with her that neither of us would ever date you, so you wouldn’t see her again. And then I broke the pact because I thought I wanted you so badly. Maybe because I just didn’t want to lose. Gabriel, you and Emily have been in love with each other since the moment you met, I can see it in your eyes, the way she looks at you, The way you look at her, anyone can see it. So no, I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t marry you. And it’s time we all just stopped pretending.”

This is extremely awkward for Emily, who is at the party with her British boyfriend Alfie.

Then Gabriel tells everyone that the only reason Camille came back from Greece at all is ’cause she’s pregnant! I hate it here.

This brings us to Season 4A. When the season opens, Camille is missing but Emily’s confident that Camille is not truly “missing” but is simply in Greece with Sofia, a suspicion she feels is confirmed when Sofia posts a scenic photo on her own instagram feed of Greece, where she lives. Mindy, once again, is perfect:

So Emily twees off to Gabriel, who’s thinking that there is a chalet somewhere (???) where Camille might be hiding, but Emily is like, actually, Camille had an affair with Sofia so she’s probably in Greece! I will say that I do appreciate that Camille’s bisexuality is a non-issue here — nobody is like “Oh my god WITH A WOMAN???” They’re just like “Oh my god???”

Gabriel reaches out to Sofia, who confirms that her beloved pita-eater is not, in fact, in Greece. Thus she is, in fact, missing!!!!

Then Emily suddenly remembers that Camille has been sharing her location with Emily since a vacation they took last season and thus, Emily goes ahead and finds Camille in a famous pond and they try to murder each other in rowboats.

Meanwhile, a concerned Sofia’s flown all the way to Paris and her first stop is the famed Restaurant Gabriel. Sofia and Gabriel quickly let bygones be bygones ’cause Gabriel doesn’t have a real personality he’s just three kids in a fleece hoodie.

I had no idea that The Olive Garden’s Culinary Institute of Tuscany was a real thing

Believe it or not, that’s where I learned to cook

Emily returns Camille to Gabriel’s stupid restaurant after their rowboat incident, and everybody’s absolutely delighted that Camille spent this whole time in a pond, like Kermit the Frog. After a meaningful embrace between Camille and Gabriel, he steps aside and Sofia steps forward. She says “I love you”…

And Camille tells Sofia that she loves her back!

This was when I knew getting four hours of sleep a night for four consecutive nights was slowly wearing away at the part of my brain that processes information because I cried???!

No rush but I do have a chicken salad sandwich in this lunchbox and it’s getting a little soggy

Thus, this show dances on the very edge of becoming interesting when Gabriel, despite possessing the personality of a folding chair, allows Sofia to move into his apartment and sleep in his bed with Camille while he gamely takes the sofa and secretly showers at Emily’s place. Emily is absolutely verklempt about this whole arrangement, which is homophobic.

What, you’ve been in France for how long and you’ve never done a little French Maid / Girl With a Paper Bag of Bread roleplay?

Desperate to be more interesting than she actually is, Emily describes this arrangement as if it is some kind of polycule, despite the fact that she hasn’t done the only thing that would truly make her character more interesting, which’s to be in an actual polycule. Until Camille and Sofia find their own place, Emily and Gabriel are refugees with no consistent space to make out! Tragic!

When JoJo Siwa sang “karma’s a bitch, I should’ve know better”…. I really felt that

Eventually, Emily can’t resist the urge to be terrible for one more minute, and spills to Gabriel’s landlord that Sofia’s moved in in hopes of getting her kicked out. Luckily, Gabriel is equally terrible: rather than simply ask Camille for an adult conversation, he confesses to Emily that he actually snitched on himself, and consequently, Sofia has in fact been booted from the residence. But Camille delivers great news: the landlord found them a new apartment right next door!

Their honeymoon phase lasts about six on-screen minutes — they move boxes, Sofia is jealous to see Camille hugging Gabriel, they go to the market to buy furniture and Sofia would rather purchase a hot iron easel than a little rocking horse for Camille’s unborn child.

I’m thinking it could be like an Anne Geddes thing, where I put Emily’s head onto the face of a baby in a watermelon, so it’s like a statement about how even adults act like babies sometimes

Sadly, this fleeting lesbian relationship ends as they so often do on teevee shows: with a nonsensical argument. Camille’s pushing back against Sofia using their third bedroom as an art studio, even temporarily, due to her dream of it becoming a nursery for her future baby.

Sofia recalls she only came to Paris ’cause she was worried about Camille, she never intended to move to Paris! (In other words, she didn’t mean to move to Napa, she just meant to take a nap-a.) She suggests Camille leave Paris, the city Emily is in, and come to Greece, where she could raise her child in a wooden chest in the sea like Zeus did with Perseus.

Camille, be realistic. We’re gay on a smash hit Netflix show about terrible straight people. You knew full well we wouldn’t get more than a few episodes to be happy together

Camille says she can’t move to Greece with Sofia. Sofia counters:”Why? Because you can’t be away from Gabriel?” Ummmmm… Gabriel is the child’s father???? Of course she can’t????

Plot twist: Camille visits the gyno ’cause she’s been experiencing spotting. She confesses she’s been making big moves and buying advance furniture for her unborn child despite not actually getting the pregnancy confirmed by anything besides one (1) home pregnancy test. Turns out that was a false positive and her missed periods were because of stress.

Level with me doc, do you think I could put my baby in an underground chamber in the sea

Then, Camille is in Gabriel’s Bar and Grill and he’s so happy to have his girlfriend Emily and the mother of his child Camille right there with him. Camille doesn’t tell him that she’s not actually pregnant. This is silly!!! Then Season 4A is over and we’ll all have to wait for Season 4B to find out what happens next!!! I don’t think I want to know though!!!!!

In conclusion, wow ok

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