'There's a big problem with Emily Cooper this season. I can't look past it.'

I have a bone to pick with one of my favourite comfort shows of all time. There is a growing, palpable tension in the latest season of Emily in Paris, and it isn't coming from a love triangle or a marketing crisis at Agence Grateau.

It's coming from the writers' room. 

This season, it feels like the show is terrified of us hating its protagonist. In an attempt to course-correct years of online discourse regarding Emily's American entitlement and cultural tone-deafness, the writers have pivoted to a version of Emily that is sanitised, overly apologetic, and frankly, a bit dull. 

By trying to make Emily "likeable," the show is losing the very thing that made it a hit: the glorious, high-fashion mess.

Listen: More on Emily In Paris season five. Article continues after podcast.

The charm of Emily in Paris was never that Emily Cooper was a saint. It was that she was a disruptor. She was loud, she made questionable choices, and she stumbled through a foreign city with a mix of audacity and ego. 

This season, however, the edges have been sanded down. We are seeing an Emily who shrinks her personality to accommodate everyone else's drama and avoids the "main character energy" that used to drive the plot forward. When you try to make a character universally agreeable, you often make them invisible. 

This season alone, Emily unnecessarily apologises several times despite having been wronged herself. First to Marcello after he betrays her trust, and then to Mindy, after she starts dating Alfie, Emily's ex-boyfriend, behind her back.

It makes no sense.

At the end of the day, we don't watch this show for a moral compass; we watch it for the escapism of a woman who creates a whirlwind and manages to stand at the centre of it.

This shift points to a much larger, more frustrating double standard in television. For decades, we have celebrated the "difficult" man — the Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos — whose toxicity is treated as a mark of complexity and prestige. Men who literally break the law. 

Image: Netflix

Yet, when a woman on screen is anything less than perfectly empathetic, she is branded as "unlikeable".

There is an institutionalised fear of the unpolished woman. We see it in the way the writers have handled Emily, effectively putting her in a narrative corner where she must constantly apologise for existing. It's as if the creators took the internet's critiques too literally, forgetting that the audience's desire to "hate-watch" or debate a character is often what keeps a show alive.

We have seen this narrative retreat before, most notably in the evolution of Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City to And Just Like That… In the original series, Carrie was frequently unlikeable. She was selfish at times, she was a frustrating friend, and she made catastrophic romantic errors.

But that is exactly why we couldn't stop watching — she felt human. 

Image: HBO Max

In the revival, there is often a sense that the writers are shielding Carrie, trying to present her as a wiser, more palatable version of herself. In doing so, they have stripped away the relatability of her flaws. 

Emily in Paris is falling into the same trap by forcing its lead to be a "perfect" version of herself at the expense of the show's inherent friction.

The irony is that we actually love these chaotic characters. We crave the messy reality of women who don't always do the right thing. From the self-destruction of Fleabag to the obsessive tendencies of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the most iconic female leads are those who lean into their rougher edges. 

Image: Netflix

When we sanitise Emily, we lose the tension that makes her triumphs feel earned. Growth is essential for any long-running character, but growth should not be synonymous with being perfect. A character can learn to respect French culture or navigate her friendships more maturely without losing her signature chaos.

The likeability complex is the enemy of good television because perfection is a narrative dead end. We want Emily to trip over her own stilettos, metaphorically and literally. We want her to make the wrong choice in the heat of the moment because that is where the drama lives. 

If the writers keep rounding out her edges to appease the critics, they will eventually find themselves with a protagonist who has no story left to tell.

We don't need Emily to be a better person. We just need her to be a real one.

Feature Image: Netflix.