“Emily in Paris” is, to JD Vance at least, anything but ringarde.
On Monday, the vice president offered a remarkably earnest analysis of the Lily Collins-led Netflix rom-com, hailing it as a “master work” and even the “Shakespeare of our time.”
But Vance also used the show, whose sixth and final season is slated for release in December, to push the GOP’s pro-marriage, pro-family message, and to criticize the life choices of his fellow millennials.
In a video shared on TikTok, in purported response to a friend who’d slammed the series, Vance went très deep with his “meta-analysis” and explained why he thinks it’s “genius.”
Amanda Edwards via Getty Images
“The basic idea,” Vance said, is that Collins’ marketing executive character Emily Cooper is “this sort of bubbly girl who goes to Paris and has a cool job and has great experiences and drinks fine wine, does all the things that you would do in Paris.”
But Donald Trump’s No. 2 argued that the show, which drew backlash in its first season over accusations of stereotypical portrayals of French people, is actually “a massive cultural criticism of millennial decision-making.”
“She goes to Paris, and it’s obvious to everybody watching the show that she should end up with the French chef,” said Vance, referring to Lucas Bravo’s character, Gabriel.
“She should marry this guy; they should start a family, whether in Paris or America. They should build a life together. That’s what they should be doing,” he continued.
The French chef “should obviously end up with her, not the various crazy people that pop in and out of his life,” said Vance. “And yet what both of them do is they make a series of absurd, sometimes hilarious, sometimes not particularly believable mistakes where she ends up with a bunch of random people or focused on her job, he ends up with a bunch of random people or focused on his job.”
It’s “like obvious,” claimed Vance, who has made marriage, parenthood and criticism of childlessness themes of his career.
“Fall in love, get married, you two were made for each other, and the fact that they keep on making atrocious decisions is kind of like the best bit of cultural commentary, I would say cultural criticism, of my generation, the millennials,” he argued.
“You gotta watch ‘Emily in Paris,’” Vance concluded the video, before declaring: “It is, at the risk of overstating it, the Shakespeare of our time.”
“Emily in Stratford-upon-Avon,” anyone?
