When does her visa expire? It’s what’s said every time on social media that we are caught up in the beautifully chaotic world of Emily Cooper, brand ambassador for Paris to the world; fabulous clothes, like Urfi Javed from Chicago; and the wit to make her mark in hard-hitting ads. Emily is a tornado in tall boots. She is everything you hate but love. I hate you (like I love you), as Aamir Khan says.

Cooper is a ridiculously nice altruist and optimistic to the point of stupidity. Her naivety is sometimes blood-curdling, but then she redeems herself with another good-looking guy while her ex-boyfriend is busy chasing his Michelin star and the new intern at Agence Grato. The West is obsessed with Emily. They can’t get enough of her, but they also hate her so much. So much so that in the past five years we’ve had four seasons, multiple release dates, and now we’re ready for Season 5. Lord, when does His visa expired!

Emily moved from Chicago to Paris ‘for a temporary job’ in Season 1. Then she found herself a corner on Netflix and never left, just like those two pigeons you chase away every day, and at the end of the night realize the inevitable: they’re never leaving.

The essence of Emily in Paris’s phenomenal success is that we love to see beautiful things. Spectacular locations, good-looking men and women, high fashion, chaotic realities and the happiness we all crave.

Emily and her Instagram are a way to escape the monotony of our daily routine, where we google vacations for the next long weekend and look at memes to pass the time in between. Cooper is not a breath of fresh air. He is noisy TV; TV at its most childish. There are no brainy conversations happening here. Don’t expect Kant or Kafka-level philosophy. There is no Rumi or Blake here. Emily is no Meursault and Darren Star is no Albert Camus. The show is just a fleeting moment of escape. What we seek in our holidays, in our evenings, in water-cooler breaks or in the occasional WhatsApp joke.

Emily belongs, borrowing a term from Kyle Chayka the new Yorker‘Global Oat Milk Elite’. So, you find her struggling with life and fashion and choices and failures, only to realise she’s scared of ‘settling down’.

Like every other post-Millennial and Gen Z, Cooper is perpetually caught between one man and another; piecing together miracles at her job as her personal life is a mess. It is this vulnerability that makes Emily Cooper so relevant to all of us in our twenties, thirties, forties; to all of us whose lives, in the social sense of the word, are not ‘sorted out’. Emily, like all of us, is the lost generation. Like monarch butterflies, we are all in motion, travelling millions of miles in our minds, from one end to the other, reluctant to ‘sort out’.

In the 2008 movie ‘Passengers’, Chris Pratt makes a relevant point about ‘settling down’: “The scary thing about commitment is that your life becomes real. It’s not a plan, it’s not what you hoped — it’s real.”

In a world where truth is debatable and reality comes in different forms, Emily Cooper’s escapism is the option we all gravitate towards. We love watching her vicariously as she wanders around Paris in her mini skirt and ugly Christmas sweater, making mistakes and realizing there is more to life than that hot guy at the restaurant. Or a ski accident in the winter wonderland of Megeve, where she meets another hot guy who has a purpose in life.

The show’s purpose has been accomplished. With every new man and every new setting comes views. We’re following Emily’s every move. The truth lies in the numbers and numbers don’t lie. In 2022, ‘Emily in Paris’ was Netflix’s most streamed show. In 2024, Season 4 premiered in the Netflix Global Top 10 with 20 million views.

Such is the pop-culture impact of ‘Emily in Paris’ that Season 4 Part 2 even features a small cameo from French First Lady Brigitte Macron! Lady Macron’s selfie with Cooper is an indicator of the character’s popularity, a fact that is further amplified by the many campaigns Netflix presents to us every time Emily appears on the horizon.

‘Emily in Paris’ might be Netflix’s biggest, most consistent and most unexpected success to date. Impossible because people love to criticise the show so much. It fits beautifully into that ‘hateful gaze’ box where you want to shut the door in Emily’s face, but also want to peek out your window to see if she walks in through Gabriel’s door.

If you’ve read this far, you know this story is about our need to escape our hamster-wheel life, just like ‘Emily in Paris’. The same story is repeated season after season. And we don’t get tired of it.

So, another season is on its way as we once again embark on this exciting journey called the life of Emily Cooper. Emily is a US citizen. And with Lady Macron, her French visa won’t expire anytime soon.