The show affords epistemological priority to Emily by focusing on her enchanting romantic dramas, sure, but it also lingers on sequences where French people berate her for being corny and basic, suggesting a degree of cultural self-awareness even where it threatens to alienate viewers who might see themselves in the protagonist. Even Emily’s dutiful, dead-eyed preoccupation with virality and marketing analytics mirrors Netflix’s obsession with its own growth. It is as if TV finally looked at itself and made the hollow conditions of its own reception an active plot point, the way novels in the ’60s started to incorporate literary critics as characters.
One was OK: a mistake. But two was a pattern. I knew at an early age that I never wanted to have kids but I didn’t think I was the type of girl who would have an abortion, certainly not more than one. Not because of adherence to a religious or natalist ideology but because I was too educated, too responsible which is an ideology, too.
As I plunged into the squall of messages, the landmarks of my own world receded. I was no longer a person but a great, universal ear receiving the worries and doubts of those in search of housing that inescapable circumstance all of us, at one point or another, are bound to endure.