28 of the worst moments on 'Emily in Paris' season 4
- Season four of Netflix's "Emily in Paris" is full of cringey moments.
- Emily continues to have overly dramatic love triangles involving Gabriel.
- From "penis pants" to funky ski gear, the props and custumes on the season are also ridiculous.
In December 2022, Netflix said fans watched 117.6 million hours of "Emily in Paris" season three in a week. It's no wonder its newly released season four is the talk of the town — whether people love to hate the show or hate to love it.
Season four follows Emily through more work drama, love triangles, and bizarre fashion choices.
Here are some of the worst details from the new episodes.
Emily showed up at Alfie’s gym, leading to him getting punched in the face.
At the end of season three, Alfie left Emily at Camille and Gabriel's (almost) wedding after discovering she might still have feelings for Gabriel.
By the start of season four, he's blocked her number and social-media accounts and doesn't reach out to her until he sees a huge billboard of them kissing for the Ami ad Emily's team was working on.
At the end of that phone call, Alfie accidentally lets slip that he's near his boxing gym, so Emily jumps at the chance to speak to him in person there. Alfie is so distracted when she gets there that his boxing partner punches him square in the face.
To make matters worse, Emily still asks Alfie to help her with the ad campaign while giving him ice.
Emily created virtual avatars of her and Alfie kissing.
Emily knows Alfie is uncomfortable being part of the Ami campaign, so she devises a backup plan when the company expects them to do a kiss cam at a big tennis tournament.
But all she does is make pretty low-brow avatars of the two of them kissing.
Emily is a marketing professional who specializes in social-media content, but the animation looked like it could've been made on a children's computer game.
Emily screamed at Gabriel while revealing she knew Camille was cheating on him.
No one has been in touch with Camille since she left Gabriel at the altar at the end of season three, so Gabriel tells Emily he's worried that she's been missing for several days at the start of season four.
Emily responds by revealing Camille was having an affair with Sofia, so she's probably with her in Greece.
Emily goes into far too much detail about what she knows of Camille and Sofia's relationship and then yells at Gabriel when he's upset with her for keeping this from him.
Even worse, Camille is not even in Greece with Sofia.
Luc ruined a client presentation while having Julien feed him lines.
Luc frantically calls Julien 20 minutes before a big client presentation the pair had prepped together before Julien left to work at JVMA. Despite being an account manager who was there for all the planning, Luc claims that he really only knows the logistics of the event.
Rather than simply having Julien send over some presentation notes with the proper jargon, they decide to embark on one of the most cliché romps: Julien secretly feeds Luc lines through an earbud.
This inevitably goes poorly. Luc repeats Julien verbatim — even when he's giving his lunch order to someone at the JVMA office — frustrating the clients and forcing Emily and Sylvie to save face.
Luc advertised a rigged giveaway.
After failing to prepare for the meeting with the client, Luc still has nothing planned for the brand's actual event.
On the spot, he announces a scavenger hunt in which the winner will get one of the company's extremely expensive necklaces.
The client is upset, as a free necklace isn't in their budget, but Luc assures them that people will get sick of the scavenger hunt before anyone wins.
This goes against the terms of most social-media promotion guidelines, including the conditions on Instagram, where Luc is running the rigged giveaway.
Someone else wore the same ridiculous outfit as Emily at the masquerade ball.
Emily wears an elaborate black-and-white outfit to Agence Grateau's masquerade ball. It has stripes running all the way to her fingertips and toes and a massive brimmed hat.
Although this is pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of Emily's wacky clothing choices throughout the series, against all odds, someone else is wearing the exact same outfit as her.
As it happens, this other woman also has short dark-brown hair and a similar build to Emily, which causes issues later on.
Alfie impulsively kisses a stranger, thinking she's Emily.
Emily is faced with choosing between Gabriel and Alfie at the masquerade ball and ultimately picks Gabriel.
Unfortunately for Alfie, he runs into the other woman dressed like Emily and frantically tries to mend their relationship. After a short speech, he grabs who he thinks is Emily for an unconsented kiss.
It's understandably awkward when they pull away. Alfie realizes his mistake and then crushingly spots Emily and Gabriel leaving the function together.
After that cringey moment, Alfie just disappears for the rest of the first half of season four, maybe forever.
Emily forgot she had Camille’s location while she was missing.
Gabriel is understandably concerned about Camille being missing, so Emily makes it her mission to find Camille.
But it takes her more than a day to remember that she's had Camille's live location information on her phone the entire time.
Camille and Emily got into a rowboat fight at a historic French site.
Once she looks at her location, Emily sees Camille is at Claude Monet's Garden in Giverny. She decides to personally go and get her instead of letting any of her friends or family talk to her.
Emily finds Camille rowing in the garden's pond, steals a boat herself, and paddles out to get her.
The two argue while immaturely jabbing each other's row boats with their oars. Of course, both of them end up tipping over into the pond.
Grégory Duprée presents an explicit (and somewhat cheap-looking) clothing line.
After Nicolas' father is accused of sexually harassing his female subordinates, Grégory Duprée shows Nicolas his first collection as the new designer for the Pierre Cadault brand under JVMA.
The collection consists of pants with phallic appendages attached to them.
It's a little on the nose for the context of the situation. Plus, the actual attachments seem to be made with felt and thrown together at the last minute.
Gabriel and Emily hook up on their roof.
With Emily and Mindy living together and Camille and Sofia living at Gabriel's, Emily and Gabriel struggle to find time to be intimate.
Rather than talking to their roommates to find a night alone or simply getting a hotel, Emily and Gabriel have sex on the roof of their building.
Although it can be seen as a romantic gesture, if the whole building has roof access, it's not exactly any more private.
Emily brought her own sex life into a pitch.
After her adventurous night with Gabriel, Emily tries to take a new lease on sex and "embrace the gray area" — which ends up being great timing because she's trying to market a line of hair products for older women.
In the client pitch, she rambles about the hypothetical customer wanting a moment alone with their sexual partner while detailing the roadblocks she and Gabriel are dealing with in real life.
By the end of the episode, Emily is done with her sexual explorations, and the hair brand isn't mentioned again.
Emily told their landlord that Camille and Sofia moved in with Gabriel.
Emily gets so fed up with Camille and Sofia living with Gabriel that she goes to their landlord to tell her that he has more people living in his apartment than the lease allows.
She does this without talking to Gabriel first and without considering that this could have had negative repercussions for him as well.
Plus, the women were actively hunting for an apartment, and getting them kicked out could've left them without a place to go.
Emily couldn’t tell she was being served a fake apple.
During the episode where Mindy explains the concept of a trompe-l'œil (art that fools the eye), Gabriel's new pastry chef presents Emily and Mindy with a dessert shaped like an apple.
Emily gushes about having truly thought it was a piece of fruit despite the treat's overly bright colors and unrealistic, waxy finish.
Marianne was lying about still being a Michelin inspector.
At the end of season three, Luc enlisted his ex Marianne, a Michelin-star inspector, to help Gabriel get a star for his restaurant.
The pair were dating again at the start of season four, but after weeks of lying to everyone, it's revealed that Marianne was fired from her gig as a Michelin inspector a year ago.
This causes Luc to disappoint Sylvie again and snatches away Gabriel's chances at getting a star. But Luc is inexplicably fine with having been lied to.
He ends episode five laughing with Marianne and deciding to stay with her.
Gabriel fires his pastry chef for news that has nothing to do with him.
After getting advice from Marianne, Gabriel hires a pastry chef to better his chances of serving Michelin-worthy desserts. But he ends up with a very pushy employee who drives him a little mad.
Despite their differences, the restaurant is packed every night with people looking to try the chef's illusion desserts after seeing them online.
When Gabriel finds out Marianne is a fraud who can't help him get a Michelin star, his immediate reaction is to fire the pastry chef.
It was a little aggressive, especially since he was only bringing more people to his restaurant, and the man looked understandably hurt and confused by the sudden dismissal.
Emily failed to do basic research on Li or her product.
Mindy's friend Li gets Emily to promote her luxury skincare product with Agence Grateau.
But after a small amount of research, Julien finds a "Shark Tank"-style clip of Li presenting the same product as a personal lubricant and getting rejected by the show's judges.
By this point, Li is already sampling her product at a department store. Instead of telling the store, the marketing team just quietly lets people continue to rub lube all over their faces.
Camille hasn't told Gabriel she’s not pregnant.
After seeing a doctor for the first time since taking a home pregnancy test, Camille finds out that she's not actually pregnant and that her missed period was likely caused by stress.
For most of the episode, she's understandably grappling with her emotions. But instead of telling Gabriel, she actively pretends that she's still having his baby so she has an excuse to stay in his life.
There's a clear limit to how long she can keep this lie up, but viewers are left with the cliffhanger before the second half of the season.
Camille’s mother suggests pursuing Gabriel despite knowing he’s dating Emily.
Throughout the series, Lousie, Camille's mother, has given Camille frequent relationship advice.
When Gabriel chooses to join Camille's family for Christmas instead of going to Chicago to see Emily's family, Louise suggests that Camille take advantage of it by getting back together with Gabriel.
Even when Emily's flight is canceled, and she joins the family in the French Alps, the mother is kind of relentless about Camille and Gabriel getting together.
Gabriel left Emily stranded on a ski run without any protective gear.
Gabriel, Camille, and Timothée pester Emily into skiing during their trip to the Alps despite her lack of experience.
Camille lends her some (interesting) ski clothes — that don't even seem to include a real winter coat. But Emily notably isn't wearing a helmet or ski goggles when they get to the top of Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc, which doesn't seem wise for a novice.
Gabriel insists he'll be right next to her the whole time, but the second Camille (an expert skier) goes down the mountain, he follows because he's worried about the baby he still doesn't know doesn't exist.
This leaves Emily to painfully tumble her way down the run, lose her phone, and lie stranded in the snow until a kind Italian stranger helps her.
Camille secretly brings Gabriel to talk to a priest about adopting a child together.
After Camille tells Gabriel that she had a false-positive pregnancy, the two spend time together to cope with the news.
Camille asks Gabriel to go with her to speak with a priest her family is close with, but Gabriel is surprised when the priest mentions something about the pair trying to adopt together.
Camille never asked Gabriel if he wanted to pursue adoption, or even get back together with her at all. She tries to talk him into both after their conversation with the priest, but Gabriel tells her no.
Genevieve sabotages Emily by mistranslating Gabriel's French.
Emily is upset that Gabriel didn't tell her about Camille's false pregnancy and starts a fight with him right before he's supposed to shoot a promotional video for the restaurant.
During the tiff, Gabriel switches to speaking in French. When Emily finds out Genevieve, Laurent's daughter, speaks French, she asks if she understood what he said.
The New Yorker correctly interprets that Gabriel thinks Emily is the one causing communication problems in the relationship. But then she pauses and adds that Gabriel said he doesn't want to see Emily again, which he didn't.
Genevieve later makes a move on Gabriel, so it's pretty clear she was trying to get Emily out of the way.
Luc shamelessly flirts with a client during a pitch.
Luc runs the pitch meeting for an Italian coffee company, Bavazza, with ideas on how to get Parisians to enjoy the product.
But most of his dialogue in the scene is focused on flirting with Bianca, one of the clients, instead of coming up with concrete details for the actual event.
When the Bavazza team asks what will be served at the launch party, Luc doesn't have an answer, and Emily steps in to suggest espresso martinis.
His flirtatious comments with Bianca are more frustrating when he asks Emily and Julien not to discuss the interaction with his girlfriend, Marianne.
Sylvie appears in Rome to pitch a meeting to Marcello without even calling Emily first.
Emily takes time off work to visit Marcello in Rome. When Sylvie finds out, she appears at Emily's hotel to convince Marcello to hire Agence Grateau.
Marcello, whose family is already hesitant to do any marketing at all, is upset about the sudden intrusion and assumes Emily must have planned this all along.
Throughout the series, Sylvie has preached about work-life balance, but the one time Emily takes a real vacation, the boss is suddenly all about work.
Nico gets Mindy disqualified from Eurovision.
Nico asks Mindy to drop out of Eurovision because of how the press around the competition is affecting his career. He offers to help her music career in other ways but also refers to her bandmate as a loser and calls Eurovision a "silly song contest."
The comments and attitude remind Mindy of her father, who she's struggled to have a relationship with her whole life, so she chooses to leave Nico and put her career first.
Nico later posts a clip of the band's song in a commercial, which automatically disqualifies her group from Eurovision. It was a surprisingly cruel way to fully ruin her band's biggest break.
Genevieve tries to kiss Gabriel in front of his business partners.
Genevieve seemingly started pursuing Gabriel the minute his relationship with Emily imploded. When Emily is in Rome, she even invites Gabriel to her housewarming and kisses him.
Gabriel never initiates anything with her, but Genevieve pursuits are pretty aggressive — especially when she gets to be the one who tells him he finally got a Michelin star.
At the celebration party, Genevieve drapes herself over Gabriel and tries to kiss him while he's speaking with Antoine and Alfie. This finally leads Gabriel to formally shut her down.
Sylvie makes Emily run the Rome without any discussion.
Sylvie decides to open a Rome office as a condition for signing an account with Marcello's family.
Despite Sylvie's own love of Rome, Luc's fluent Italian, and Julien's past business experience in Rome, Sylvie announces that Emily will be running the new office.
She doesn't give her a chance to turn the offer down, and she tells Emily she can't even go back to Paris to pack — she has to send for her clothes.
Alfie inexplicably convinces Gabriel to pursue Emily again.
Gabriel and Alfie remain friends and business partners despite their chaotic past. When Mindy tells them that Emily is moving to Rome, Alfie goes out of his way to convince Gabriel to pursue Emily.
He insists that Gabriel still has a chance even though she's with Marcello, and Gabriel seems to take his advice.
Alfie is happily in a new relationship after Emily chose Gabriel earlier on the season, but it still seems out of character for him to be so adamant about Gabriel and Emily getting back together.
Alfie pretty much disappeared from the show, so it's extra confusing why he comes back just to do this.
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.