You know those pop cultural twins that emerge as if they’re from the same zygote? Think Armageddon and Deep Impact. Coco and The Book of Life. Charli XCX and Lorde. Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle. And … Emily in Paris and Industry.
Let me get ahead of the dissent: I know that Industry (critical darling, Succession’s hot-blooded, drug-dazed younger cousin) may not seem to be any real kin to Emily in Paris (the great disrupter of bygone Golden Globes, favorite hate-watch of the intelligentsia and TikTok pilled). Surely the gray, sharp-edged, and densely plotted world of Industry bears no comparison to the candy-colored fantasia of Emily in Paris. And Emily Cooper of Emily in Paris and Harper Stern of Industry could scarcely breathe the same air without asphyxiating on cigarette smoke or Maison Lavaux perfume, respectively.
But even if these shows aren’t pop culture twins, they could pass as cousins (of some remove). At times, they feel like two varying responses to one basic writing prompt: What happens when you send an American upstart abroad and put her to work? Let’s run through the common DNA of two shows that, like most second cousins, have nothing to do with each other and probably don’t even talk—but, by God, they’re still related!
The Pandemic Premiere
Emily in Paris debuted in October 2020, Industry a month later—when we were deep into the pandemic and its assorted deprivations. EIP became a totem of pandemic entertainment, ambient TV for a time when it was easier to remember TikTok songs than challenging plotlines. It went down like one of those trendy dalgona coffees people were making to pass the time—sweet and vaguely energizing for the hours you spent on your couch. Industry is more like a bitter pill, which might explain why its first season didn’t make quite the splash Emily in Paris did. In the depths of our COVID despair, the corridors of power in Industry made for a much less appealing refuge than the arrondissements of Paris. But they both whisked us off to worlds of commerce as we sat on our couches, quiet quitting and forgetting how to talk to our coworkers.
The American Wunderkind
Emily and Harper are both American expats (and proxies for the American audience) in Europe. They both come from provincial and middle- or possibly lower-class backgrounds: Emily’s mom is a math teacher, her dad is a dog breeder, and she’s from suburban Skokie, Illinois; Harper is from Binghamton, New York, went to a state school, and shared a bedroom with her twin brother when she was growing up (quelle horreur!). Emily gets called a plouc and ringarde right off the bat, and Harper overhears gossip about how she’s just a diversity hire with a nose ring; Emily’s a foil for the broadly painted snobbishness of Parisians, Harper for the caste-like hierarchies of the Oxford and Pierpoint set.
But what do both women do in response to their cold welcomes? They print business! In her opening interview at Pierpoint, Harper says, “I think this is the closest thing to a meritocracy there is. And I only ever want to be judged on the strength of my abilities.” A very American rebuke to the aristocracy! Emily and Harper both throw themselves into their work (with varying results, of course), sometimes (often) inviting their colleagues’ disdain. They’re both queens of the sales pitch, although Harper’s ideas actually sound somewhat realistic (but who am I to say—I don’t really understand financial instruments and hedge funds, so her ideas might be as terrible as Emily’s Instagram posts). Harper increases her business 100 percent year over year; Emily wins over her boss (and EIP’s true heroine), Sylvie, who admits that, while Emily is basically intolerable on a personal level, she’s still “very, very good at her job.”
And, actually, that’s another commonality between Emily and Harper—they’re both deeply grating people (some might say the villains of their own series). They talk about their jobs all the time. Emily stalks clients in Saint-Tropez and at the opera to sell them on her questionable ideas; Harper follows hers to the tennis court, the club, the pool, and the bathroom. When each protagonist makes a mistake (or just outright lies), they somehow spin their errors and deceit into something better than what they started with.
Their bottomless need to succeed means they can’t see other people as anything more than either consumer products or career obstacles: Emily uses her boyfriends in ad campaigns and doesn’t hesitate to turn real life into marketing collateral; as soon as Harper starts selling people out, it’s clear she doesn’t care whom she steps on or over. They both lie, early and often, to get their way. They both get called out for their total self-absorption, but they keep making money anyway. They both get fired, but they never stop working.
The Ménàge à Trois
I know, every show has its love triangle. But Industry and EIP have turned their respective threesomes (Harper, Robert, and Yasmin and Emily, Gabriel, and Camille) into series linchpins. Emily-Gabriel-Camille has been artificially extended by a fake pregnancy, a duplicitous love pact, Gabriel’s general gormlessness, and too many side pieces to keep up with. But the triangle does feature some of the same elements as Harper-Yasmin-Rob: clear class and cultural differences between the two women, an American upstart coming in to disrupt the romantic balance, a hapless man caught in the middle, and one person who’s always left feeling less than.
The Problematic Workplace Relationships
Sex and love are just a part of the business. Emily’s always getting her boyfriends jobs—she introduces Gabriel to Antoine Lambert, who funds his restaurant, and Alfie becomes the CFO of Antoine’s perfumery (and all this is to say nothing of Antoine’s own flirtation with Emily and his ongoing affair with Sylvie). Sylvie’s relationship with Antoine means that Maison Lavaux gets a pretty hefty discount on Savoir’s marketing services. But somehow, when love affairs with clients go wrong, Emily doesn’t lose business or get called into HR.
The colleagues in Industry are just as blatant about their office romances, without much fear of repercussion. Gus gets with Theo; Harper gets with Danny, Rob, and Rishi; Rishi gets with Sweetpea; Rob gets with Venetia, Yasmin, and maybe that guy from the sauna; Yasmin gets with Rob, Celeste, and Henry Muck—and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head. Sex makes the powerless feel more powerful and brings the powerful back down to earth. (“Do I fuck like a young man?” Eric asks a sex worker, desperately and sweatily, in Switzerland.) It’s another way of leveraging and losing influence at Pierpoint—and it’s more effective than a pitch deck.
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The American Ex Plot Device
As a character, Emily’s American ex-boyfriend (he’s named Doug, but he’s so forgettable it doesn’t even matter) exists only to give her a vague connection to Chicago and, eventually, a big potential client in McDonald’s. Harper’s American ex also just exists to do her a big favor: doctor a transcript so she can lie her way into Pierpoint.
Both exes also participate in some let’s-look-away-now-this-is-so-uncomfortable FaceTime sex and are never seen or heard from again once they stop being convenient.
The Bully/Mentor
Both Harper and Emily have, through the seasons, traded places with their mentors. Eric held his power over Harper throughout Seasons 1 and 2, keeping her secrets one moment and betraying them the next. In Season 3, Harper has fully become him (but even more cutthroat), reading Pierpoint’s fortunes better than he ever did and being willing to sell anyone out to win: “Everything you do on the floor communicates an ideology that people are a means to an end. I enact your philosophy, and you have the nerve to come into my office and call me a bad person,” she tells him. Meanwhile, Eric’s showing cracks just like Harper did in Season 1, but now she’s on the exploiting end.
Emily is a loud and American thorn in Sylvie’s side until the lithe, très chic marketing head recognizes her new pupil’s (dubious) talents. Emily constantly embarrasses Sylvie at parties and events, bringing up work in social settings and pitching brash, outré social campaigns that match her gaudy outfits. But by Season 4, Sylvie has become a little more like her protégée. She crashes Emily’s romantic Roman getaway with Marcello, trying to poach Emily’s beau as a new client. She proceeds to concoct some very Emily-like deceptions and won’t stop talking about work on vacation. Très American.
The Heiress Roommate (With Daddy Issues)
Although the dynamic is flipped in the two shows, both of our protagonists end up bunking with paragons of privilege. (Heiress Mindy moves in with normie Emily, and normie Harper moves in with heiress Yasmin.) Harper wants to get out of Pierpoint’s graduate housing system, and Yasmin casually mentions that she has a room available in her London manse. Mindy gets fired from her nannying job, and Emily takes her into her comically large chambre de bonne.
Also, both Yasmin and Mindy are (mostly) on the outs with their wealthy, withholding fathers. But even in their fallen states, the pair’s privilege is a foil for their American roommates. Whenever they fight, Harper reminds Yasmin that her only value comes from her upbringing; she’s never earned a thing she owns. And although there is somehow never conflict between Mindy and Emily (which, there’s no way, considering some questionable etiquette when it comes to men staying over and there apparently being zero closets in the apartment), Mindy (like Yasmin) is trying to step out of her father’s shadow. Harper and Emily had to work to get to where they are; their roommates had to give up what they had to arrive at the same place.
The Very Unhappy Birthday
Every birthday is a time for reckoning and/or oblivion. On her birthday, Harper gets both when she parties all night, gets rebuffed by Rob, and has to face up to a misbooked trade the following day. It’s her first (but by no means last) major mistake at Pierpoint, although she wriggles out of it like a snake.
Emily similarly gets a reckoning on her big day when her friend Camille finds Gabriel’s monogrammed cast-iron pan in Emily’s chambre de bonne/den of iniquity. Somehow that, and not Emily and Gabriel’s constant googly eyes, clues her into their ongoing, kinda-sorta affair. There’s a blowup and broken champagne glass—although, naturally, it’s far from the end of their love triangle.
The Corporate Coup
The end of a second season always needs some mixing up, and Industry and Emily in Paris take a similar approach to stir the pot. In response to the impending merger of the London CPS desk with New York’s, Harper, Eric, Rishi, and (eventually) Danny shop their services around to other banks. In response to another American takeover, this time at Savoir, Sylvie takes her talent and clients and starts her own marketing agency. Questions abound about the noncompete clauses at both Pierpoint and Savoir. (Also, both Harper and Emily participate in these coups, in part, just to avoid going back to America.)
One coup, naturally, ends better than the other—absolutely no negative consequences (or real disturbances of any kind) arise from the creation of Agence Grateau in Emily in Paris. On the Pierpoint side, the coup falls apart when Eric and Harper’s sins come back to haunt them in the form of Daria, whom they’d ousted the season before. Things spiral from there, as the CPS and FX desks are merged and Danny and Harper are both fired from Pierpoint. A corporate coup is just a temporary setback in the world of Emily in Paris; in Industry, it ends careers.
