What would the world look like if there were no more losers and everyone was just winning all the time? Darren Star, the creator of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Sex and the City, has given us his answer with his new Netflix series Emily in Paris. The characters in this latest show — more stereotypes than living beings — are depicted as swinging from one success to another, none more so than the eponymous protagonist: Emily (Lily Collins) is a millennial ingénue sent to Paris to provide an American marketing perspective to a French agency catering to luxury brands and teach them how to use Instagram. She leaves her hometown of Chicago, including her successful boyfriend (who probably played college football), to become the charming Midwesterner in a charming Parisian loft apartment who now markets perfumes instead of pharmaceuticals.

Upon arrival, the French real estate agent makes an advance that Emily — not speaking any French — initially doesn’t understand. When the penny finally drops, and as his gestures become more obtrusive, her refusal moves from polite to annoyed. This conflict — crossing language, culture, and sexuality — is repeatedly played out in ever-new variations over the course of the remaining nine episodes: she meets a good-looking Frenchman with whom she almost goes home until he whispers in her ear: “I love American pussy.” This goes too far for the initially prudish Emily. Later she goes out with a semiotics professor who proves to her that French men really have sex all night long. The relationship falls apart during a trip to the opera when he remarks that Swan Lake is simpleminded and for tourists. She gives him the middle finger with the words, “Thomas, since you’re a professor of signs, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble recognizing this one.” “That’s more of a gesture,” he replies.

Emily in Paris ranked among the daily top ten on Netflix, yet in the flurry of media reviews and commentary, there has been remarkably little interrogation of the show’s appeal among audiences. Instead of asking why the show is so popular, the central point of contention has been whether the depiction of French culture is realistic or whether it simply reproduces meaningless clichés. On the one hand, you will find countless blog entries by Americans describing how they identify with Emily’s experience in Paris (one blogger even suspects that she is the unacknowledged model for Emily’s role, showing as proof a photo from last year in which she wears — just like the protagonist — a red beret in front of the Eiffel Tower). On the other hand, and well-represented in the French press, reviews have complained about the show’s many clichés: misogyny is not such a big issue, Parisians do not take multi-hour lunch breaks, and not everyone wears haute couture to the office. The Anglophone press has voiced strong opposition to Emily’s character traits, her being selfish and immoral: How dare she simply make out with her best friend’s boyfriend?