Are you hate-watching Emily in Paris? You won't like what it says about you.

It's highly likely that a large portion of your week is dedicated to being entertained by people who make your skin crawl.

A group of people whose life choices make no sense to you, whose designer clothes are completely out of their budget (yet never seem to wrinkle), and people who you only wish bad fortune for. All the while being told that you have to root for them.

The fact that these people are fictional only makes their annoying qualities harder to stomach, and yet you can't look away.

Welcome to the world of TV hate-watching, a pastime that is currently fueling streaming services and algorithms across the globe as people frequently tune into shows filled with storylines and characters they know will leave them enraged, which is exactly why they hit play in the first place. 

A glance at your TikTok feed, a peek into a group chat or just running your eyes across one of the many online articles that declares 'These are the TV shows people most love to hate' will quickly reveal that a specific group of titles always rises to the surface.

The Bold Type, Gilmore Girls, And Just Like That, Girls and Emily in Paris all top the list. 

It's no surprise that hate-watching a TV show is the option that most frequently makes its way into public conversation.

Admitting to hate-watching a specific person's Instagram or TikTok content can place you in a pretty bad light, and hate-reading a book is quite the time commitment. Granted, there are specific movies designed with a hate-watch in mind (here's looking at the many low-budget rom-coms starring former Disney stars with gushy titles that tend to pop up on Netflix like clockwork, all designed to ride the 'so bad it's good' wave), but it's TV shows that continue to dominate this pastime.

Our desire to be part of a pop culture conversation around a popular new show is understandable, but what's even more intriguing is which shows we choose to love to hate.

Listen to The Spill hosts discuss hate-watching Emily In Paris.

The shows that top the hate-watch lists all have different writers, are set in different locations, and in some cases even take place decades apart, yet they all share one common thread. They are all stories about women's lives, just with a glossy topcoat applied. Ensuring that these tales of romance, friendship, and work feel more like escapist wish-fulfillment sagas than anything resembling real life.

What's interesting is how our minds have been trained over time to label different TV shows so definitively. TV shows that depict women in trauma can easily be labelled 'prestige' (whether they deserve the label or not) while shows that depict women in fancy clothes getting coffee while dealing with a difficult boss (a plot that somehow fits into every hate-watch show on the list) instead of being murdered are immediately regarded as trash TV.

This is not to say that a series like Emily in Paris should be placed in the same category as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Succession or any of the other (admittedly very good) shows that centre on complicated men making morally dubious decisions. Yet it also has to be said that at the heart of these hate-watches is perhaps a tinge of guilt at how much we truly enjoy and are soothed by them. So, it brings us a small sense of inner retribution to publicly denounce them as shows we "love to hate".

As a rule, the entertainment industry has never warmed to celebrating women's stories or even comedies in general. The Oscars are infamously known to throw statues at movies that depict war, slavery, rape, and suffering. Meanwhile, they mostly ignore more comedic offerings or stories told through a female lens — despite what audiences and the box office have to say about it. 

If drawing a line from the Academy Awards to a Netflix show about a flamboyantly dressed young woman who cannot learn French feels like a leap, then allow me to draw your intention to an idea popularised by the ultimate 'well-dressed girls getting coffee while complaining about a bad boss' film. A little film that was infamously let down by the Oscars, called The Devil Wears Prada. Much like how cerulean blue trickles down from the offices of Runway through to the bargain bins, so does the thinking around entertainment trickle down from the Oscars to the streamers.

Yet there's something to be said about the work that goes into crafting an escapist comfort watch, no matter how flimsy it might appear on the surface. You need to land on the correct mix of interesting characters (when it comes to Emily in Paris, Sylvie Grateau delivers on that) and plot deviations to keep the viewer interested (even if their interest comes with a desire to phone scroll while watching). It's a balance of keeping the world just heightened enough without it feeling like a poorly crafted after-school special.

The Bold Type is often cited as a hate-watch. 

The other common thread that links the characters of shows like The Bold Type, And Just Like That, and Emily In Paris together is that these characters all epitomise the type of people we've been taught are fair game when it comes to humour at their expense.

The women in these TV shows are mostly white, thin, young or extremely wealthy. They tend to live in picturesque homes and exciting/expensive cities, their designer outfits styled to perfection and handsome men are always on hand to quickly fall in love with them. 

If good humour is linked to punching up, then these women exist at the top of the pyramid and should be the prime target.

Yet the hate-watching around these shows goes much deeper than a dislike of women wearing clothes they should not be able to afford.

What the Hannah Horvaths, Emily Coopers and Carrie Bradshaws of the TV world all have in common is their ability to reflect our deepest insecurities back at us.

So many of their storylines are hooked on moments of extreme cringe and embarrassment, moments of selfishness towards their friends, or thinking that their voices and opinions are unique and therefore more valid than others.

Storylines that are not exactly delving into high-stakes trauma, but ones that hold a mirror up to the low-stakes yet very loud securities and moments of regret that rage inside our own heads. 

Everybody wants to believe they wouldn't be the Emily Cooper if given the chance to move to Paris, but the hard fact is that most of us would behave eerily the same way. 

So as you sit down to watch Emily in Paris season four part two, just keep one thought in your mind. Are you really telling people that you're hate-watching it because the story makes no sense, or do you just not know how to deal with a show that centres on escapism rather than a woman's trauma?

Emily in Paris Season 4: Part 2 premieres September 12, only on Netflix.

Laura Brodnik is Mamamia's Head of Entertainment and host of The Spill podcast. You can follow her on Instagram here for more entertainment news and recommendations.

Feature Image: Netflix.